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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