Letter from Phöbus Electricity Works to the Gödöllő Town Council, 14 June 1944 - excerpt:
Today we received an order from the Commander of the Military Staff, according to which our company is forbidden to supply electricity to Jewish homes or to Jewish persons. This prohibition also extends to the districts, buildings and parts of buildings designated as ghettos (...)
I first heard their voices. They were speaking German or something very similar, it sounded like all at once. As far as I could make out, they wanted us to land. "But instead, it seemed, they pushed their way up between us; I could see nothing yet. But already the news was out that the suitcases and luggage were staying here. Later - they explained, translated and passed around me by word of mouth - everyone would get back his possessions, of course, but first the objects would have to be disinfected, and we would have to take a bath: indeed, it was time, I found that myself. It was then that I came nearer to them in the bustle, and at last caught a glimpse of the people here. I was surprised, for it was the first time in my life that I had seen, at least at such close quarters, real convicts in the striped gowns, shaven heads and round caps of the villains. (...) On each of their chests, in addition to the usual number for convicts, I saw a yellow triangle, and although I had no difficulty in deciphering the meaning of this colour, it suddenly struck me; I almost forgot the whole affair as I went along. Their faces were not exactly inspiring either: protruding ears, protruding noses, sunken, small, shrewdly shining eyes. Indeed, they looked Jewish in every way. I found them suspicious and altogether alien.
I said, quite quietly:
- Dude, slow down a little bit, you're going to get exhausted.
- Are you talking? Are you talking? - and they pull me over from behind. I was in a hat, the stick could have slipped, it didn't hurt, believe me. Thin, blond kid, he likes to be bossy, I saw it yesterday. It was something else, not what I got: it was so comical to be hit on the head by this silly boy at the age of sixty, it was a great embarrassment for me not to laugh. Imagine if the laughter ran out of my mouth there.
By mid-March 1942, 75 to 80 percent of the European victims of the Holocaust were still alive, and 75 to 80 percent of the people had died by February 1943. One of the greatest tragedies of the Hungarian Holocaust, however, was that although the Germans did not arrive until 19 March 1944, the proactive diligence of the Hungarian authorities (also) resulted in the deportation of so many Jews in a short time that almost one in ten of the Holocaust victims were deported to Hungary. and one in three of the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau were Hungarians.
The collaborationist Støy government appointed by Horthy introduced its disenfranchising decrees day after day: Jews were excluded from the chambers of commerce, their trade licences were revoked, they had to hand in their radios and bicycles, their shopping hours were restricted, and they were only allowed to use designated hotels, restaurants, cinemas and baths.
From 5 April, the "canary yellow" star has been made compulsory on the outerwear of all children over the age of six. The Jews had different attitudes to the stamp: some wore it defiantly, many were ashamed or did not wear it at all, for which, of course, they were severely punished.
As of 16 April, the designation of forced housing started in rural areas. In Budapest, people had to move into designated houses or take in other families by 27 June. Such dwellings were marked with a yellow star placed in the gate.
A decree was prepared for 4 April on the "Designation of the place of residence for Jews". This was supplemented by another government decree prohibiting the use of cars and motorcycles, or travel by rail. The aim was to restrict their movement, increase their isolation and prevent escape attempts.
The ghettos and deportations began on 16 April 1944, and over the next 55 days or so, almost 450,000 Jews were deported. This amounted to the extermination of almost all rural Jewry. Adopting Eichmann's position, the Jews of north-eastern Hungary were deported first, followed by a circular route to the south and west, with Budapest as the final destination. The trains were escorted to the border by the Hungarian gendarmes, who were very enthusiastic about their 'work', and only there were the people handed over to the SS officers.
At the end of June and beginning of July 1944, as a result of international pressure, Horthy stopped the deportations, but by then only the Jews of Budapest and those serving in the labour service companies were still alive. Horthy tried half-heartedly to lead Hungary out of the war. His advisers thought that in the West it would be a good point that the Jews had been protected, but in mid-August he agreed to deport the Jews of Budapest as well. This was ultimately thwarted by the confusion surrounding Romania's withdrawal. Horthy was also hesitant about the Hungarian withdrawal, which did not succeed, and on 15 October 1944 the Arrow Cross took power under Ferenc Szálasi, with the help of the German invaders.
