In addition to the task already entrusted to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to find the most favourable solution of the Jewish question in the form of emigration or evacuation, according to circumstances, I hereby instruct you to make all necessary preparations, in organizational, material and financial terms, for the complete solution of the Jewish question in the German-controlled area of Europe.
Where other central authorities' powers would be affected, they should be involved. I further instruct you to submit to me as soon as possible a comprehensive draft of the preliminary organisational, material and material arrangements necessary for the final settlement of the Jewish question.
Victor Klemperer linguist, writer, politician a politician and politician:
September 19, 1941 From that time on, I had to wear the Jewish star, (...) the yellow rag. (...) A nice and cheerful-looking man comes towards me, leading a little boy by the hand. He stops a step away from me. "Take a good look, Horst - they're all guilty!...)
Recollection of Rozália Vajda in 2000:
The Jews were scarce by then, the Gypsies came. But no one spoke against it, no one said that this should not be allowed. At home they shouted after us that we were stinking gypsies and rotten Jews. Such snotty kids. Here, where the pharmacy is, there was a shop. The manager was a Jew. It must have been in forty-three. Two snotty little girls followed them and sang: "One rabbi, two rabbis...". They spat on his doorstep and his window.
Recollection of Lajos Kánya in 2000:
We were playing music in Viszak, here in the neighbouring village. All of a sudden three or four gendarmes came up to us, told us to stop, to pack up, because they were taking us away. We were surprised, all the guests were surprised, how come? You couldn't talk to the gendarme. The guests said that they hadn't hurt anyone, they were nice people, but it was useless. We had to pack up and they took us away.
From anti-Jewish measures to the first mass murder
Although the Germans did not enter Hungary until 1944, atrocities and partial deportations of Jews began earlier.
The first anti-Jewish law, the numerus clausus (closed number), was introduced in 1920 which reduced the participation of people of Jewish origin in higher education. The aim of this measure of the Horthy era was to reduce the proportion of Jews studying at universities of economics, law and medicine to around 30%. The only people adversely affected by the measure were the Jews, while the other nationalities were not affected.
The numerus clausus provided for the restriction of 'races and nationalities', i.e. the law defined Jews as a nationality instead of an Israelite religion. Hitherto equal citizens were reclassified into another nationality, so that they could no longer be admitted to university by adopting the Christian religion. With this law, equality of civil rights was lost for good, and the Jews were placed in an oppressed and humiliated social position.
At that time, origin meant that you or at least one parent or two grandparents belonged to the Jewish denomination. The first The first anti-Jewish law was passed in 1938, restricting employment in industrial, commercial or financial companies to a maximum of 20% Jewish origin. This law still defined Jews on religious grounds and exempted people who had been decorated in World War I or who had converted to Christianity before 1 August 1919.
The second anti-Jewish law of 1939 further tightened employment opportunities. Jews were no longer allowed to work in the state administration, judicial organisations and secondary schools, but were allowed to make up 6% of the workforce in the intellectual sector. They were almost completely excluded from the theatre, the media, industry and commerce.
The third anti-Jewish law came into force in 1941. Here and in the previous law, anyone who had two Jewish children was considered Jewish. grandparents. Mixed marriage and sexual intercourse were classified as racial vilification, prohibited and sanctioned.
In 1942, another decree was passed, obliging Jews to sell their land at very low prices; these lands were bought by members of the 'Order of the Vitézi', founded by Miklós Horthy, relatives of soldiers fighting at the front and large families.
What could a person born Jewish not do? He couldn't run auctions, he couldn't work as a real estate agent, he couldn't run a movie theatre. He couldn't be a permanent court expert, sell certain spirits, work as a sugar trader or as a private detective. To escape the humiliation, an increasing number of people fled to commit suicide or were baptised in the hope of escaping persecution.
Jewish men were forbidden to bear arms, but they were also unwilling to give up free labour, so they were forced to work in the army, clearing forests, building roads, bridges or railways in the hinterland and in areas near the front. The most dangerous work was mine clearance and construction under enemy fire.
All armies need auxiliary workers, but the Hungarian "Muslims" worked in extremely poor conditions: starving, without health care, humiliated, even killed by their guards.
However, despite all the inhumanity of labour service, it was not total slavery, and people were lucky enough to be able to go on holiday, receive gifts and correspond with family members. And in 1944, labour service could mean escape from deportation, which depended mainly on the attitude of the company commander.
