Holocaust In Hungary Analysis
Randolph L Braham describes the Holocaust in Hungary as being “replete with paradoxes.” Explain and evaluate this statement in relation to both the German policy towards the Jews in Hungary in March to July 1944 and the Hungarian Jewish response.
The Holocaust in Hungary represents its own late, brutal, chapter in the full, appalling story of the Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe. Conducted with an alliance of diplomacy and cold-blooded, ruthless efficiency, it was in some respects, the apotheosis of the Nazi death machine. Typical of the Holocaust in general, the events were disturbingly inhuman, but in this instance they were particularly noteworthy for the speed in which they took place. Whereas the previous path of the Holocaust elsewhere may have been – to borrow Karl Schleunes …show more content…
phrase – twisted , in Hungary it was emphatically not: as the product of the by now well rehearsed machinery of the Final Solution, it was in fact disarmingly swift and decisive. Such issues as the Jews for Trucks affair, and the Kastner train, should not distract from the fundamental fact that, from the German occupation in March, to the official end of deportations at the start of July, roughly 440,000 Jews were deported from the territory -- meaning that Hungary (excepting Budapest) was effectively rendered judenrein in less than four months. If, as Braham eloquently surmises, the issues arising are generally paradoxical in nature, they are rendered thus by the specific circumstances – or micro-history – in which they are framed (particularly in the timing relative to the general course of the war) coupled with the impact of this speed in which they occurred.
The status of the War by spring 1944 was substantially different to that of early 1942 (where the Final Solution had been formally instigated at the Wannsee Conference). The German victories that had defined the early years had become increasingly fleeting. The Wehrmacht had experienced heavy losses on the Eastern front (including the decisive blow in Stalingrad) and the despised Red Army were correspondingly making significant gains. The Allies had successfully invaded North Africa in 1942 and then Italy in 1943, with a substantial invasion of Northern France as an imminent inevitability. Whilst there is a degree of controversy amongst historians of the period as to the extent to which Germans considered the war lost at this point, it seems clear that for most it must have been acknowledged that defeat was at least a possibility. Resources, both human and material, had been fundamentally reduced and the attritional nature of the conflict on the Eastern front, together with the demands of total mobilization and constructing and maintaining the active defence and fortification of the Atlantic wall – not to mention the realities of living as a country at war for two more years -- had inflicted a substantial toll on the German War machine.
In terms of the Final Solution, things had slowed down. Operation Reinhard, its grim zenith thus far, had been concluded with the Harvest Festival at the end of 1943. A reflection of Himmler’s growing sense of unease about the security situation behind the German line, the notoriously bloody Harvest Festival had mandated the murder of all the Jews that remained alive in the Lublin District of the Generalgouvernement. By its conclusion, and partly with the assistance of those subsequently murdered, the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec had all been destroyed -- where they had once carried out their dismal task now stood hastily erected farmhouses . With the Generalgouvernement now declared by Himmler judenrein, even the crema at Auschwitz had fallen into underuse -- with Bunker 2 being taken out of action entirely.
Inside the heart of the Reich meanwhile, relations were drifting towards fissure -- with paranoia growing between both individuals and supposed national allies. Hitler had spent the best part of February addressing the supposedly imminent defection of Finland. Whilst these concerns had turned out to be premature, they forced him to breaking point with Hungary. German relations towards their ally Hungary had been irretrievably strained by intelligence reports that Hungarian Prime Minister Kallay had, with the permission of head of state, Admiral Horthy, begun to tentatively investigate the prospect of an armistice with both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Hitler, deciding that he had finally had enough of their “treachery,” announced to Goebbels in a meeting on March 3rd that he wanted the situation dealt with in short order. In the actuality, if the circumstance was not entirely of Hitler’s choosing -- forced upon him as it was supposed, by the actions of his erstwhile ally -- the outcome was, from a German point of view, potentially fortuitous. Amongst other things, Horthy had to this point been demonstrably reticent about dealing with the Jewish question with the gusto that Hitler was looking for -- meaning that an enormous Jewish community had been allowed to continue to live with relative impunity on the doorstep of the Third Reich. “In Poland,” Hitler had ranted to Horthy in 1943 (as recorded in the minutes of his interpreter Dr Paul Otto Schmidt) “this state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared up. If the Jews did not want to work, they were shot. If they could not work, they had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a healthy body may become infected.” Whilst it is prudent to guard against the suggestion that it was the opportunity to deal with this issue that represented the sole, or certainly principal, motivation that underpinned the invasion, it would be wrong to suggest that it wasn’t a convenient secondary factor: As ever, it was the progress and path of the War that remained integral and Hungary offered attractive several opportunities to the Reich . Quite apart from the resources available in terms of raw materials, the Country featured a number of industrial enterprises that were heavily in Jewish hands. The acquirement of this industry, together with the raw materials such as fuel and food on offer, was a pecuniary opportunity commensurately vital in assisting the war effort, as lining the pockets of those waging it. The large Jewish community that would concurrently become available furthermore, offered a valuable human resource at a time when it was needed. With an economy based on total mobilization and additional demands for labour being made on Eichmann, the timing of this suddenly available vast seam of fresh labour was outstanding. The consolidated bombing campaign of occupied Europe being conducted by the RAF and AAF, had necessitated the construction of huge underground facilities in which the Nazis new V1 (and eventually V2) weaponry could be built. The process of construction was labour intensive, dangerous and unpleasant, and could be more efficiently performed by humans than machines – perfect work, of course, for the Jewish slave labour force. The prospect of plunder, too, should not be forgotten -- plunder had after all, become an integral issue in the management of the Final Solution, and the Jewish assets of Hungary were currently untapped.
The invasion itself, when it occurred, was bloodless. The Regent, Admiral Horthy, was summoned to a meeting with Hitler at the Palace of Klessheim in Austria on March 15th: Whilst there, and being subjected to an intense and bizarre interrogation by the Fuhrer, an occupation was mounted. Pursuant to the, frequently fractious, negotiations with Hitler at Klesseheim, Horthy was forced to replace his Prime Minister Kallay with Dome Sztojay, the former Ambassador to Berlin. Sztojay, as a proud anti-semite was a figure much more sympathetic to Nazi ideology than his predecessor -- he was also a figure that Horthy (who would retain his position) -- is said to have believed would be suitably strong towards German demands (a natural product of his background as a soldier). In addition to the newly chosen Prime Minister a German plenipotentiary (from whom Horthy would take orders, would be installed) together with a German Security Police force under a Higher SS and Police Leader. This was a structure of command that would allow the Jewish Question to be addressed in short order.