Gays under Arrow Cross rule
With the takeover, the Nazi policy became more and more an example for the Hungarian leadership to follow. The Arrow Cross crusaders also wanted to interfere in people's private lives; they imposed marriage between (non-Jewish) men and women, made child-bearing compulsory and education along certain principles. Single people, childless people and sexual deviants were to be severely punished, and forced sterilisation and castration were planned for non-Jews, Jews, Gypsies and gays, following the German model. They broke the silence surrounding homosexuality, and although their plans were thwarted by the Soviet occupation, after the end of the war - perhaps not unrelated to the events - the persecution of gays in Hungary became more widespread than ever.
Gypsies after the occupation - deportations, mass killings
(...) In the villages of the Nagykanizsa district, our gendarmes combed the gypsy settlements and wherever they found unemployed, vagabond gypsies, they picked them up as elements harmful to economic life and dangerous to public safety, escorted them to Nagykanizsa, and then transported them to a labour camp. The population of the municipalities of the district took the authorities' action with great reassurance.
Ilona Lacková's memoir in 2000 (Holocaust survivor, one of the most well-known Roma in Slovakia, she wrote and directed plays, founded a newspaper)
In the evening the train arrived from Strawberry. In the village they shouted: - They are taking the gypsies! They're taking the Gypsies! (...) I ran out, followed by a few more women. One of the women was wailing terribly, saying that there were seven children, who was going to keep them? A gendarme rode up to her and hit her with a shotgun. She fell to the ground. We were told to turn back immediately. Two women picked up the one the gendarme had hit and led him home.
Ilona Lacková's recollection in 2000:
In Petič, the labour camp operated for a good year. Then it was dismantled, (...) most of the prisoners were transferred elsewhere. (...) Of course, people immediately realised that they could make themselves more unfit than they really were and thus avoid another camp. They believed that it would stain their lungs, as if they were just lunatics, and they were not taken to the camps. (...) When Ema and Feri's son-in-law received the invitation to the next camp, Feri advised them to drink tobacco tincture. Unfortunately, they took the advice. They drank the potion and died the next day.
After the German occupation, Gypsies lived more or less the same life during the war as before. They were not dealt with by the occupying German army authorities, and this practice basically remained unchanged in the weeks following the Arrow Cross takeover.
The raids, atrocities and murders against the Gypsies took place, staggered in time, after 15 October 1944, during the Arrow Cross era.
The changes were slow and initially rather unconceptual. From the spring of 1944 onwards, especially in the Transdanubian region, people were increasingly sent to internment camps on charges of labour deprivation or minor offences. Some of them were demonstrably deported. On 23 August 1944, a decision was taken to organise Gypsy military work camps. These companies were made up of men who had strayed, were unemployed or had no steady occupation. The Ministry of Defence had hoped to recruit 10-12 thousand gypsy labourers, but it was not possible to raise more than 1-2 thousand. As a result, a maximum of 4-5 Gypsy labour bases could eventually be established.
Indeed, harsh persecutions began in Hungary under Ferenc Szálasi from early November 1944. The majority of the Roma victims of the Holocaust in Hungary came from the Transdanubian region and partly from the northern Hungarian areas of what is now Slovakia. In November, sporadic raids and deportations took place in the capital, as well as in Budafok, Csepel, Kispest, Pestújhely and Rákospalota, among other places.
The most important domestic collection camp was Csillagerőd, part of the Komárom fortress system. From here, a significant number of prisoners were first sent to Dachau, from where many were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück. The Dachau camp was the most important destination. Between 10 November 1944 and 28 March 1945, transports of Hungarian Gypsies (also) arrived, many of whom (mainly women) were subjected to various pseudo-medical experiments.
Researchers have so far found documents on nearly 1,500 Hungarian Gypsy deportees in the surviving archives of the former concentration camps.
In addition to the deportations, German and Hungarian soldiers have many other war crimes on their consciences. The most serious of these are the mass murders committed between October 1944 and March 1945. Literature records around ten massacres in the former territory of Hungary. The best known are the massacres in Doboz on 5 October 1944, in lajoskomárom on 30 January 1945 and near Várpalota on 14 February 1945. On the latter occasion alone, more than a hundred Gypsies from Székesfehérvár and Várpalota were shot dead by the gendarmerie and the Arrow Cross party at Grábler Lake near Várpalota.
Around 400 Gypsies in Hungary were victims of similar mass murders in the final stages of the Second World War.