Jews in Hungary felt relatively safe, at least compared to other states, despite the deprivation of rights. Between 1939 and 1941, 10-20 thousand people fled from German-occupied territories until the National Central Authority for the Control of Foreigners rounded up Jews with "irregular/dual citizenship/ stateless" and deported them to Kamenyec-Podolsky in what is now Ukraine (long before the official deportations began). These people, among whom many were Hungarian citizens with papers, were murdered by Einsatzgruppe troops in two days on 27-28 August 1941, and only 2-3 thousand were able to return to Hungary.
Kamenyec-Podolsky was the site of the first Holocaust massacre.
Letter from Gáspár Fischer and Erzsébet Szenes to the orphanage, August 1942:
We respectfully request that Your Excellency, the Reverend Arvasek, (...) graciously grant permission for our children, John and Laszlo, to convert from the Israelite religion to the Reformed religion, since we are both Reformed since our conversion. Although János's mother is dead, I have been raising the undersigned Mrs. Gáspár Fischer for 10 years as his stepmother, and he himself wants to become a Reformed, so we also ask for permission for his conversion.
Letter from Sándor Hajas to László Endre, Deputy Minister, April 1940 - excerpt (Hajas was a young man from Szeged, who was an unknown job seeker for the enthusiastic race protector Endre. The reply has not survived):
(...) Here I am, young and beggarly, with my wife and me, hopeless. (...) My only hope is to get a modest little job in Your Grace's county, where the honest Hungarian man, who loves his race, is not persecuted but loved. It is impossible that I should have been fatal to my twenty-six years of life because I was reckless enough to play a fool with the Jews, impossible that today, in the time of the Second Jewish Law, I and my poor young wife should be the victims of what many others - I mean legislators - boast of at length and in the wind. Your Excellency, I want to live! (...).
Letter from Ferenc Neisz, notary of Pilisvörösvár to Gábor Schultz, chief bailiff, Christmas 1938 - excerpt):
(...) I report that during the night of this morning unknown persons marked all the shops of the merchants in the village, namely the Christian merchants with a cross (not an arrow cross) and Christian inscriptions, and the Jewish shops with a Jewish cross and Jewish inscriptions. The inscriptions were made in blue paint and were clearly visible.
Letter from the Chief Bailiff of Szentendre to the District Magistrates, August 1942 - excerpt:
It has been complained that the relatives of Jewish auxiliary labourers are visiting in large numbers the villages and towns where there are Jewish workers, and are carrying on whispered propaganda, politicizing, and arousing sympathy and compassion for the Jews among the population, according to the English radio. They infect the minds and thinking of the population, and discredit government action (...)
From the diary of Bernát Deutsch, a labour serviceman, 10 December 1943 - excerpt (Deutsch was found dead on a train in 1945 - he was probably returning home from labour service, but the investigation revealed that he had simply starved to death):
"At the foot of the hill of Romania, rose trees bloom
Beneath it, a section of workers marches briskly.
Don't march, working class, or you'll get shot
Your mother is far away to cry for you.
(...)
Letter from the Esztergom branch of the National Central Authority for the Control of Foreigners to Rezső Vadas, Chief Bailiff of the Szob district, 18 August 1941 - excerpt:
According to the radio order of the Minister of the Interior issued today, the removal of Jews of Russian and Polish origin from the territory of the country will not be carried out to the extent required by the situation and the interests of the country. According to the orders of the Minister of the Interior, Jews of Polish and Russian origin are to be removed from the territory of the country without exception, whether they have been expelled, denied a residence permit or required to apply in person, and even if they have a valid residence permit. The removal is, of course, to be understood as including family members (...)
Letter from Samuel Fischmann to the National Central Authority for the Control of Foreigners, June 1939 - excerpt (The village of Kisbári also stood up for Fischmann and his wife, but in vain: humanity did not save them from deportation.):
I have been living in Hungary since 1894.In 1915 I was drafted as a soldier from Sátoraljaújhely, fought the World War, and in 1918 I came home sick and deaf in both ears (...) I really did not give the slightest reason for expulsion, since I could not, due to my deafness and ignorance, be in a position to be concerned about the interests of the state, public order and public safety. I humbly beg that my remaining few days should not be made more serious by my expulsion, that I should not be sent to a foreign country where I have no one; here I have lived my life and here I wish to rest forever.
A hotlist from 1942
After the relative calm of the 1930s, from 1941 onwards, intolerance towards gays increased as homosexuality became incompatible with ideology. Although no specific law was passed on gays, the authorities took increasingly harsh action against them. Criminal prosecutions increased and, following the example of Nazi Germany, the authorities considered sending homosexuals to forced labour.