The Holocaust as it unfolded in Hungary was very much a product of the SS experience gained in Operation Reinhard (albeit within a drastically reduced time frame) and was co-ordinated personally by Eichmann -- who had been stationed in waiting with his staff at Mathausen from the beginning of March, and entered the country before the end of the month. Jewish Councils, pacified with appropriate assurances regarding the future safety and wellbeing of the Jews, were swiftly established to manage practical relations and enforce the rapidly emerging new legislation. Wearing the yellow Star of David was to become a legal requirement for all but a few Jews, beginning in short order the familiar process of seeking to isolate Jewry from the Community at large (needless to say, incidentally, that it was the responsibility of the Jews themselves to source the material for these stars, and to ensure that they were the right size, colour and affixed in the correct manner) . Further laws were introduced virtually simultaneously that required Jews in most professional industries to give up their jobs and curtailed their access to wealth. The Journal of the Hungarian Jews Zsidok Lapja fell under censorship by the Gestapo and eventually every Jew was confined to his or her dwelling place. All Jewish assets, wherever they were stored, were to be inventoried – eventually to be sequestered by the State (with severe penalties for any Hungarians looking to assist their Jewish neighbours) . With isolation now consolidated, ghettoization – the necessary practical groundwork for deportation -- followed. Any guilt or sympathy that the rest of the population may have been feeling about the fate of their erstwhile neighbours, must surely have been partly assuaged by the correspondent number of excellent openings and opportunities that had suddenly become available. The ghettoization process also had the side effect of exposing the full potential of the aforementioned plunder available to the occupying force. The homes that had been left, though allegedly sealed, were ransacked for valuables – appropriated by individuals and the State. Through brutal methods, possessions were stripped from internees throughout the ghettoization and deportation process, and grotesquely sadistic torture attempts were used to extract any remaining assets that were being kept by the victims undeclared. This process of appropriation created some friction between the Hungarians, and the occupying force. The friction was not caused by humanitarian factors, as one might suppose, but by the frustration that the Hungarians were experiencing at not receiving all the spoils themselves.
The ghettoization process, when it began on April 16th in Carpatho-Ruthenia and northeastern Hungary, was meticulously planned. The operation was to progress in 6 zonal phases, culminating in the final zone of Budapest. The rationale that underpinned the decision to manage the process in this manner, was the perception that the assimilated Jews of the Capital could be reasonably assumed to be more potentially cognisant of what was occurring, and would be prevented – by this approach – from looking to escape their fate by absconding to rural areas (as it happened, Horthy’s intervention preventing deportations came in a timely fashion for these Jews, coming as it did before they had been rounded up). Unlike the ghettos of the Generalgouvernement, these were ghettos designed to be used for very short periods. They were also formed for a specific reason. Conditions were varied, but generally appalling, with locations ranging from brick factories to pigsties – with some being completely in the open air. Provision of food became the responsibility of the Jewish Councils, and rations were meagre. With the naivety that would in some respect come to define them, the Councils petitioned the Nazi administration on these issues, finding that their entreaties were given short shrift.
Whilst the path of the Holocaust was, within Hungary, ruthlessly swift, it did offer the prospect, borne out of the unique terms of the Klessheim Agreement, for some of the country’s well resourced Jews to negotiate escape with their captors. In a notable exception to the occupation elsewhere, the terms of the Schloss Klessheim Agreement meant that the Nazis were technically unable to enforce the compulsory takeover of businesses : This distinction allowed for a limited number of Jewish industrialists to do deals to secure escape for themselves and their families, using the sale of their business as leverage. Such deals reflect a paradoxical degree of pragmatism in Nazi ideology, with the practical benefits of the deals considered more important than the total, unconditional annihilation of World Jewry. Further deals would of course be done, securing the release of limited numbers of Jews with a view to ensuring the greater good – in Hitler’s perception – of further genocide.
As elsewhere, ghettoization was the mechanism for entrainment and deportation. Necessary agreements were made to allow trains to move from Hungary to Auschwitz and the wheels were set seamlessly in motion. What transpired was the notorious camp’s deadliest hour. With ruthless efficiency transports began within 6 weeks or so of the initial occupation; 12-14000 Jews a day were sped towards their doom . The camp was redesigned and the notorious ramp was introduced to speed up the process of selections. The crematoria became burnt out with overuse -- and even the decommissioned Krema 2 was hastily brought back into operation. Eventually it even became necessary to resort to open pits for the disposal of bodies. By the start of July, when under considerable international pressure Admiral Horthy re-established control of the Jews of his Country and halted the deportations, around 438,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported – most of whom (394, 000) would meet their end in the gas chambers of Auschwitz . Unlike the previously completed Operation Reinhard, and the Holocaust by Bullets that preceded it, all of this occurred unambiguously and with utter impunity, with the world watching. In what is perhaps the greatest paradox of all, this is for some the moment where the Allies are invited to share culpability with the perpetrators -- the implied culpability of the inactive bystander, as opposed to the active perpetrator, but a register of culpability nonetheless.
By April 1944 reports had started to emerge from Auschwitz specifically – notably in the so-called Auschwitz Protocols – that detailed what was happening there. It has of course been suggested, controversially and lengthily elsewhere, that the particulars of the Final Solution were widely known in advance of this, but these reports of 1944 -- with particular reference to Auschwitz -- were in relative terms unmistakable and irrefutable. It is from this, as previously mentioned, that the bulk of Braham’s paradoxes stems; why, in such circumstances, did it happen? Why, if the Nazis knew that their crimes were being watched did they continue with them, where they had been so secretive elsewhere? Why, given the precipitous course of the War, did they risk exposing themselves as individuals and as a nation to unconditional condemnation and retribution if the War was lost? Why, if the Allies – and the free world -- knew about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent people did they not intervene? Why, if they knew what was to befall them did the Jewish victims make themselves so vulnerable, and so willingly acquiesce to their executioners? It is in general terms a narrative of action and inaction; decisive action on the part of perpetrators, and decisive inaction on the part of the victims and the bystanders. The paradoxes above aren’t exhaustive of course (questions regarding the conduct of the Hungarian population and Leadership for example, are enormously problematic), and are painted with very broad strokes, but they lie at the heart of the issue as it is addressed here.
