Axis nations reluctance to participate in the holocaust ?

[Dan]

Dan -- When you said:

David, aren't you presupposing German interest in killing Jews as opposed to using them as slave labor? Admittedly a difference perhaps of nuance, but a difference all the same. I think the concern was for industrial cannon fodder rather than an overwhelming obsession to destroy the Jewish race.

are you talking about the Hitler-Horthy exchanges about the Hungarian Jews at the Klessheim conference in 1943, or about the pressure the German Foreign Office generally put on all their allies to deport their Jewish citizens into Nazi custody?

As I understand this, there were 400,000 of them. Some were killed, some were used as labor. No one, at least as I understand it, has any idea at all how many of each there were.

[Apocalypse_Now]

Dan wrote:

What happened to them?

Jewish Fate in Hungary
by László Varga

Randolph L. Braham. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. 1,260 pp.


The annihilation of Jewry in Hungary deserves a special chapter in the contemporary tragedy of the European Jews. The incomprehensible destruction took place in a few brief months, with almost stormy speed. This is the reason why the precise number of victims has never been established. Prior to the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, almost 60,000 Jews perished as the consequence of individual deportations and local pogroms, and primarily as the result of forced-labor military service. According to postwar statistics, 618,000 Jews were killed after the occupation began. From this, the liquidation of half a million Jews can be unambiguously confirmed, while the fate of 150,000 remains unclear, though the majority of them were also victims of the Holocaust.

Thus, recent estimations do not contradict the 1946 statistics concerning the order of magnitude of the destruction, and one can agree with Professor Braham's decision not to devote major attention to the question of the "accurate" number of victims but to the process of the Holocaust itself. His work is characterized by consistent precision, but he is aware, as the preeminent expert on this issue, that one must get beyond the increasingly senseless dispute over figures.

Braham is also aware that the tragedy of the Jews in Hungary did not start with the German occupation. Although the backbone of his work is naturally the era that followed the occupation, his presentation of the subject starts historically, with the evolution of the modern Jewish question in Hungary. It is difficult to comprehend, not only emotionally, but also scientifically, why and how the fate of the Jews was characterized by such extreme changes throughout a period of nearly a century prior to the liquidation. A whole generation lived through a golden age before the turn of the century, then through an extremely antisernitic era after World War I, and then, directly before the Holocaust, experienced once again a kind of safe and protected island for Jews in Hungary.........

Does not sound like "industrial cannon fodder" to me.

Can you show anything to refute this, other then revisionist propaganda?

[Dan]

From this, the liquidation of half a million Jews can be unambiguously confirmed

,

You mock me as a Revisionist, but to me you are just a stupid child with no brains. How about a list of those half million names? Or do you not understand the meaning of unambiguously confirmed? Perhaps you think that pulling a figure out of you ass makes it unambiguous? Tell me who built the underground V2 factories or the synthetic fuel production plants?

[Apocalypse_Now]

You mock me as a Revisionist, but to me you are just a stupid child with no brains. How about a list of those half million names? Or do you not understand the meaning of unambiguously confirmed? Perhaps you think that pulling a figure out of you ass makes it unambiguous? Tell me who built the underground V2 factories or the synthetic fuel production plants?

Ok, I'm not sure why you have to resort to name calling? (Who is the child? ) So you are not a Revisionist ? Not what I read and hear about you....

...but, I shall be civil.

Can you show me that Hungarian Jew's built V2 factories or the synthetic fuel production plants? As far as I know the inmates of Buchenwald were used, can you prove these inmates were Hungarian?

The Mittelwerke / Mittelbau / Camp Dora
Mittelbau GmbH - Mittelbau KZ
Written by Paul Grigorieff

The name Mittelbau refers to a complex of factories, storage depots, facilities and prisoner camps, some underground, that were used from August, 1943 until April, 1945 to manufacture and test the V2 rocket near Nordhausen in central Germany.

The main V2 assembly line was located in an underground factory called Mittelwerk that was excavated beneath Kohnstein Mountain, about 2 km southwest of the town of Neidersachswerfen. The Dora concentration camp (later called Mittelbau KZ), where most of the Mittelwerk workers were imprisoned, was located on the southwest edge of the Kohnstein, near the southern portals of Mittelwerk tunnels A and B.

This chapter explains the history of the Mittelbau complex, the organization of the underground Mittelwerk V2 assembly plant, and how the V2 assembly line functioned. It also describes the discovery of the plant by the Americans and their race to remove V2 parts, people, and papers to the United States.

