Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the Wealth of Hungarian Jews

440 Pages·2004·1.88 MB·English

by  Gabor Kadar

SELF-FINANCING GENOCIDE
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SELF-FINANCING
GENOCIDE
The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the
Wealth of Hungarian Jews
by
GÁBOR KÁDÁR and ZOLTÁN VÁGI
Central European University Press
Budapest New York
©2001 by GÁBORKÁDÁRand ZOLTÁNVÁGI
English translation ©by ENIKÔKONCZ,JIMTUCKERand ANDRÁSKÁDÁR2004
Certain parts were published in Hungarian as Aranyvonat.
Fejezetek a zsidó vagyon történetébôl
by Osiris, Budapest in 2001
English edition published in 2004 by
Central European University Press
An imprint of the
Central European University Share Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
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Translated by ENIKÔKONCZ,JIMTUCKERandANDRÁSKÁDÁR
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, without the permission
of the Publisher.
ISBN 963 9241 53 9 Cloth
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kádár, Gábor.
[Aranyvonat. English]
Self-financing genocide : the gold train, the Becher case and the wealth of Hungarian
Jews / by Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági ; English translation by Enikô Koncz, Jim
Tucker and András Kádár
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9639241539 (hardbound)
1.Jews—Persecutions—Hungary. 2.Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Hungary.
3.World War, 1939–1945—Confiscations and contributions—Hungary. 4.Becher,
Kurt, 1909. 5.Jewish property—Hungary. 6.Hungary—Ethnic relations. I. Vági,
Zoltán. II. Title.
DS135.H9K32513 2004
940.53'18132'09439—dc22
2004002564
Printed in Hungary by
Akaprint Nyomda
Table of Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
PROLOGUE: The specifics of the genocide against
Hungarian Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
PART I. RATIONALITY AND HOLOCAUST:
SELF-FINANCING GENOCIDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Hungarians and Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The demography and sociology of the Jews before
the German occupation of Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. The economic status of Hungarian Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4. The wealth of the Hungarian Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5. The wealth of Hungarian Jews in international comparison . . . 26
6. From crisis to crisis: Anti-Semitic concepts and practice
(1919–1936) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7. Race-protectionism, the wealth of Jews, Aryanization
(1936–1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8. The road to the Holocaust: Hungarian Jews during
the Second World War (1939–1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
9. 1944—The looting of Jewish wealth and its main problems:
Speed, legal controversies, institutional rivalry, and the
Germans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
10. Lofty goals and disillusioning reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
11. Self-financing genocide 1: From death camps to budget, or:
The Reich, occupied Europe, and Operation Reinhard . . . . . . . 111
vi CONTENTS
12. Self-financing genocide 2: Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German
budget, and the postwar fate of Hungarian Jewish property
and the Melmer deposits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
13. Self-financing genocide 3: The profit to the Hungarian budget 135
14. Multiple plunder: The fate of Hungarian Jewish assets
at the end of the war and after 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
PART II. LEGEND AND REALITY: THE STORY OF
KURT BECHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
1. The character and the sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
2. Soldier, businessman, bureaucrat, mass murderer?
Becher’s career until 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
3. Artificial chaos: Becher’s position in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
4. In the gateway to success: The Weiss Manfréd affair . . . . . . . . . 195
5. The Kasztner affair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
6. Stopping deportations and death marches from Budapest . . . . 219
7. Halting the mass extermination of the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
8. Becher: Savior of the Pest ghetto and Chief Inspector of the
concentration camps? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
9. Evacuation: Removal of the Hungarian industry to the Reich . 244
10. Becher’s personal gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
11. Assessment of Becher’s character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
PART III. THE STORY OF THE HUNGARIAN JEWISH
GOLD TRAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
1. Assembling the contents of the Gold Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
2. The train’s journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
3. The trucks and Toldy’s journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
4. International legal background and problems of definition . . . 296
5. The fate of those contents of the Gold Train which fell into
American hands (1945–1957) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
6. Hungarian attempts to recover the contents of the
Gold Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
7. Critique of U.S. restitution policy and practice pursued
in relation to the Gold Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
8. The fate of the treasure that fell under French control . . . . . . . 332
9. The value of the contents of the Gold Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
10. The historiography of the Gold Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
CONTENTS vii
ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
SUBJECT INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
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List of Illustrations
1. Rezsô Kasztner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
2. Kurt Becher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
3. Adolf Eichmann (Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
4. Deportation in Hungary in the summer of 1944
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
5. Gentile population is robbing a ghetto in Hungary in the
summer of 1944 (Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
6. Deportation in Hungary in the summer of 1944
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
7. Ghettoization in Hungary in the spring of 1944
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
8. Ferenc Chorin with Regent Miklós Horthy in 1935
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
9. Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös with the leaders of the National
Alliance of Industrialists in 1932 (Hungarian National Museum) 376
10. The assets of the victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
11. The assets of the victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau
(Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
12. László Endre (Hungarian National Museum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378