Beginning with the Hungarian Jews themselves, debates centre in the first instance on the subject of how much they truly knew about what had been occurring across Europe in the previous years. Controversy is ongoing on this subject, but there is general consensus that by this stage of the War, information was relatively freely available (to them) about the reality of the Final Solution and what it entailed. In the first instance, Jewish soldiers had fought on the Eastern Front in Labour Battalions, returning (albeit with small numbers of survivors) with stories of what they had personally witnessed of what would become known as the Holocaust by Bullets. If this did not directly articulate the mechanism of death that they would face, it unambiguously confirmed the murderous intent of the Nazi regime. Later, Jewish refugees escaping from the affected territories would frequently enter Hungary with their own testimony. Finally (though not exhaustively), international relief organisations – whose role would grow -- disseminated specific information as they received it (to leaders of the Jewish Councils at least). There were clearly regional variations – Budapest was better informed than the outer lying areas for example – and it must be remembered that the Jews of Hungary were not one homogenised group -- but information it is fair to say, existed. David Cesarani (in a choice of phrase shared by Braham) characterises the perspective of the Jews of Hungary in the light of this as “short sightedness” . He suggests that in their conduct, the Hungarian Jews appear to wilfully ignore the events occurring to other Jews across much of occupied Europe – the scale of which made the notion of ignorance implausible. It is difficult to disagree with this summation, but is worth, in addressing the paradoxes of the question, investigating some of the circumstances that may have underpinned such a wilful delusion. It makes sense in doing this to start with the Jewish Councils, who had such a crucial role in the process.
The increased volume of information pertaining to the Final Solution put the Jewish Councils in a challenging position. Their paradoxical role became one of assisting the community, and assisting -- albeit inadvertently -- in their demise. Their job was “lulling the Jewish masses into submission by giving them a false sense of security” . They co-ordinated no active response, resistance or meaningful protest and offered little more than passive acquiescence. The perspective of Council members was partially manipulated or steered by the specific treatment that they, and their families, were given (as had been the practise of the Nazi administration across occupied territories, members of the Council were routinely exempted from measures corresponding to the Jewish population in general). Even within their ranks though, prominent Jewish leaders were divided in an extraordinarily polemic way, on the subject of what the reality of the occupation entailed – whilst in Budapest, for example, Fulop Freudiger the Orthodox Leader, remained confident that they would not suffer the fate of the Polish Jews, Nison Kahan took a more fatalistic tone, saying “Our fate is not only material ruin, and not even a chain of physical and mental tortures and the beating down of the last fibres of our human dignity, but rather certain physical annihilation.” It’s a confusing dichotomy and it is perhaps marginally easier to make sense of the lack of meaningful intervention, when such divergence of opinion existed -- active resistance after all, represented a high risk strategy. In what remains a more problematic question, the Auschwitz Protocols were made available to the Councils, but information regarding their content was never formally, or widely, disseminated by them. There is a degree of controversy about the micro-history of the dates involved, but the headline “bottom line” remains true. As has been identified by a number of historians, in real terms -- with the given time frames -- such a dissemination of information would most likely have been an act of semantics (on an ideological level, it would have furnished the Jews with some sort of ownership of their fate – but on a practical level, it’s unlikely that this would have, or could have, counted for much) but it remains a paradox. Ultimately, the Councils were peopled by individuals who were attempting to process and act upon information with no meaningful historic precedent – and very little time. Braham identifies this swiftness of the Holocaust in Hungary as being the root cause in general of the impotence in mounting any sort of consolidated resistance. Beyond the influence of the Councils, Braham identifies a series of further assumptions, or perceptions, which informed the attitude of the Jews en masse. . He suggests, in a key observation that locates a fundamental existential truth, that to this point – and after nearly five years of vicious, murderous persecution -- Hungary had been “an island of safety in an ocean of destruction” for the Jews. He is speaking in relative terms of course, because the anti-Jewish legislation of 1938, and ongoing anti-semitic measures during the war years, meant that the life of the average Jew in the country did not compare favourably with that of his or her neighbours (it must be borne in mind too, that in 1941 some 15000 stateless Jews had murdered by einsatzgruppen after being deported from Hungary ) but the point resonates. Having lived in such circumstances through the sustained heat of the conflict, and under the direct gaze of the perpetrators, it is very possible to understand some complacency – particularly given the changing course of the War. There were too, the unequivocal assurances of safety by the SS; assurances that appeared rational, based on the widely held assumption that the unpopular occupation was too fragile to withstand such an assault (as had occurred elsewhere) on members of its population. The economy, which was heavily influenced by the Jewish population, was also supposed to be too important for the Nazis to risk or endanger on such matters of principal. Parliament would surely protect them if the need arose came as well – particularly as Horthy was maintaining his position as head of state. These assumptions are indeed “short sighted” and even naive – but they aren’t entirely illogical. In the actuality, fatally they proved too fragile to withstand or weather the speed of events beyond.
The issue of paradox for the Jews of Hungary is then perhaps worth investigating not so much from the point of view of the availability, or acquisition, of information or knowledge, but more from the point of view of the interpretation and application of this in respect of the context. The Jews may have been caught out by the speed of events, but on calm reflection the signs and warnings were apparent and present. Is the paradox then – and it is almost unbearably tragic -- that the information was there, but for some reason, they didn’t want to see it. Discussing the issue on BBC’s Document programme, Tony Kushner characterises the phenomena as “knowing but not believing.” David Cesarani develops this point on the same programme, suggesting that the denial is borne out of an unwillingness to engage with the horror. The paradox then, is then that the Hungarian Jews being deported allowed themselves to enter a state of active ignorance – they knew what was happening; knew and did nothing.