Immediately after the war, while America was building its own rocket program on the foundations of German technology, the horrible reality of slave labor used during V2 production was concealed from the public. Only in the past 10 years, as prisoners’ histories have been published, have we begun to understand more.

Estimates put the number of prisoners used by the Germans for V2 production at - Mittelbau at more than 60000. Over 25000 of these were killed either by beatings, starvation, and sickness in the complex, or by the brutal efforts of the SS to relocate them before the Americans arrived in April, 1945. We now know that many of the most shocking “concentration camp pictures” that are seared into our common consciousness from this era were taken by U.S. troops as they entered the Mittelbau camps.

Many of us are impressed by the technical achievement of building so many complex new weapons so rapidly under such harsh conditions. As we mull over this achievement, however, we must never forget the scope of the human sacrifice made for each piece and part disgorged from these workshops.

The History of the Complex
In early December, 1942, Albert Speer, German Armaments Minister, set up the “A4 Special Committee”, headed by Gerhard Degenkolb, a fanatical Nazi. As a Director of the DEMAG company, Degenkolb had previously succeeded in a remarkably “efficient” reorganization of German production of railroad locomotives. During 1943, Degenkolb pushed to have production of the V2 (A4) rocket organized more along the industrial model, and taken out from under the control of Army Ordinance (Wa Pruf 11), with its bureaucratic procedures and slow moving organization. Walter Dornberger, chief of Wa Pruf 11, resented and resisted Degenkolb’s attempt to take over V2 production.

But manpower was in very short supply. Therefore, in April, 1943, Arthur Rudolph, the Chief Production Engineer of the Peenemünde V2 assembly effort and a pre-war colleague of von Braun, toured the Heinkel aircraft plant north of Berlin, and returned enthused about the possibility of using concentration camp labor (mostly Russians, Poles, and French) for production of the V2. These concentration camp inmates were referred to as “detainees” (Haftlinge) and would supplement the “guest workers” who had already been recruited (and were paid small amounts of wages) by the Germans.

So in June, 1943, Peenemünde requested some 1400 detainees from the SS concentration camps, and initially set the maximum number of these workers 2500. An assembly line was set up at Peenemünde on the lower floor of Building F1. This line, which opened on July 16th, was the precursor of the rail-borne horizontal transport type of assembly later used at Mittelwerk.

V2 parts, however, were never made fully interchangeable. Combustion chambers, fuel pumps, and many valves had to be matched up to each other and specifically tested and regulated for each missile. This meant that each V2s power plant had to be test-fired prior to final assembly. Wernher Von Braun was in charge of these so-called “Final Acceptance” tests.

On August 4, 1943, Peenemünde made the decision that V2 production would be done mostly by concentration camp labor, in a ratio reported to have been set at 10 to 15 detainees to every German worker. The SS, which ran the camps, thus became the supplier and organizer of V2 production manpower. A small concentration camp was in fact located in the basement of Building F1 at the base.

Then on August 17-18, 1943 came the massive Allied air raid on Peenemünde. This raid and those that followed forced the Germans to look for “hardened” underground production locations for the V2, and for many other key weapons production projects as well.

In a meeting on August 26, 1943, a series of pre-existing tunnels under Kohnstein Mountain near Nordhausen were chosen for the new plant, to become known as Mittelwerk. Mittelwerk was incorporated as a private company on September 24, 1943, and received a contract for the production of 12000 V2s (A4s). After meeting with Hitler on August 18th, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler had informed Armaments Minister Speer that he was personally taking over V2 production and placing SS Brigadier General Hans Kammler in charge of the Mittelbau complex. It was Kammler who had been in charge of building of the extermination camps and gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maidenek, and Belzec.

The tunnel system at Mittelwerk had been started back in 1934 by another government run company (Wifo) that mined gypsum there. Later, these tunnels had been used as a storage facility for oil, gasoline, and poison gas. In October, 1940, the Armaments Ministry in Berlin approved expansion of the Wifo site, creating two parallel S-shaped tunnels, connected at regular intervals by cross tunnels resembling the rungs of a ladder. By late 1943, 46 cross tunnels existed, and each of the main tunnels (called “A” and “B”) was wide enough to permit twin regular gauge railroad tracks to run through them.



