Trading in Lives? Operations of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, 1944-1945

253 Pages·2005·7.33 MB·English

by  Szabolcs Szita, Sean Lambert

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Trading in Lives?
Operations of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee
in Budapest, 1944–1945
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Trading in Lives?
Operations of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee
in Budapest, 1944–1945
by
SZABOLCS SZITA
Central European University Press
Budapest N New York
©2005 by Szabolcs Szita
English translation © by Sean Lambert
Published in 2005 by
Central European University Press
An imprint of the
Central European University Share Company
Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
Tel: [phone] or 327-3000
Fax: [phone]
E-mail:
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Contents
1. Operations of the Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee from
1941 to 1944 ....................................................................................... 1
2. The German Occupation of Hungary, March 19 1944 ....................
a. The Special Units Strike Immediately .........................................
3. The Sonderkommando and the Ungarnaktion .................................
a. Eichmann on the Move Again .....................................................
b. The Organizations of Terror Settle In ........................................
c. Deportation of the First Captives .................................................
d. The Ungarnaktion in Full Swing .................................................
e. The Hungarian Prisoners of the Vienna Gestapo .......................
f. In the Buda Prison of the Gestapo ..............................................
4. The Deportation of Hungarian Jews in the Eyes of the World ........
a. Indifference ..................................................................................
b. Protests .........................................................................................
c. Another German Cover-up Game ...............................................
5. The SS Trading in Human Lives .......................................................
a. The First Meetings of the Rescue Committee .............................
b. The Columbus Street Camp ........................................................
c. The SS Buyout Proposal Mediated by Joel Brand .....................
d. Zionist Youths ..............................................................................
e. The Ordeals of the “Emissary of the Dead” ...............................
f. Some Conclusions ........................................................................
6. The “Sample Train” ...........................................................................
a. Departure .....................................................................................
b. The Swiss Reception ....................................................................
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7. Another Chapter in Human Trade; Forced Labor for the SS ..........
a. Provincial Jews Sheltered in Strasshof .........................................
b. Camp Life in Greater Vienna ......................................................
c. Jews from the Great Hungarian Plain in the Region of Gau
Niederdonau ................................................................................
8. More Looting—Daylight Robbery on a Different Plain .....................
a. The Biggest Catch: Ferenc Chorin and the Families of
Financiers and Industrial Magnates .............................................
b. Blackmail and “Buyout” Continue ..............................................
c. Hopes and Doubts—the Prospects of the Negotiations ..............
d. Summer Months in Columbus Street ..........................................
e. More Kidnappings and Arrests ....................................................
9. An Extraordinary Hostage: János Mauthner and the Deputy Chief
of the Gestapo in Vienna ....................................................................
10. In the Lion’s Maw ...............................................................................
a. Those Left behind at the Bergen Camp ......................................
b. December 7; The Second Train to Switzerland .........................
c. The Arrow Cross Terror and the Re-Filling of the Ungarnlager
d. Subsequent Negotiations in Switzerland ......................................
e. The Rescue Committee in Budapest, Winter 1944. ...................
11. Spring 1945 .........................................................................................
a. Jewish “Family Camps,” Late April and Early May 1945 ...........
b. The Fate of the Rescue Committee’s Swiss Charges ..................
12. The Bonds Survive .............................................................................
a. Kasztner, Becher and the Others ................................................
b. The Kasztner Report ...................................................................
c. Kurt Becher, Savior of the Jews ...................................................
d. Kasztner’s Subsequent Activities, the Jerusalem Trial ................
e. Becher’s Single Interview .............................................................
Epilogue .......................................................................................................
1. Operations of the Budapest Relief
and Rescue Committee from 1941 to 1944
From the fall of 1941 on, the persecution of Jews intensified in the countries
surrounding the Kingdom of Hungary. Thousands of refugees fled from sys-
tematic looting, ghettoization and deportation to Hungarian territory. The
Jewish charity organizations in Hungary were faced with a new a challenge.
They were compelled to broaden the scope of their activities in order to pro-
vide assistance to the forlorn, defenseless multitudes.
The territorial revisions and the re-expansion of the country that took place
between 1938 and 1941 brought a palpable strengthening in the Hungarian
Zionist movement. (With hardly more than 4,000–5,000 members, Zionism
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had little influence over the lives of Hungarian Jews before 1938.) The grow-
ing popularity of Zionism was also due to the effect of a several rounds of anti-
Jewish legislation and widespread, institutionalized discrimination directed
against Hungarian Jews.
In Budapest and several provincial towns, Jews, both young and old, began
to take notice of the Zionists, whose role, until that time, had been marginal in
Hungarian Jewish society. Heavily pressed, indeed, driven against the wall,
Hungarian Jews began to realize that the traditional spirit of Hungarian–Jewish
coexistence was a thing of the past, and that rapid “Magyarization” was no
longer a viable alternative. “Official” Hungarian Jewry had failed to stand its
ground, adopting a wait-and-see attitude that merely aggravated the plight of all
Jews. Zionism, by contrast, confronted Hungarian Jews with alternate patterns
of identification and strategies, essentially offering them the prospect of deliv-
erance.
1 Atilla Novák, Átmenetben. A cionista mozgalom négy éve Magyarországon [In Transition.
Four Years in the Hungarian Zionist Movement] (Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 2000), p. 17. Zionist-
inspired emigration was continually low. For example, only 306 Jews emigrated from Hungary in
1931; in 1936 this number increased to 416, then fell again to a mere 318 in 1941.
2 TRADING IN LIVES?
Zionist leaders perceived correctly that the rising tide of National Socialism,
the change of climate brought upon by the war, the ceaseless hate-mongering,
and the hysterical upsurge of anti-Semitism were strengthening the appeal of
their ideas. Legalized discrimination, existential insecurity and impoverish-
ment, and the humiliating experience of enlistment of Jewish men into un-
armed forced labor battalions in the Hungarian Army afflicted hundreds of
thousands of Hungarian Jews. These phenomena were evidence of a profound
change in the status of Hungarian Jewry, one that brought it closer to the fre-
quently maligned Hungarian Zionist movement which had taken root in re-
sponse to social ostracism and offered an alternative to the assimilationist ten-
ets of the Jewish religious establishment.
The upswing in the movement was, if anything, dramatic, though this did
not entail unity. The movement continued to encompass several groups es-
pousing diverse principles. Still, compared to the earlier state of affairs, the
sheer fact that representatives of the barely tolerated, only semi-legal Zionist
groups at least managed to establish a joint framework for future cooperation
marked true progress.
Cooperation between Zionists in Northern Transylvania and the Budapest
Relief and Rescue Committee (Va’adat ha-Ezra ve-ha-Hatzala be-Budapest,
known as the Va’ada) took years to develop. Operating as the Hungarian arm
of the Palestine-based Va’adat Ezra ve-ha Hatzala, the Budapest team was a
dynamic group, highly committed to Zionism. Its leaders were Ottó Komoly,
an engineer and the president of the Hungarian Zionist Association (Magyar
Cionista Szövetség, or MCSz), legalized in 1927, and Dr. Rezső Kasztner, a
journalist from Kolozsvár (Cluj). Working with them at various times were Joel
Brand and his wife Hansi, Sámuel Springmann, Sándor (Shalom) Offenbach,
András Bliss, Dr. Miklós (Moshe) Schweiziger, Ernő (Tzvi) Szilágyi from the
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Pro Palestine League of Hungarian Jews and others.
Members of the Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee (to be referred to
from now on as the Rescue Committee) represented various trends within the
Zionist movement. Komoly was affiliated to the General Zionists, Kasztner
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and Joel Brand to the Ichud, while Miklós (Moshe) Krausz, who later worked
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with them, was a member of the Mizrachi.
2 This organization was founded with the aim of recruiting prominent Jews to the cause of
promoting Zionism in Hungary.
3 A union of the Zionist groups Hanoar Hatzioni, Dror, and Maccabi Hatzair.
4 This portmanteau was the name of an organization working to realize Zionist ideals based
on religious ideals. From 1934, Krausz served as an agent for the immigration division of the
1. OPERATIONS OF THE BUDAPEST RELIEF AND RESCUE COMMITTEE 3
Following the German occupation of Hungary, Zionist activity in Budapest
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crystallized around the Budapest Palestine Office (Palamt), led by Krausz,
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and the Chalutz Movement. These groups were forced to deal with the most
pressing issues of the day: emigration to Palestine (aliyah in Hebrew), organiza-
tion of Jewish self-defense and support of refugees. Necessity increasingly dic-
tated the utilization of both legal and illegal methods of dealing with these mat-
ters.
The head of the Rescue Committee, the construction engineer Ottó Ko-
moly, was born in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in 1892. He had been raised in a Zionist
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spirit since his early youth. He began his work with the Hungarian Zionist
Association following World War I as an editor for Zsidó Szemle [Jewish Re-
view]. In 1940, he became president of the League. His study “The Zionist
View of Life” as well as a series of well-argued appeals he submitted to the
government probably contributed to the Kállay cabinet’s partial authorization
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of Zionist activity in Hungary in 1943. At this time, Komoly was linked closely
to parties, politicians and journalists working to promote democratic political
transformation and the interests of the “other Hungary.” He considered
prompt withdrawal from the war to be in Hungary’s national interest, utilizing
the Zionist News Service to advocate this position.
Komoly took a deep interest in issues regarding the future of Hungarian
Jewry and the creation of a Jewish homeland. On several occasions he ex-
changed views with Hungarian diplomats, including Aladár Szegedy-Maszák,
the head of the political department of the Foreign Ministry, about the treat-
ment of the “Jewish problem.” Szegedy-Maszák was a highly respected liberal
politician who espoused bourgeois ideals.
—————
Hungarian branch of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Working with him at the agency was
fellow Mizrachist Mihály Salamon, who became president of the Hungarian Zionist Association
following the war.
5 This office administered emigration to Palestine, disseminated the so-called Zertifikat is-
sued by the British government and distributed with assistance from the Jewish Agency
(Sochnut). Between World War I and 1938, between 200 and 300 Jews emigrated annually from
Hungary to Palestine, mainly through legal channels.
6 Chalutzim was a term used to designate young, prospective immigrants who had been
trained to do agricultural work in Palestine. There were approximately 500 such immigrants in
Hungary between 1942 and 1944—eighty came from the B’naiAkiba (religious), thirty from the
Betar (Revisionist), seventy from the Dror Habonim (Social Democratic), forty from the Ichud
(also Social Democratic) as ell as ninety from the Maccabi Hatzair (Socialist) organizations.
7 The son of the Zionist David Kohen translated Theodore Herzl’s seminal work, Altneu-
land, into Hungarian in 1916.
8 Dr. Alexander Emed, A magyarországi cionista mozgalom története [History of the Hun-
garian Zionist Movement], (Bethlen Téri Oneg Sábbát Klub, n.a.), p. 102.
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