Equally bewildering, though form an entirely different perspective, is the question of why the Nazis chose this point to allow the Holocaust to come into the light; why it was now, with defeat as a discernible possibility, that the fiercely maintained veil of secrecy should be lifted. The liquidation of the remaining Jews in the Harvest Festival was a necessary factor in the process of ensuring that Europe was judenrein. As well maintaining security (as far as was Himmler was concerned) though, it also served the purpose of ensuring that no Jews would survive to tell the tale of what had occurred. Secrecy had always been a pre-requisite of the management of the Final Solution, with issues such as the location of the death camps, their internal design and their management all informed by a desire to maintain confidentiality. In a telling correspondence between Himmler and Globocnik of November 1943, Globocniks’s reference “During a visit, you, Reichsfuhrer, held out to me the prospect that a few iron crosses might be awarded for the special performance of this difficult task after the work had been concluded” – is conspicuously not alluded to in the Reichsfuhrer’s response . This was always to be “this is an unwritten – never to be written – and yet glorious page in our history.” The death camps were not left as a towering example of a defining historic moment, they were – as has been previously mentioned – destroyed, their footprint disguised. The Final Solution may ultimately have needed the circumstances of War to allow for its existence, but it was also predicated on the War culminating in a German victory. Through 1944, as Ian Kershaw articulates in The End, the successful allied invasion of mainland Europe in June, combined with the emphatic gains for the Red Army and allied victory in Rome made a German defeat seem all but inevitable (if not to every last committed Nazi). The act of continuing with the Final Solution, where the secrets of Auschwitz were becoming known, made the potential for denial impossible. Furthermore, formal conversations with the Hungarians regarding its management were a unique example of the Holocaust being openly discussed, co-ordinated and planned with a foreign power. This is unmistakeably the Holocaust coming into the open (which is not to suggest that there weren’t still Nazis working hard to attempt to cover their own backs). Why such a bold, and public, act as this should have been embarked on at such a precipitous point of the war, is perplexing. There are diverging opinions, or possible opinions, to explain why this would have been the case.
Ian Kershaw identifies the fact that by this stage of the war, Hitler had become increasingly convinced that virtually every act perpetrated against the Reich happened at the instigation of – or as a result of – the Jews (“this entire bestiality has been organized by the Jews” as he said in May 1944) . Placed within this matrix of logic, the escalation of the War contiguously raised the stakes of the Jewish Question –winning the War became intrinsically contingent on killing the Jews. Even Goebbels noted in April 1944, “the Fuhrer’s hatred against the Jews has intensified even further rather than declined.” Saul Friedlander quotes Hitler’s adjutant Walter Hewel, reporting that in the words of the Fuhrer the Jews were “responsible for the mass murder of women and children in the Anglo-American bombings.” In this climate of increasing anti-semitic obsession, it is perhaps not surprising that the concerns of post-War secrecy, found themselves becoming secondary by some distance, to the business of addressing the job at hand.
In a vein tangential to this issue, it would be possible to suggest that the manner in which the Final Solution was conducted in Hungary was borne out of tactical necessity. The growing proliferation of information about the Holocaust would have obliged those managing it in Hungary to act with haste. As has already been discussed, the approach to the pattern of zones of action in the Country was designed with a view of leaving Budapest til last – based on the assumption that the Jews of Budapest would be most likely to be in receipt of information about Nazi intentions, and so could try and flee to the countryside. Concerns about Jews receiving information and co-ordinating action based up on that, were thus clearly factors in the SS consciousness (particularly given the uprisings in Sobibor, Treblinka and Warsaw). With this in mind, the need to act decisively and publically could supersede operational matters of secrecy. The Nazis were perhaps further emboldened in this by the lack of action from the free world at large -- Tony Kushner identifies the fact that by 1943 public activities in Britain in response to the Holocaust “had almost faded away.” It’s speculative of course, but this lack of international dissension must surely have had an impact at this very specific juncture – it certainly had some sort of impact when it finally came.
Peter Longerich implies an interesting interpretation of the Nazi strategy of secrecy at this point in time, in respect of Himmler. He identifies the fact that Himmler’s speeches to Wehrmacht Generals became more open, and more explicit on the subject of the Final Solution as the War reached its conclusion. In what would be a high stakes strategy, Longerich suggests that this behaviour is designed to implicate the largest number of people possible in the crimes – “the Reichsfuhrer wanted to make it clear to senior officers...that in the event of a military defeat, they would not be able to pretend that they were unaware of the fact that the murder of the European Jews was one of the regime’s war aims.” It is interesting to extend this concept of guilt by association to the question of the manner in which the Holocaust in Hungary was dealt with. It would be possible to make the case that the paradox of Nazi behaviour at this stage, was partly determined by a desire – or even need – to ensure that Hungary as a nation were secured to Germany by virtue of their collaboration in the Final Solution. In an occupation that was fragilely maintained, and in a territory that was sensitively positioned, implicating them in the Final Solution was a strategy that could mandate loyalty and compliance – but only if the World was aware of that for which they were responsible, and only if Hungary were aware of this in turn. The ability to share, and further decentralise, responsibility could doubtless too have proved appealing.
It must further be acknowledged that the incremental impact of years of sleepless nights and unimaginable stress on the Nazi Leadership (frequently coupled with well known physiological conditions) meant that these were men making judgement calls in a very specific set of circumstances. Extending logic and reason -- only ever relative concepts in the Third Reich – in such circumstances becomes in turn a relative exercise. The acknowledgement of this is obviously not to absolve or excuse any decisions, but to locate the specificity of the context in which they were made (and to suggest contributory factors to the paradoxical nature of their decision making). Whilst avoiding any sort of further “armchair psychology” it’s also worth identifying the fact that these are individuals who had been allowed, by this stage, to act with an extraordinary impunity for almost five years – the notion of cause and consequence, soaked through an ideology that had only become more concentrated – must surely be borne in mind.