On August 28, 1943, two days after the choice of Mittelwerk, the SS delivered the first truckloads of prisoners from the concentration camp at Buchenwald to begin the heavy labor of expanding and completing of the Wifo tunnel system. Dora was the name given to the Buchenwald sub camp (which became independent about November 1st as “KZ Mittelbau”) that was set up within the tunnels for the laborers. Later, from the spring of 1944, Dora was transformed into a more traditional camp, with 58 barracks buildings surrounded by barbed wire being set up about a quarter mile west of the south entrance to Tunnel B. Camp construction was not completed until October, 1944.

It was during October, November, and December of 1943 that the most physically punishing work was done by the Dora prisoners, who struggled under terrible, inhuman conditions to enlarge and fit out the Mittelwerk tunnels. Prisoners drilled and blasted away thousands of tons of rock. They built rickety, temporary narrow gauge tracks to support the multi-ton loads of rock that were extracted from the caves. If the “skips” or small rail cars, full of rock fell off these tracks (and this happened frequently), prisoners were kicked, whipped, and beaten until they could re-rail and reload the cars.

The prisoners were made to eat and sleep within the tunnels they were digging. Thousands of workers were crammed into stinking, lice infested bunks stacked four high in the first few south side cross tunnels at the mouth of Tunnel “A”, in an atmosphere thick with gypsum dust and fumes from the blasting work, which continued 24 hours a day. Prisoners had no running water or sanitary facilities. Dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis, and starvation were constant causes of suffering and death for these unfortunate people.

Detainees worked atop 30 foot scaffolds, using picks to enlarge the tunnels. From time to time, a prisoner would become too weak to continue, fall to his death from the scaffolding, and be replaced by another. Trucks bearing piles of prisoner corpses left every other day for the crematorium ovens at Buchenwald. All of the manufacturing equipment from Peenemünde had to be installed in the tunnels. This was done by hand by prisoner workers, using hand-carts, block and tackle, huge skids pulled by teams of prisoners, and the temporary narrow gauge rail lines.

Related Projects
A large network of small concentration camps (said to number more than 40) subsidiary to Dora and of smaller parts depots and related workshops also sprang up around Nordhausen. German war production planners had conceived of this area as the “Silicon Valley” of its time for hi-tech weapons development. Fortunately for the Allies, most of these production efforts never got past the site construction stage (in which thousands of prisoner construction workers lost their lives). The V2 and the V1 were two of the few production efforts that became operational.

Late in 1943, prisoner labor was used to carve the Lehesten facility, "Vorwerk Mitte", out of a quarry site about 128 km. southeast of Mittelwerk. This facility was to be used for final test-firing and calibration of V2 engines, pumps, and valves. There was also a similar facility located in Zipf, Austria -called "Vorwerk Sued". The engines tested in the Vorwerk Mitte, were assembled in the Mittelwerk. The ones in Vorwerk Sued, were assembled in the Rax Werke in Wiener-Neustadt, Austria.

As mentioned above, such calibration was an essential part of the Mittelwerk production process, Lehesten had its own small concentration camp, called Laura, located in the village of Schmiedebach. Laura was also a sub camp of Buchenwald. (Two similar test stands also continued to operate at Peenemünde. Von Braun, who later denied knowledge of any prisoner mis-treatment in order to enter the U.S., is known to have visited both Mittelwerk and the Lehesten site on numerous occasions. He also visited Buchenwald and personally selected prisoners for the Mittelwerk.

The Mittelbau complex sheltered other weapons production projects as well. One, called the Nordwerk, was located in the same tunnel system as the Mittelwerk, but was used for the manufacture of Junkers aircraft engines. The Nordwerk used the northern entrances to Tunnels A and B, occupied the cross tunnels up through Hall 20, and did not use concentration camp labor. A small production line for the V1 flying bomb, later code named Mittelwerk II, occupied the southern tip of Tunnel A (the first four Halls and the entryway), after these had been vacated as prisoner sleeping quarters.

Project B12, alias Kaolin, was a Kohnstein tunneling project west of the Mittelwerk tunnels, intended to create an even larger underground factory (160000 sq. meters vs. 125000 for Mittelwerk). This plan for this project foresaw Tunnels C-1, C-2, D-1, and D-2, parallel to Mittelwerk’s A and B, being used for an aircraft factory.

Project B11, alias Zinnstein, was situated on the eastern side of Mittelwerk. It had two galleries connecting with Mittelwerk, at the level of Halls 17 and 43. A checkerboard pattern of underground chambers was planned, with 80000 sq. meters of usable space. Three factories were to occupy this space: Kuckuck for synthetic fuel production (coal liquefaction), Eber for liquid oxygen production, and Schildkrote for aircraft manufacture.