There is a surviving list from 1942 with the details of 993 gay men, based on an exchange of correspondence between the Centre for State Protection and the Ministry of Defence about whether or not they should be obliged to do "national defence" service. The correspondence ends with a negative reply from the Ministry - probably because they did not want people to be taken into the army, which is seen as a paragon of honour, on a punitive basis. On the other hand, the presence of gays in the army was tacitly acknowledged, even high-ranking gay officers might have been among the soldiers, and the authorities did not want this to be revealed to the wider public. Nor did they want gayness to 'spread' in the army.
What happened to the people on the list was never revealed, except for one person. ever found out. The exception is a journalist who became a police 'undercover' under the name Urbán in the late 1950s under the communist regime (presumably to blackmail him for his sexual orientation), and his file reveals that he was called up for labour service during the Great War, from which he escaped. In the 1960s, he reported mainly on his journalistic colleagues in Vienna and eventually defected to Australia.
As far as we know, this list is the only document linking gays in Hungary to the Holocaust.
Letter from the State Defence Centre to the Minister of Defence, 7 November 1942;
I request that homosexual individuals who are unreliable from the point of view of public morals and who are in the territory of the capital city of Budapest, and who are included in the attached list, be called up for national defence labour service. Please inform me of Your Excellency's high decision.
Detailed submission of the War Organisation and Mobilisation Department within the Ministry of Defence, 7 November 1942, detail
(...) does not recommend and does not consider a military solution desirable, on the one hand, because the question requires a specifically law enforcement (...) solution and, on the other hand, by temporarily using the persons concerned for military service, we cannot hope to change the character of individuals with degenerated nerves (here handwritten insertion: "character") (handwritten insertion: "it is undoubtedly useful if individuals who are primarily useless for the nation are destroyed"). On the other hand, the requests and proposals which offer the slag of the country's population for use by the armed forces are becoming increasingly widespread. Such a procedure offends the good feelings of the other blameless individuals involved in the war, when they see that the recourse is primarily of a punitive nature.
Reply of the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of the Interior, 1942;
(...) Finally, it must be pointed out that among those (homosexuals) who were soldiers, there may be, and even will be, those who hold rank and medals (...)
Diverse Gypsy community.
In 1941, there was a Gypsy population of over 200 000 in the country. A significant proportion of them were among the poorest sections of society, but they did not represent a real economic, political or social problem.
However, the Roma population in the country at the time was highly differentiated. In addition to the mainly rural masses living in deep poverty or, better, in "respectable poverty", several families, mainly from the cities, started on the path of integration (or at least of "getting by"). The more talented and fortunate sometimes found a stable livelihood as café and restaurant gypsy musicians, while others earned a regular income by becoming industrial workers. In some cases, entire communities found their fulfillment in serving the needs of the manufacturing industry of the day.
In addition, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, especially in the families of some of the more prominent gypsy musicians, children became educated and began to mix with the bourgeois or noble elite through marriage. Thus, many intellectuals of Gypsy origin, but no longer considered Gypsy by virtue of their social status, lived in Hungary.
Meanwhile, the authorities and the public were preoccupied with the news from the front and the "final solution" of the Jewish question. There were no decrees similar to the Jewish Laws in relation to the Gypsies; in Hungary before the Arrow Cross takeover, there was not a single order that required the racial discrimination and deportation of the entire Gypsy population. Many of them fought at the front, and their families, widows and orphans received the same benefits as everyone else. At the same time, however, there was a steadily growing antipathy and strictness on the part of the authorities, especially towards gypsies living in extreme poverty.
Letter from Kálmán Keserű, Chief Bailiff of the Szentendre district to the villages and towns of the district, 28 April 1942
By order of the Deputy District Judge, I order that all the gypsies of the district, except the more educated and clean musicians who live a civil life, be lice-ridden and shaven from head to toe twice a year, between 15-30 May and 15-30 October. The official doctor shall examine the Gypsies for lice once every month and report the depilation as the monthly lice examinations.
Letter of István Tudomány Primate to László Endre Deputy Mayor, September 1942 - excerpt:
(...) in the course of the investigation so far, the examining official doctor has not yet found anything objectionable from the point of view of public cleanliness and public health in the case of folk musicians and their family members, and we humbly request Your Excellency to exempt the folk musicians from this humiliating procedure;(...) we consider it very unfair that we are being subjected to this examination by the gendarmerie at the same time as the so-called stray gypsies who have only recently been settled, when we are also exposed to the risk of catching contagious diseases or worms from them. (...
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
