The Holocaust in Hungary
Part 1: 1938-1943
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how I discovered documentation of Árpád Gerbner’s death. We now know when he was murdered: August 15, 1944.
With this information, it’s possible to place his murder into the context of the Holocaust in Hungary. I say it’s possible — but it’s also emotionally difficult. I started researching this post two weeks ago, and found it too hard to finish. To be honest, I haven’t felt so physically affected by my research in quite a while. So I took a break, and now I’m back. I won’t get into too much detail, but it’s important to understand the stages of the Holocaust in Hungary because its helps to explain why Hungarian Jews like Árpád thought — hoped — that they would be safe.
The Holocaust in Hungary was an anomaly. In January 1944, Hungary was the only country allied with the Axis powers that had not begun mass deportation of Jews. Here is how one historian describes the situation before 1944:
While across occupied Europe millions of Jews were being shot to death or gassed, in Hungary the yellow star was not introduced, ghettos were not set up, and trains were not routed to death camps. Most Hungarian Jews still remained physically safe, even if living under harsher daily conditions due to economic restrictions and disenfranchisement.1
Now, don’t let these facts fool you: Hungarian politicians were still deeply anti-Semitic, and they weren’t necessarily opposed to deportation or genocide.
Miklós Horthy (above), the Hungarian Regent from 1920-1944, wrote the following lines to Pál Teleki, the Hungarian Prime Minister from 1939-1941:
“Concerning the Jewish question, for all my life, I have been an antisemite, I have never made any contact with Jews. I have found it intolerable that here, in Hungary, every single factory, bank, asset, shop, theater, newspaper, trade, etc. is in Jewish hands.”2
As my previous posts have described, Hungary had already passed wide-ranging Anti-Jewish laws by 1944. The first was passed in 1938, when Béla Imrédy was Prime Minister, while the second was sponsored by Imrédy but passed after he was forced to step down. In 1941, Hungary passed a third Anti-Jewish law that expanded persecution even further. More discriminatory laws followed.
We have letters from Árpád and Margit (Opapa’s mother) from 1939 to 1941, describing in some detail how these laws affected their everyday life. In 1939, Árpád wrote that the family was “sinking,” and alluded to the fact that they had to give up their car due to the anti-Jewish legislation. By 1941, Árpád had not been able to work for two years, and the family had rented out most of their house. In a letter to Opapa (who was then in California), they explained that they now lived in their son’s old bedroom.
Despite the increasingly radical anti-Jewish laws, Hungarian politicians wanted to remain politically autonomous, and they resisted German efforts to subjugate the Hungarian state. In fact, Prime Minister Pal Teléky, the same man who passed the sweeping anti-Jewish laws of 1939 and 1941, committed suicide when Germany marched through Hungary to invade Yugoslavia in 1941 — meaning that Hungary could no longer maintain neutrality in the war.
In other words, Hungarian politicians refused to deport the Jews not because they thought it was the right thing to do, but rather because it would mean capitulating to German demands. In 1942, when Miklós Kállay became the Hungarian Prime Minister, his goal was to get Hungary out of the war, which meant breaking with the Germans. As a result, he “consistently resisted German demands to hand over and deport the Jews.”3 Yet this was only one part of his effort to maintain autonomy: he also irritated the Germans by relaxing censorship, recognizing the Badoglio government of Italy, and attempting to “purge the foreign service of the openly pro-Nazi elements.”4
By 1944, then, Hungary’s Jews were suffering, but they remained — with important exceptions — alive. Moreover, many Hungarian Jews believed that they would be protected from the same degree of persecution that befell Jews in Germany and elsewhere.
In March 1944, however, this all changed.
Even as they were losing ground throughout Europe, Hitler ordered his army to invade Hungary. On March 19, 1944, German troops entered Hungarian territory, beginning the next, horrifying phase of the Holocaust in Hungary. More on that tomorrow.
Vági et al., The Holocaust in Hungary, p. 61.
Regent Miklós Horthy’s letter to Prime Minister Pál Teleki, October 14, 1940, in Miklós
Szinai and László Szűcs, eds., Horthy Miklós titkos iratai (Budapest: Kossuth, 1962), 260. Cited in The Holocaust in Hungary, p. 1.
Vági et al., The Holocaust in Hungary, p. 61.
Braham, The politics of genocide: the Holocaust in Hungary, p. 53.
How chilling is that picture of Hitler and Horthy.