A final project was called B3, or Anhydrite, in the area west of Himmelberg, near Bischofferrode. This project included a checkerboard pattern of 28 east west tunnels connected by perpendicular halls. Its 130000 sq. meters were to house a factory named Hydra—another aircraft factory. It is suggested this plant was intended to handle production of the R4M Orkan, the Taifun, and the Hs-117 missiles, as well as the X4 and X7 wire-guided missiles.

Since the Dora camp could not hold all the prisoner labor needed for all these new projects, Kammler decided, in March, 1944, to create two new concentration camps: Harzungen, on the east side of the project area, and Ellrich, next to the train station in that small village west of the Mittelbau. These two camps had a higher death rate among their inmates than did Dora.

The Human Cost
The number of prisoner workers at Dora was about 7000 in October, 1943 and rose to over 12000 in January, 1944. By February, 1945 there more than 19000 inmates were reported in the camp. As other Mittelbau construction projects accelerated, the prisoner population of Dora sub camps swelled as well, going from some 15000 in September, 1944 to over 20000 in March, 1945.


Reporting from the chillingly detailed records kept by the SS, Andre Sellier gives us more precise numbers of detainees and worker deaths. Between the end of August, 1943 and the beginning of April, 1944, he says, 17535 detainees arrived at Dora.
Since the reported level of prisoner manpower at the beginning of April was only 11653, ; 5882 persons had disappeared over these seven months. Of these, 2882 are known to have died on the job and been incinerated in the ovens at Buchenwald (the SS did not construct a separate crematorium at Dora until later), and some 3000 had left Dora on “transports” to other camps. Such “transported” workers were usually too sick to attend the roll calls for work detail and were dying a slow death. The “transport” was usually equivalent to a death sentence.

Images de Dora
Le Maner & Sellier

The Mittelwerk V2 factory produced some 4575 V2s between August, 1944 and March, 1945—the period in which these rockets were headed for firing batteries (as opposed, earlier on, to development testing).

It is also estimated that of the 60000+ detainees employed in and around the Mittelbau complex over a 20 month period, 26500 did not survive. (Estimates of the total number of prisoners in the complex at range between 40000 and 64000). Sellier attributes 15500 of these deaths to the camps or to “transports”, and 11000 to the period in April, 1945 when the camps were evacuated by the SS in the face of the American advance. This evacuation was especially barbaric. The SS shot prisoners, herded them into barns and burned them alive, left them to die if they were too sick to walk, or made them part of walking or rail convoys headed to other concentration camps. (It was at this time that the Boelcke Kaserne, a barracks in Nordhausen later to be discovered by U.S. troops, became an SS dumping ground for prisoners from several camps who were too sick to transport.

It is a little known truth that more people died manufacturing the V2 than were killed by its blast. Each operational V2 to come off the Mittelwerk line consumed about six human lives.

Regarding the destination of Hungarian Jews:

The history of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry encompasses the Jewish population of the enlarged state of Hungary. In 1930, 444,567 Jews had lived in Hungary within the boundaries fixed in 1920. An additional 78,000 Jews came under Hungarian rule when southern Slovakia was annexed by Hungary (Nov. 2, 1938). The 72,000 Jews who lived in the Czechoslovak province of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia came under Hungarian jurisdiction when Hungary moved in on March 15–16, 1939. The Jewish population of the formerly Rumanian northern Transylvania (awarded to Hungary on Aug. 30, 1940) numbered 149,000. According to the Jan. 31, 1941, census out of a total population of 14,683,323 the Jews numbered 725,007 (184,453 of them in Budapest). In April 1941 there were about 20,000 Jews in the former Yugoslav territory, occupied in the course of joint German-Hungarian military operations.

In conformity with the "Third Jewish Law" (1941), which defined the term "Jew" on more radical racial principles, 58,320 persons not belonging to the Jewish faith were considered Jewish. Thus the total number of persons officially registered as Jews in mid-1941 was over 803,000. According to a generally accepted estimate, the actual number of Christians of Jewish origin exceeded by far the officially recorded 58,320. Consequently, the total number of persons liable to racial discrimination in mid-1941 may be put at a minimum of 850,000.

The Third Jewish Law, based on the Nuremberg laws, prohibited intermarriage. By mid-1941 the anti-Jewish measures had placed Hungarian Jewry in a most disadvantageous position in every sphere of political, economic, cultural, and social life. The government Party of Hungarian Life pursued a pro-Nazi, antisemitic policy, while various national-socialist groupings and the Arrow-Cross Party exerted increasing pressure upon the government to stiffen radically its anti-Jewish policy.