Quite clearly, the scope of the paradoxes of the Holocaust in Hungary extend much further than those investigated in this essay (space forbids discussion of the Trucks for Jews Affair, the Kastner train, Zionist intervention and so on). The fact that this invasion of Hungary was to be the last invasion mounted by the Nazis – and yet was their most ruthlessly efficient, means that it somehow assumes the status of a grim, consolidating coda; a coda in which paradoxes seem strangely appropriate. The sense that it was in some way, avoidable, informs it with a particular sense of tragedy – which is probably appropriate too.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
David Cesarani, Randolph L Braha,, Yehuda Don, Richard Breitman, Shlomo Aronson, Asher Cohen, Robert Rozett, Attila Pok, Tony Kushner, Dina Parat, Yehuda Bauer Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944 (Oxford: Berg, 1997)
Peter Longerich Heinrich Himmler, trans. Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
The Holocaust in Hungary” National Committee for Attending Deportees, accessed January 5th 2013 http://degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2031
Karl A Schleunes The Twisted Road to Auschwitz; Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933-1939 (Illinois: The University of Illinois Press, 1990)
Yitzhak Arad Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999)
David Cesarani Eichmann His Life and Crimes (London, Random House 2005),
Saul Friedlander The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson)
The Destruction of the Jews of Hungary” Holocaust Research Project, accessed January 4th 2013 http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/DestructionofHungarianJews.html
Ian Kershaw Hitler (London: Penguin Books,
2008)
Randolph L. Braham The Politics of Genocide (Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2000)
Peter Longerich Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews trans. Shaun Whiteside (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
Mark Roseman The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (London: Penguin Books, 2002)
Ian Kershaw The End: Germany 1944-45 (London: Penguin Books, 2012)
The Holocaust in Hungary represents its own late, brutal, chapter in the full, appalling story of the Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe. Conducted with an alliance of diplomacy and cold-blooded, ruthless efficiency, it was in some respects, the apotheosis of the Nazi death machine. Typical of the Holocaust in general, the events were disturbingly inhuman, but in this instance they were particularly noteworthy for the speed in which they took place. Whereas the previous path of the Holocaust elsewhere may have been – to borrow Karl Schleunes …show more content…
phrase – twisted , in Hungary it was emphatically not: as the product of the by now well rehearsed machinery of the Final Solution, it was in fact disarmingly swift and decisive. Such issues as the Jews for Trucks affair, and the Kastner train, should not distract from the fundamental fact that, from the German occupation in March, to the official end of deportations at the start of July, roughly 440,000 Jews were deported from the territory -- meaning that Hungary (excepting Budapest) was effectively rendered judenrein in less than four months. If, as Braham eloquently surmises, the issues arising are generally paradoxical in nature, they are rendered thus by the specific circumstances – or micro-history – in which they are framed (particularly in the timing relative to the general course of the war) coupled with the impact of this speed in which they occurred.
The status of the War by spring 1944 was substantially different to that of early 1942 (where the Final Solution had been formally instigated at the Wannsee Conference). The German victories that had defined the early years had become increasingly fleeting. The Wehrmacht had experienced heavy losses on the Eastern front (including the decisive blow in Stalingrad) and the despised Red Army were correspondingly making significant gains. The Allies had successfully invaded North Africa in 1942 and then Italy in 1943, with a substantial invasion of Northern France as an imminent inevitability. Whilst there is a degree of controversy amongst historians of the period as to the extent to which Germans considered the war lost at this point, it seems clear that for most it must have been acknowledged that defeat was at least a possibility. Resources, both human and material, had been fundamentally reduced and the attritional nature of the conflict on the Eastern front, together with the demands of total mobilization and constructing and maintaining the active defence and fortification of the Atlantic wall – not to mention the realities of living as a country at war for two more years -- had inflicted a substantial toll on the German War machine.
In terms of the Final Solution, things had slowed down. Operation Reinhard, its grim zenith thus far, had been concluded with the Harvest Festival at the end of 1943. A reflection of Himmler’s growing sense of unease about the security situation behind the German line, the notoriously bloody Harvest Festival had mandated the murder of all the Jews that remained alive in the Lublin District of the Generalgouvernement. By its conclusion, and partly with the assistance of those subsequently murdered, the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec had all been destroyed -- where they had once carried out their dismal task now stood hastily erected farmhouses . With the Generalgouvernement now declared by Himmler judenrein, even the crema at Auschwitz had fallen into underuse -- with Bunker 2 being taken out of action entirely.
Inside the heart of the Reich meanwhile, relations were drifting towards fissure -- with paranoia growing between both individuals and supposed national allies. Hitler had spent the best part of February addressing the supposedly imminent defection of Finland. Whilst these concerns had turned out to be premature, they forced him to breaking point with Hungary. German relations towards their ally Hungary had been irretrievably strained by intelligence reports that Hungarian Prime Minister Kallay had, with the permission of head of state, Admiral Horthy, begun to tentatively investigate the prospect of an armistice with both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Hitler, deciding that he had finally had enough of their “treachery,” announced to Goebbels in a meeting on March 3rd that he wanted the situation dealt with in short order. In the actuality, if the circumstance was not entirely of Hitler’s choosing -- forced upon him as it was supposed, by the actions of his erstwhile ally -- the outcome was, from a German point of view, potentially fortuitous. Amongst other things, Horthy had to this point been demonstrably reticent about dealing with the Jewish question with the gusto that Hitler was looking for -- meaning that an enormous Jewish community had been allowed to continue to live with relative impunity on the doorstep of the Third Reich. “In Poland,” Hitler had ranted to Horthy in 1943 (as recorded in the minutes of his interpreter Dr Paul Otto Schmidt) “this state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared up. If the Jews did not want to work, they were shot. If they could not work, they had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a healthy body may become infected.” Whilst it is prudent to guard against the suggestion that it was the opportunity to deal with this issue that represented the sole, or certainly principal, motivation that underpinned the invasion, it would be wrong to suggest that it wasn’t a convenient secondary factor: As ever, it was the progress and path of the War that remained integral and Hungary offered attractive several opportunities to the Reich . Quite apart from the resources available in terms of raw materials, the Country featured a number of industrial enterprises that were heavily in Jewish hands. The acquirement of this industry, together with the raw materials such as fuel and food on offer, was a pecuniary opportunity commensurately vital in assisting the war effort, as lining the pockets of those waging it. The large Jewish community that would concurrently become available furthermore, offered a valuable human resource at a time when it was needed. With an economy based on total mobilization and additional demands for labour being made on Eichmann, the timing of this suddenly available vast seam of fresh labour was outstanding. The consolidated bombing campaign of occupied Europe being conducted by the RAF and AAF, had necessitated the construction of huge underground facilities in which the Nazis new V1 (and eventually V2) weaponry could be built. The process of construction was labour intensive, dangerous and unpleasant, and could be more efficiently performed by humans than machines – perfect work, of course, for the Jewish slave labour force. The prospect of plunder, too, should not be forgotten -- plunder had after all, become an integral issue in the management of the Final Solution, and the Jewish assets of Hungary were currently untapped.
The invasion itself, when it occurred, was bloodless. The Regent, Admiral Horthy, was summoned to a meeting with Hitler at the Palace of Klessheim in Austria on March 15th: Whilst there, and being subjected to an intense and bizarre interrogation by the Fuhrer, an occupation was mounted. Pursuant to the, frequently fractious, negotiations with Hitler at Klesseheim, Horthy was forced to replace his Prime Minister Kallay with Dome Sztojay, the former Ambassador to Berlin. Sztojay, as a proud anti-semite was a figure much more sympathetic to Nazi ideology than his predecessor -- he was also a figure that Horthy (who would retain his position) -- is said to have believed would be suitably strong towards German demands (a natural product of his background as a soldier). In addition to the newly chosen Prime Minister a German plenipotentiary (from whom Horthy would take orders, would be installed) together with a German Security Police force under a Higher SS and Police Leader. This was a structure of command that would allow the Jewish Question to be addressed in short order.
The Holocaust as it unfolded in Hungary was very much a product of the SS experience gained in Operation Reinhard (albeit within a drastically reduced time frame) and was co-ordinated personally by Eichmann -- who had been stationed in waiting with his staff at Mathausen from the beginning of March, and entered the country before the end of the month. Jewish Councils, pacified with appropriate assurances regarding the future safety and wellbeing of the Jews, were swiftly established to manage practical relations and enforce the rapidly emerging new legislation. Wearing the yellow Star of David was to become a legal requirement for all but a few Jews, beginning in short order the familiar process of seeking to isolate Jewry from the Community at large (needless to say, incidentally, that it was the responsibility of the Jews themselves to source the material for these stars, and to ensure that they were the right size, colour and affixed in the correct manner) . Further laws were introduced virtually simultaneously that required Jews in most professional industries to give up their jobs and curtailed their access to wealth. The Journal of the Hungarian Jews Zsidok Lapja fell under censorship by the Gestapo and eventually every Jew was confined to his or her dwelling place. All Jewish assets, wherever they were stored, were to be inventoried – eventually to be sequestered by the State (with severe penalties for any Hungarians looking to assist their Jewish neighbours) . With isolation now consolidated, ghettoization – the necessary practical groundwork for deportation -- followed. Any guilt or sympathy that the rest of the population may have been feeling about the fate of their erstwhile neighbours, must surely have been partly assuaged by the correspondent number of excellent openings and opportunities that had suddenly become available. The ghettoization process also had the side effect of exposing the full potential of the aforementioned plunder available to the occupying force. The homes that had been left, though allegedly sealed, were ransacked for valuables – appropriated by individuals and the State. Through brutal methods, possessions were stripped from internees throughout the ghettoization and deportation process, and grotesquely sadistic torture attempts were used to extract any remaining assets that were being kept by the victims undeclared. This process of appropriation created some friction between the Hungarians, and the occupying force. The friction was not caused by humanitarian factors, as one might suppose, but by the frustration that the Hungarians were experiencing at not receiving all the spoils themselves.
The ghettoization process, when it began on April 16th in Carpatho-Ruthenia and northeastern Hungary, was meticulously planned. The operation was to progress in 6 zonal phases, culminating in the final zone of Budapest. The rationale that underpinned the decision to manage the process in this manner, was the perception that the assimilated Jews of the Capital could be reasonably assumed to be more potentially cognisant of what was occurring, and would be prevented – by this approach – from looking to escape their fate by absconding to rural areas (as it happened, Horthy’s intervention preventing deportations came in a timely fashion for these Jews, coming as it did before they had been rounded up). Unlike the ghettos of the Generalgouvernement, these were ghettos designed to be used for very short periods. They were also formed for a specific reason. Conditions were varied, but generally appalling, with locations ranging from brick factories to pigsties – with some being completely in the open air. Provision of food became the responsibility of the Jewish Councils, and rations were meagre. With the naivety that would in some respect come to define them, the Councils petitioned the Nazi administration on these issues, finding that their entreaties were given short shrift.
Whilst the path of the Holocaust was, within Hungary, ruthlessly swift, it did offer the prospect, borne out of the unique terms of the Klessheim Agreement, for some of the country’s well resourced Jews to negotiate escape with their captors. In a notable exception to the occupation elsewhere, the terms of the Schloss Klessheim Agreement meant that the Nazis were technically unable to enforce the compulsory takeover of businesses : This distinction allowed for a limited number of Jewish industrialists to do deals to secure escape for themselves and their families, using the sale of their business as leverage. Such deals reflect a paradoxical degree of pragmatism in Nazi ideology, with the practical benefits of the deals considered more important than the total, unconditional annihilation of World Jewry. Further deals would of course be done, securing the release of limited numbers of Jews with a view to ensuring the greater good – in Hitler’s perception – of further genocide.
As elsewhere, ghettoization was the mechanism for entrainment and deportation. Necessary agreements were made to allow trains to move from Hungary to Auschwitz and the wheels were set seamlessly in motion. What transpired was the notorious camp’s deadliest hour. With ruthless efficiency transports began within 6 weeks or so of the initial occupation; 12-14000 Jews a day were sped towards their doom . The camp was redesigned and the notorious ramp was introduced to speed up the process of selections. The crematoria became burnt out with overuse -- and even the decommissioned Krema 2 was hastily brought back into operation. Eventually it even became necessary to resort to open pits for the disposal of bodies. By the start of July, when under considerable international pressure Admiral Horthy re-established control of the Jews of his Country and halted the deportations, around 438,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported – most of whom (394, 000) would meet their end in the gas chambers of Auschwitz . Unlike the previously completed Operation Reinhard, and the Holocaust by Bullets that preceded it, all of this occurred unambiguously and with utter impunity, with the world watching. In what is perhaps the greatest paradox of all, this is for some the moment where the Allies are invited to share culpability with the perpetrators -- the implied culpability of the inactive bystander, as opposed to the active perpetrator, but a register of culpability nonetheless.
By April 1944 reports had started to emerge from Auschwitz specifically – notably in the so-called Auschwitz Protocols – that detailed what was happening there. It has of course been suggested, controversially and lengthily elsewhere, that the particulars of the Final Solution were widely known in advance of this, but these reports of 1944 -- with particular reference to Auschwitz -- were in relative terms unmistakable and irrefutable. It is from this, as previously mentioned, that the bulk of Braham’s paradoxes stems; why, in such circumstances, did it happen? Why, if the Nazis knew that their crimes were being watched did they continue with them, where they had been so secretive elsewhere? Why, given the precipitous course of the War, did they risk exposing themselves as individuals and as a nation to unconditional condemnation and retribution if the War was lost? Why, if the Allies – and the free world -- knew about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent people did they not intervene? Why, if they knew what was to befall them did the Jewish victims make themselves so vulnerable, and so willingly acquiesce to their executioners? It is in general terms a narrative of action and inaction; decisive action on the part of perpetrators, and decisive inaction on the part of the victims and the bystanders. The paradoxes above aren’t exhaustive of course (questions regarding the conduct of the Hungarian population and Leadership for example, are enormously problematic), and are painted with very broad strokes, but they lie at the heart of the issue as it is addressed here.
Beginning with the Hungarian Jews themselves, debates centre in the first instance on the subject of how much they truly knew about what had been occurring across Europe in the previous years. Controversy is ongoing on this subject, but there is general consensus that by this stage of the War, information was relatively freely available (to them) about the reality of the Final Solution and what it entailed. In the first instance, Jewish soldiers had fought on the Eastern Front in Labour Battalions, returning (albeit with small numbers of survivors) with stories of what they had personally witnessed of what would become known as the Holocaust by Bullets. If this did not directly articulate the mechanism of death that they would face, it unambiguously confirmed the murderous intent of the Nazi regime. Later, Jewish refugees escaping from the affected territories would frequently enter Hungary with their own testimony. Finally (though not exhaustively), international relief organisations – whose role would grow -- disseminated specific information as they received it (to leaders of the Jewish Councils at least). There were clearly regional variations – Budapest was better informed than the outer lying areas for example – and it must be remembered that the Jews of Hungary were not one homogenised group -- but information it is fair to say, existed. David Cesarani (in a choice of phrase shared by Braham) characterises the perspective of the Jews of Hungary in the light of this as “short sightedness” . He suggests that in their conduct, the Hungarian Jews appear to wilfully ignore the events occurring to other Jews across much of occupied Europe – the scale of which made the notion of ignorance implausible. It is difficult to disagree with this summation, but is worth, in addressing the paradoxes of the question, investigating some of the circumstances that may have underpinned such a wilful delusion. It makes sense in doing this to start with the Jewish Councils, who had such a crucial role in the process.
The increased volume of information pertaining to the Final Solution put the Jewish Councils in a challenging position. Their paradoxical role became one of assisting the community, and assisting -- albeit inadvertently -- in their demise. Their job was “lulling the Jewish masses into submission by giving them a false sense of security” . They co-ordinated no active response, resistance or meaningful protest and offered little more than passive acquiescence. The perspective of Council members was partially manipulated or steered by the specific treatment that they, and their families, were given (as had been the practise of the Nazi administration across occupied territories, members of the Council were routinely exempted from measures corresponding to the Jewish population in general). Even within their ranks though, prominent Jewish leaders were divided in an extraordinarily polemic way, on the subject of what the reality of the occupation entailed – whilst in Budapest, for example, Fulop Freudiger the Orthodox Leader, remained confident that they would not suffer the fate of the Polish Jews, Nison Kahan took a more fatalistic tone, saying “Our fate is not only material ruin, and not even a chain of physical and mental tortures and the beating down of the last fibres of our human dignity, but rather certain physical annihilation.” It’s a confusing dichotomy and it is perhaps marginally easier to make sense of the lack of meaningful intervention, when such divergence of opinion existed -- active resistance after all, represented a high risk strategy. In what remains a more problematic question, the Auschwitz Protocols were made available to the Councils, but information regarding their content was never formally, or widely, disseminated by them. There is a degree of controversy about the micro-history of the dates involved, but the headline “bottom line” remains true. As has been identified by a number of historians, in real terms -- with the given time frames -- such a dissemination of information would most likely have been an act of semantics (on an ideological level, it would have furnished the Jews with some sort of ownership of their fate – but on a practical level, it’s unlikely that this would have, or could have, counted for much) but it remains a paradox. Ultimately, the Councils were peopled by individuals who were attempting to process and act upon information with no meaningful historic precedent – and very little time. Braham identifies this swiftness of the Holocaust in Hungary as being the root cause in general of the impotence in mounting any sort of consolidated resistance. Beyond the influence of the Councils, Braham identifies a series of further assumptions, or perceptions, which informed the attitude of the Jews en masse. . He suggests, in a key observation that locates a fundamental existential truth, that to this point – and after nearly five years of vicious, murderous persecution -- Hungary had been “an island of safety in an ocean of destruction” for the Jews. He is speaking in relative terms of course, because the anti-Jewish legislation of 1938, and ongoing anti-semitic measures during the war years, meant that the life of the average Jew in the country did not compare favourably with that of his or her neighbours (it must be borne in mind too, that in 1941 some 15000 stateless Jews had murdered by einsatzgruppen after being deported from Hungary ) but the point resonates. Having lived in such circumstances through the sustained heat of the conflict, and under the direct gaze of the perpetrators, it is very possible to understand some complacency – particularly given the changing course of the War. There were too, the unequivocal assurances of safety by the SS; assurances that appeared rational, based on the widely held assumption that the unpopular occupation was too fragile to withstand such an assault (as had occurred elsewhere) on members of its population. The economy, which was heavily influenced by the Jewish population, was also supposed to be too important for the Nazis to risk or endanger on such matters of principal. Parliament would surely protect them if the need arose came as well – particularly as Horthy was maintaining his position as head of state. These assumptions are indeed “short sighted” and even naive – but they aren’t entirely illogical. In the actuality, fatally they proved too fragile to withstand or weather the speed of events beyond.
The issue of paradox for the Jews of Hungary is then perhaps worth investigating not so much from the point of view of the availability, or acquisition, of information or knowledge, but more from the point of view of the interpretation and application of this in respect of the context. The Jews may have been caught out by the speed of events, but on calm reflection the signs and warnings were apparent and present. Is the paradox then – and it is almost unbearably tragic -- that the information was there, but for some reason, they didn’t want to see it. Discussing the issue on BBC’s Document programme, Tony Kushner characterises the phenomena as “knowing but not believing.” David Cesarani develops this point on the same programme, suggesting that the denial is borne out of an unwillingness to engage with the horror. The paradox then, is then that the Hungarian Jews being deported allowed themselves to enter a state of active ignorance – they knew what was happening; knew and did nothing.
Equally bewildering, though form an entirely different perspective, is the question of why the Nazis chose this point to allow the Holocaust to come into the light; why it was now, with defeat as a discernible possibility, that the fiercely maintained veil of secrecy should be lifted. The liquidation of the remaining Jews in the Harvest Festival was a necessary factor in the process of ensuring that Europe was judenrein. As well maintaining security (as far as was Himmler was concerned) though, it also served the purpose of ensuring that no Jews would survive to tell the tale of what had occurred. Secrecy had always been a pre-requisite of the management of the Final Solution, with issues such as the location of the death camps, their internal design and their management all informed by a desire to maintain confidentiality. In a telling correspondence between Himmler and Globocnik of November 1943, Globocniks’s reference “During a visit, you, Reichsfuhrer, held out to me the prospect that a few iron crosses might be awarded for the special performance of this difficult task after the work had been concluded” – is conspicuously not alluded to in the Reichsfuhrer’s response . This was always to be “this is an unwritten – never to be written – and yet glorious page in our history.” The death camps were not left as a towering example of a defining historic moment, they were – as has been previously mentioned – destroyed, their footprint disguised. The Final Solution may ultimately have needed the circumstances of War to allow for its existence, but it was also predicated on the War culminating in a German victory. Through 1944, as Ian Kershaw articulates in The End, the successful allied invasion of mainland Europe in June, combined with the emphatic gains for the Red Army and allied victory in Rome made a German defeat seem all but inevitable (if not to every last committed Nazi). The act of continuing with the Final Solution, where the secrets of Auschwitz were becoming known, made the potential for denial impossible. Furthermore, formal conversations with the Hungarians regarding its management were a unique example of the Holocaust being openly discussed, co-ordinated and planned with a foreign power. This is unmistakeably the Holocaust coming into the open (which is not to suggest that there weren’t still Nazis working hard to attempt to cover their own backs). Why such a bold, and public, act as this should have been embarked on at such a precipitous point of the war, is perplexing. There are diverging opinions, or possible opinions, to explain why this would have been the case.
Ian Kershaw identifies the fact that by this stage of the war, Hitler had become increasingly convinced that virtually every act perpetrated against the Reich happened at the instigation of – or as a result of – the Jews (“this entire bestiality has been organized by the Jews” as he said in May 1944) . Placed within this matrix of logic, the escalation of the War contiguously raised the stakes of the Jewish Question –winning the War became intrinsically contingent on killing the Jews. Even Goebbels noted in April 1944, “the Fuhrer’s hatred against the Jews has intensified even further rather than declined.” Saul Friedlander quotes Hitler’s adjutant Walter Hewel, reporting that in the words of the Fuhrer the Jews were “responsible for the mass murder of women and children in the Anglo-American bombings.” In this climate of increasing anti-semitic obsession, it is perhaps not surprising that the concerns of post-War secrecy, found themselves becoming secondary by some distance, to the business of addressing the job at hand.
In a vein tangential to this issue, it would be possible to suggest that the manner in which the Final Solution was conducted in Hungary was borne out of tactical necessity. The growing proliferation of information about the Holocaust would have obliged those managing it in Hungary to act with haste. As has already been discussed, the approach to the pattern of zones of action in the Country was designed with a view of leaving Budapest til last – based on the assumption that the Jews of Budapest would be most likely to be in receipt of information about Nazi intentions, and so could try and flee to the countryside. Concerns about Jews receiving information and co-ordinating action based up on that, were thus clearly factors in the SS consciousness (particularly given the uprisings in Sobibor, Treblinka and Warsaw). With this in mind, the need to act decisively and publically could supersede operational matters of secrecy. The Nazis were perhaps further emboldened in this by the lack of action from the free world at large -- Tony Kushner identifies the fact that by 1943 public activities in Britain in response to the Holocaust “had almost faded away.” It’s speculative of course, but this lack of international dissension must surely have had an impact at this very specific juncture – it certainly had some sort of impact when it finally came.
Peter Longerich implies an interesting interpretation of the Nazi strategy of secrecy at this point in time, in respect of Himmler. He identifies the fact that Himmler’s speeches to Wehrmacht Generals became more open, and more explicit on the subject of the Final Solution as the War reached its conclusion. In what would be a high stakes strategy, Longerich suggests that this behaviour is designed to implicate the largest number of people possible in the crimes – “the Reichsfuhrer wanted to make it clear to senior officers...that in the event of a military defeat, they would not be able to pretend that they were unaware of the fact that the murder of the European Jews was one of the regime’s war aims.” It is interesting to extend this concept of guilt by association to the question of the manner in which the Holocaust in Hungary was dealt with. It would be possible to make the case that the paradox of Nazi behaviour at this stage, was partly determined by a desire – or even need – to ensure that Hungary as a nation were secured to Germany by virtue of their collaboration in the Final Solution. In an occupation that was fragilely maintained, and in a territory that was sensitively positioned, implicating them in the Final Solution was a strategy that could mandate loyalty and compliance – but only if the World was aware of that for which they were responsible, and only if Hungary were aware of this in turn. The ability to share, and further decentralise, responsibility could doubtless too have proved appealing.
It must further be acknowledged that the incremental impact of years of sleepless nights and unimaginable stress on the Nazi Leadership (frequently coupled with well known physiological conditions) meant that these were men making judgement calls in a very specific set of circumstances. Extending logic and reason -- only ever relative concepts in the Third Reich – in such circumstances becomes in turn a relative exercise. The acknowledgement of this is obviously not to absolve or excuse any decisions, but to locate the specificity of the context in which they were made (and to suggest contributory factors to the paradoxical nature of their decision making). Whilst avoiding any sort of further “armchair psychology” it’s also worth identifying the fact that these are individuals who had been allowed, by this stage, to act with an extraordinary impunity for almost five years – the notion of cause and consequence, soaked through an ideology that had only become more concentrated – must surely be borne in mind.
Quite clearly, the scope of the paradoxes of the Holocaust in Hungary extend much further than those investigated in this essay (space forbids discussion of the Trucks for Jews Affair, the Kastner train, Zionist intervention and so on). The fact that this invasion of Hungary was to be the last invasion mounted by the Nazis – and yet was their most ruthlessly efficient, means that it somehow assumes the status of a grim, consolidating coda; a coda in which paradoxes seem strangely appropriate. The sense that it was in some way, avoidable, informs it with a particular sense of tragedy – which is probably appropriate too.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The Holocaust in Hungary” National Committee for Attending Deportees, accessed January 5th 2013 http://degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2031
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