Report of German Lieutenant General Walther, Serbia, 1 November 1941:
(...) Shooting Jews is easier than shooting gypsies. It must be admitted that Jews go to their death very calmly - they stand very still - whereas Gypsies cry, shout and move constantly when they are already standing at the place of the shooting. Some of them jumped straight into the grave pit before the shooting and tried to pretend to be dead (...) My personal impression is that there are no psychological inhibitions during the shootings. However, they do arise when one reflects on them days later, in the evening, under calm circumstances.
All the gypsies were taken away,
they were taken to dig big trenches.
The big ditch is slowly deepening,
water bubbling up from the deep vein.
Poor boys, all our kind,
the gendarmes chase him.
They beat them, they get them,
the laggard at the end of a gun.
Why the big ditch,
the black bottomless?
They don't know how they would know,
and the gendarmes don't know!
If they knew what they were digging for,
for themselves, not for anyone else,
for themselves and others,
for women, children.
On the second day, in the afternoon
the blue sky turns red
blood of the gypsies:
they shall be shed with their pure blood.
That day, good brothers and sisters,
gypsies, remember!
A great dark day of mourning,
a day of mourning for gypsies.
Michail Krausnick-Lukas Ruegenberg: The Story of Else - A Little Girl Survives Auschwitz (a youth novel based on a true story - excerpt):
Else was beaten several times. The SS woman called him a dung master and whipped him whenever she could. This woman was feared by everyone in the camp. It was well known that she liked to whip women and little girls.
Angéla Lakatos, Mici's recollection of the 1975 massacre in várpalota:
They picked us up and took us to Várpalota. There were a lot of us, they put us in a barn. It was snowing, raining, the children were crying, you can imagine, there was not a piece of bread. They were not allowed to come up from the depths, they were fired upon. When we got there, the men were all dead. And then they shot us, the women and children. I was pregnant at the time, I was going to have a baby in July. I was shot eight times, in my arm, in my leg, in my side, here and in my thigh (...) I survived, and one little girl.
Mrs B.A.'s recollection:
In Komárom, in the Star Prison, my sister and I were locked in the underground cellar with a lot of myself. We were there for two weeks, during which time many of us starved to death and even newborn babies were thrown into the lime pit. We were given no food, what we could bring from home was soon gone. We were put in cattle cars, transported to Dachau, to Auschwitz.
Gypsy folk song:
The ghetto room in Komárom
Does every Roma know that
He tells his family in tears
Oh, the ghetto room stinks.
I am a prisoner in the ghetto
They know I live there
I've got artificial fibres all over my member.
Oh God do a miracle
From Hitler to a cattle
A rope around his neck
Drive it out to Main Street.
I am in the ghetto
They cut my hair
Oh God what to do
Should I run or stop?
If I run to be shot dead
If I stop, I will be beaten to death.
Recollection of Mrs. Vilmos Hodosi in 2000 (deported at the age of fourteen, survived the Holocaust):
Imagine, we went naked to the camp, what a shame, you know, especially for us. They gave us a striped dress, the kind that fools wear, not even a button, just a little tie, and we were in it (...) The soldiers didn't hurt us, they didn't touch us. And they were disgusted with us. They hated us, you could tell. Sometimes they hit us with the truncheon (...) The worst thing was the way we carried people to the incinerator. How the man would catch those dead and throw them in like dogs. You can never forget that. So many people were killed, damn that Hitler.
Recollection by Hermine Horváth in 2000:
Because there was no water, it happened that people with fever drank urine. Later, we received our food from the same cuvette where we did our needs. It was washed out beforehand.
Recollections of a survivor, July 1944:
It rained for 3 days, we were outdoors in a clay pit in the brickworks. There were gendarmes with machine guns at the edge of the trench. Sometimes they fired alarm shots. There was some shabby hole called a hospital, a horrible, cellar-like place. A lot of people went mad, there were a lot of suicides.
all chapters
Remembering the HolocaustHungary
Return and emigrationHungary
LMBTQHungary
History of the HolocaustHungary
Fascist ideologyHungary
The HolocaustHungary
The HolocaustSlovakia
Slovak StateSlovakia
IdeologySlovakia
PersecutionSlovakia
AntisemitismSlovakia
AryanisationSlovakia
PorajmosSlovakia
PorajmosHungary
LGBT minoritySlovakia
First transportSlovakia
DeportationsSlovakia
Life in the campSlovakia
Slovak National UprisingSlovakia
HomecomingSlovakia
EmigrationSlovakia