The decimation of the Jewish population began in the fall of 1940, shortly after the incorporation of northern Transylvania, from where thousands of Jews whose citizenship was in question were forcibly expelled, mainly to Rumania. The first large-scale loss of life among Hungarian Jewry occurred in July 1941, when the Office for Aliens' Control expelled to German-held Galicia about 20,000 Jews, whose Hungarian citizenship was in doubt (mostly inhabitants of the areas annexed from Czechoslovakia), as well as refugees from neighboring countries. They were mostly concentrated in Kamenets-Podolski and murdered in the autumn of 1941 by S.S. men, assisted by Hungarian troops. The second great loss occurred in January 1942, when 1,000 Jews were massacred by gendarmes and soldiers in Becska, mainly in Novi-Sad. In May 1940, special forced labor units had already been set up for enlisting Jews, who were excluded from army service. When Hungary joined the war against the Soviet Union, the labor units were sent with the troops. At that time there were 10 to 12 labor battalions comprising about 14,000 men, but later the number of Jews on the eastern front reached 50,000. After the great breakthrough of the advancing Soviet army near the River Don (January 1943) the Second Hungarian Army disintegrated and fled in panic. It is estimated that of the 50,000 Jews, 40,000–43,000 died during the retreat.

The position of the labor units which remained in Hungary was much better, especially when on March 10, 1942, the extreme antisemitic prime minister was succeeded by the moderate, conservative Miklus Kellay. Nevertheless, that month Kellay announced the draft law for expropriation of Jewish property and envisaged clearing the countryside of Jews. He successively announced measures to be taken to eliminate Jews from economic and cultural life. In April 1942 Kellay pledged the "resettlement" of 800,000 Jews—as a "final solution of the Jewish question," pointing out, however, that this could be implemented only after the war. Presumably, these extreme anti-Jewish plans were meant to curry favor with the Germans, but in fact Kellay, in an agreement with the regent Nicolas Horthy, refrained from drastic steps and resisted pressure from the German government. Dissatisfied with Kellay's halfhearted measures, Germany exerted greater pressure upon Hungary from October 1942 for legislation for the complete elimination of the Jews from economic and cultural life, for compulsory wearing of the yellow badge, and finally, their evacuation to the east. Similar interventions went on early in 1943. The Kellay government rejected the German requests for deportation mainly on economic grounds, arguing that deportation would ruin Hungary's economy and would harm Germany as well.

In April 1943 Hitler conferred with Horthy and condemned Hungary's handling of the "Jewish question" as irresolute and ineffective. Again the Hungarians rejected the German demands for the deportations, pointing out the necessity of waiting for favorable circumstances. By 1943 the Kellay government completed the program of eliminating the Jews from public and cultural life, while a numerous clauses was applied in economic life to restrict the position of the Jews according to their percentage in the total population (about 6%). The Jewish agricultural holdings were almost entirely liquidated, while the "race-protective" legislation segregated Jews from Hungarian society. However, in the course of 1943 and beginning of 1944 the Kellay government secretly conferred with the Western Allies in preparation for Hungary's extrication from the war. Under these circumstances the Nazi-style handling of the "Jewish question" hardly suited the country's interests. In December 1943, military court procedure was initiated against the criminals involved in the anti-Serbian and anti-Jewish massacres in Becska (January 1942). The Germans regarded the prosecution of the murderers of Jews as an attempt to gain footing with the Jews and the Allies, and the incident contributed to aggravate the tension between Berlin and Budapest.

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German Occupation
By the beginning of March 1944 the occupation of Hungary was decided upon in Berlin. One of the German arguments for this step was the alleged sabotage committed by the Hungarian government against the "final solution of the Jewish question." Kellay's rejection of the German demands for deportation was considered as evidence of Hungary's determination to join forces with the Western Allies. Operation Margaret, that is, the occupation of Hungary, took place on March 19, 1944. By the time of the German occupation, close to 63,000 Jews (8% of the Jewish population) had already fallen victim to the persecution. Prior to the occupation, on March 12, 1944, Adolf Eichmann, at the head of S.S. officers of the R.S.H.A. (Reich Security Main Office) began preparations in Mauthausen, Austria, for setting up the Sondereinsatzkommando (Special Task Force) destined to direct the liquidation of Hungarian Jewry. Most of the Sonderkommando members, among them Hermann Krumey and Dieter Wisliceny, arrived in Budapest on the day of the occupation, while Eichmann arrived on March 21. On the German side special responsibility for Jewish affairs was assigned to Edmund Veesenmayer, the newly appointed minister and Reich plenipotentiary, and to Otto Winkelmann, higher S.S. and police leader and Himmler's representative in Hungary.

