Occupied Hungary's 1944 Murder Machine (original) (raw)
Related papers
Stopping the Trains to Auschwitz. Budapest 1944.
Stopping the Trains to Auschwitz, 2020
Despite Hitler’s and Eichmann’s secret machinery for the deportation of Jews from the Hungarian provinces, dramatic events finally interrupted the progress of their unprecedented crimes. How this unfolded is the focus of this book. Although many thousands had already perished, a rescue effort saved the Jewish population of Budapest. The initiative resulted from the courageous actions of networks within Hungary and Switzerland. The Auschwitz Report, the detailed revelations of two Slovak escapees, revealed to them the truth about the deportations. They took dangerous risks by aggressively challenging the power of the Nazi extermination program.
Stopping the Trains to Auschwitz (second, revised edition)
Stopping the Trains to Auschwitz: Budapest, 1944, 2020
When the German army invaded Hungary on March 19, Adolf Eichmann and the Gestapo had a free hand to solve what Hitler considered to be the “Jewish problem.” With the aid of the Hungarian gendarmes (the provincial police force) the operation proceeded swiftly, so that by early July about 470,000 Jews had been deported to the German Reich, primarily to Auschwitz. But a number of factors played a role in causing Eichmann and the Gestapo to fail in deporting a remaining Jewish population of Budapest, close to 200,000 persons. The following study shows how and why they failed.
The Holocaust and the Hungarian Occupation Forces in the West-Ukrainian Territories
Alternatives, Turning Points and Regime Changes in Russian History and Culture - Materials of the First International Conference for Young Scholars of Russian Studies at the Centre for Russian Studies in Budapest, 19-20 May, 2014 (Ruszisztikai Könyvek XLI.), 2015
The Hungarian Royal Army occupied more than half million square kilometres in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944. During the occupancy the soldiers of the Hungarian Occupation Forces were instrumental in the destruction of Ukrainian Jews. It has two reasons: the Hungarian units collaborated with Germans and the Hungarian Army was anti-semite in partisan war. In my writing I demonstrate through examples of two Hungarian units the ambivalent Jewish Policy of the Hungarian Army in the occupied Soviet territories. The members of the 49/II and 50/I battalions were involved in the liquidation of ghettos in Gaysin and its countryside in 1941–1942.
In the wake of the Second World War, thousands of members of the Horthy– and Szálasi–regime were brought before the newly established People’s Court system for war crimes and crimes against the people. The People’s Courts adjudicated cases of former prime ministers and ministers, as well as high-ranking military, gendarmerie and police officers in relation to the deportation of the Jewish population from the Hungarian countryside during the summer of 1944, atrocities committed on the Eastern from against the civilian population and Hungarian labor service members, as well as crimes against Jews during the Szálasi-regime. My paper focuses on the trials of those select group of Hungarian politicians and gendarmerie officers who devised and implemented the Final Solution in Hungary between March and July 1944, namely Prime Minister Döme Sztójay, Minister of Interior Andor Jaross, Undersecretaries of State in the Ministry of Internal Affairs László Endre and László Baky, gendarmerie liaison officer of Adolf Eichmann László Ferenczy and two other gendarmerie officers in charge of major deportation zones. In this case study, I probe the limits of judicial reckoning with the Holocaust in postwar Hungary from a historical and judicial perspective. First, I consider the breadth and prominence of crimes against the Jews within the indictments and the treatment they received during the trial and in the verdicts. I also investigate the evidentiary basis and arguments upon which the guilty verdicts were pronounced. How were the historical and legal problems framed, and to what extent were they based on facts and sound legal reasoning – I ask. Secondly, I look at the new legal tools and the innovative way they were employed in the trials. What were the arguments and counterarguments at the time against retroactive justice and how were they treated by the parties and the courts – I inquire. The paper contributes to the field of regional Holocaust studies and the application of criminal law in post–World War II Eastern Europe.
Daily Life and Survival in Mauthausen in the final stage of the war: The Hungarian Jews
Since summer 1944, because of its western location – in significant distance to the front – Mauthausen, including its subcamps, became one of the main destinations for deportation and evacuation transports. As a result, the number of prisoners in the Mauthausen concentration camp complex grew significantly, and the living conditions in the camp deteriorated substantially. Thus, prisoners who reached Mauthausen during this late period of the war often found considerably worse living conditions than prisoners who arrived earlier. Using the example of the Jewish prisoners from Hungary the paper analyses the last period of Mauthausen, describes the daily life especially in the tent camp, in Gunskirchen and in the subcamps of Mauthausen, and discusses how the changed living conditions effected the chances for survival. Based on narrative interviews and protocols that were recorded immediately after the war the paper questions the image of a homogenous camp history and points to the plurality of camp experiences during the last months of the war.