A Community Destroyed:

60 Years Since the Annihilation of Hungarian Jewry

By Professor Israel Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett

The Hungarian Jewish community was annihilated towards the end of WWII, as the Red Army moved toward the Hungarian frontiers. The impending Nazi defeat and the responsibility the perpetrators of the crime were about to face had no effect on bringing the killings to an end. In fact, the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in the spring and early summer of 1944 proceeded more quickly than those that had been employed against any Jewish collective in Europe, except for the mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942. The murder machine accelerated to peak speed during these months in terms of both the magnitude of the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the barbarity employed in this operation.

In the shadow of humiliating defeat in the First World War and the unfolding economic crisis, Hungary moved closer to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s hoping, among other goals, to regain the vast territory it had lost in the Trianon peace settlement.  The alliance with Germany yielded fruit; by 1941, Hungary’s territorial annexations greatly increased its physical and economic boundaries. By default, it also nearly doubled the Jewish population of the country, bringing it to about 800,000 people.

Despite the disabling “Jewish Laws”, until 1944 Hungarian Jews retained some personal freedoms. However, as Hungary began making moves to quit the war, the German high leadership decided to invade. On 19 March 1944, the Wehrmacht marched into Hungary, accompanied by hundreds of Gestapo operatives and some 100-150 members of a special unit (Sonderkommando) under the personal command of Adolf Eichmann.

The rapid assault on Hungarian Jewry—a community noted for devotion to its country—was marked by intensity and brutality. Within just a few weeks the Germans had implemented measures they had taken against other Jewish communities over the course of many months and even years.  Beginning in mid-April, stunned families and communities were subjected to terrifying searches for valuables, while being crowded into makeshift and then often larger ghettos.

The transports to Auschwitz began on 15 May, and continued until July.  In all, 147 freight trains packed with over 435,000 women, men, children and elderly set out from points spanning the entire country.  Only the bulk of Budapest Jewry was spared. In her memoirs, Sarah Beinhorn (Klein) of Munkács recalled: “The distressing journey lasted two days, and nobody knew where it was heading. Each person was preoccupied with himself, attempting to overcome the great fear in his heart…Fatigue and helplessness overwhelmed them and caused them to fall asleep on their feet for a moment of slumber followed by a shocking awakening.”

Before the Germans arrived, Hungarian Jewish men serving in slave labor battalions on the Eastern Front had witnessed murder operations, or had seen their fresh traces.  However, they generally believed this violence was a local by-product of an extremely brutal war—not part of a larger systematic campaign of murder—and reported it as such.  Jewish refugees from neighboring countries described similar experiences, but they too were unable to express the extent of the unfolding slaughter. Moreover Jews in Hungary commonly believed their government would continue protecting them. Even just before the occupation, young Zionists who had tried to alert provincial Jewry about German intentions were generally rebuked and sent home.  Soon after the deportations to Auschwitz began, a report of the camp’s activities, known as the Auschwitz Protocols, reached several Hungarian Jewish leaders.  Perhaps on the background of earlier failed warnings, the report was not disseminated. Thus Auschwitz and its operation remained unknown to the masses of Hungarian Jews until they set foot in the notorious death camp.  

“I remember the arrival of one of the first Hungarian transports,” wrote Alfred Fiderkiewicz, a Polish physician who worked in the infirmary barracks at Birkenau, in his memoirs. “We saw a large number of well-dressed men and even more elegant women… Despite the screaming of the SS men, the people milled about or consulted with each other in groups. The SS men shouted and cracked their whips, but the newly arrived people did not yield. They threatened, cursed, and demanded an audience with the commander…. Members of the transport who saw us next to the barbed wire began to approach us. They spoke an unfamiliar language. When we gestured that we did not understand them, they began to speak German and French. Then one of us shouted, ‘Das ist Birkenau!’ Did this mean anything to them? I do not know.”

The summer months saw a respite. But following the failed attempt by Regent Miklos Horthy to break his alliance with Nazi Germany on 15 October, the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party rose to power. Soon thereafter the deportations recommenced, accompanied by mass murder in Budapest.  Tens of thousands of Jews were marched by foot to the Austrian border, where they were cruelly enslaved building fortifications.  The survivors were then taken on death marches, mostly to German camps in the Austrian interior. Many died on the way; others perished in the camps on the eve of liberation and even afterward.

During the deportations—especially the last phase—Jews were aided by many dedicated and courageous people. Foremost were diplomats Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden and Carl Lutz of Switzerland, representatives of the Red Cross, and Christian groups, who granted them protection and became involved in their fate.  Backed by the American War Refugee Board, and funded in large part by American Jewry, Hungarian Jews worked closely with them, playing a central role in rescue operations. Especially prominent were members of the Zionist youth movements who determined that in their specific situation, the requisite from of resistance was maximum exploitation of existing rescue opportunities, rather than an armed uprising. Preparing forged papers, obtaining food, protecting groups of children, and activating underground escape to Romania became meaningful ways to foster rescue; some Jews even negotiated with the SS to save their brethren. Especially in the autumn, the goal was to keep Jews out of the hands of the Arrow Cross.

Tragically, these heroic rescue efforts were too late for most. By the time the Red Army took Budapest in January 1945, some 570,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered—and another entire Jewish community wiped out in the last year of the war in Europe. 

Professor Gutman is an Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem, Dr. Rozett is Director of the Library

Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority