Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - The Fate of Hungary's Jews
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Eichmann,Hungary,Ruthenia,Sztojay

Archive/File: pub/camps/auschhwitz hungary.01

Last-Modified: 1993/11/02

Holocaust deniers continue to maintain that there was no cohesive or
deliberate Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews, no matter how inclusive or
pervasive the evidence may be. This brief note about the situation in
Hungary once again makes the Nazi plan crystal clear:

"The fate of the Jewish settlement in Hungary -- one of the largest in
Europe -- was a desolating climax to the tragic Holocaust period. Before
Hitler came to power in 1933 there were about 800,000 Jews in Greater
Hungary, 200,000 of them living in Budapest where, despite an endemic
anti-Semitism, they were at the forefront of the cultural, scientific, and
economic life of the country. Hungary was one of the first nations to fall
under Hitler's sway; the obscene speed with which it joined the Nazis was
appropriately termed the `Gaderine rush.' Hitler rewarded Hungary's
collaborating government by permitting it to take over Ruthenia from
Czechoslovakia. Fifty thousand Jews in the annexed areas perished as
Hungarians collaborated with the Nazi occupiers.

Hungary ... chose the wrong side in teaming up with Hitler, whose early
victories had turned to ashes by 1943. The Hungarian government ... sensed
the turn in fortune. As news of the Nazi rout in Russia poured in, he
[Admiral Horthy, head of state] began to twist and turn to move away from
the Axis, and he leaked his intentions to the Allies. One of his several
maneuvers to demonstrate that his loyalty to the Nazis was pliable was to
delay the deportation of the Jews in the annexed provinces and in Hungary
itself.

Hitler ... was not taken in. On March 19, 1944, in Operation Margaret, Nazi
tanks rumbled over the Danube Bridge into Budapest, paratroop units landed
at airports; all strategic military and industrial points were invested,
and a new puppet government under Dome Sztojay was installed. The
deportations were substantially accelerated. Late in April, a month after
Hitler took over Hungary, 4,000 Jews were despatched by train to Auschwitz.
Between mid-May and July 9, 437,000 more followed, until few but the Jews
of Budapest were left. For their destruction, Adolf Eichmann was chosen to
take charge. He too knew that the Nazi cause was lost, but he was
determined that, all else failing, at least the objectives of the Final
Solution would be fulfilled. He had prepared Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and
other death camps in Austria and Poland to receive the one million Jews who
still remained alive after the extermination campaigns in the
Nazi-conquered countries.

Eichmann was proud of his Hungarian assignment and the faith in him that
his Fuehrer had exhibited. Although the Russians were already storming the
outer Hungarian province on their certain way to Budapest, Eichmann exulted
that he would at least fulfill his mission. Only a quarter of Hungary's
nearly one million prewar Jewish population, mainly in Budapest, would live
into the postwar world ..." (Sachar)

                          Work Cited
 
Sachar, Abram L. The Redemption of the Unwanted. New York: St.
Martin's/Marek, 1983.

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