On March 22 a new government was set up under the premiership of the former Hungarian minister in Berlin. The government consisted of extreme pro-Nazi elements, willing collaborators with Germany in the accomplishment of the "Final Solution." The new regime's minister of the interior Andor Jaross was in charge of Jewish affairs; however, actual execution of the anti-Jewish measures was directed by Laszlo Endre and Laszlo Baky, state secretaries of the Ministry of the Interior. Immediately after the entry of German troops into Hungary, hundreds of prominent Jews were arrested in Budapest and several other cities. Over 3,000 were detained by the end of March, increasing to 8,000 by mid-April. A great number of provincial Jews were rounded up, mainly at the Budapest railway stations, on the very evening of the occupation. They were interned at Kistarcsa and other concentration camps.

The Jewish organizations were dissolved throughout the country, and on March 20 a Jewish council with eight members was set up in Budapest upon orders from the Germans, to act as the head of the Jewish communities. The Germans aimed at manipulating this authorized Jewish body to execute their measures without resistance and avoid an atmosphere of panic. By the end of March, similar Jewish councils were constituted in several larger provincial towns. However, unlike the Budapest Jewish Council, their activity was minimal and their existence short-lived. From the first days of the occupation, Eichmann and his collaborators endeavored to persuade the members of the central Jewish council that deportations were not intended and that Hungarian Jewry would not undergo brutal treatment. They assured them that no harm would befall the Jews, on condition that they obediently carry out the directives regarding their segregation and their new economic status.

The "Provisional Executive Committee of the Jewish Federation of Hungary," appointed by the Hungarian government on May 6, likewise aimed at ensuring complete observance of the anti-Jewish directives. By the time this body was set up, the Jews of the provinces had already been concentrated in ghettos, and Jewish community life had ceased to exist, so that the "Executive Committee" was a mere fiction, devised with the additional aim of lending a semblance of legality to the government's measures. Another task imposed on the Jewish bodies established after the occupation was to assure the complete and unhindered transfer of Jewish assets and valuables. Simultaneously with the German actions, the government enacted intensive anti-Jewish legislation. Numerous anti-Jewish decrees aimed at the total exclusion of Jews from economic, cultural, and public life. Jews were dismissed from all public services and excluded from the professions; their businesses were closed down and any assets over 3,000 penge (about $300) confiscated, as well as their cars, bicycles, radios, and telephones.

On March 31, 1944, Jews were ordered to wear the yellow badge. Actually, in a few places (e.g., Munkacs), the local authorities issued this order earlier. On April 7, the decision was taken to concentrate the Jews in ghettos and afterwards to deport them. The ghettoization process was entrusted to the Hungarian gendarmerie in collaboration with the local administration. By mid-April an agreement was reached between the Hungarian government and the Germans stipulating the delivery of 100,000 able-bodied Jews to German factories in the course of April and May. By the end of April the Germans modified this plan by dismissing any criteria on ability to work and demanded the deportation of the entire Jewish population to concentration camps in the eastern territories. However, at the end of April, several groups of able-bodied Jews were transported from the outskirts of Budapest to Germany (1,800 persons on April 28, and a smaller group from the Topolya concentration camp on April 30).


Ghettoization and Deportation

The ghettoization was started in the provinces. The Jews of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia were evacuated to ghettos on April 16–19; up to April 23, about 150,000 Jews were concentrated on the northeastern areas of Hungary, pending their deportation to Auschwitz, which started on May 15, with daily transports of 2,000–3,000. At the same time as the Carpatho-Ruthenian action, some ghettos were set up sporadically in different parts of the country, arbitrarily initiated by local authorities (e.g., the Nagykanizsa Jews were forced into a ghetto on April 19; a number of the Jews of the Veszprem county were crammed into improvised concentration camps as early as the last days of March). North Transylvanian Jewry was evacuated to ghettos in the first days of May, when the process of ghettoization had already been concluded in northeastern Hungary. The ghettoization in the rest of the country, except for the capital, was completed simultaneously. The Jews were driven out of their homes in the night, allowed to pack only a minimal supply of food and some strictly necessary personal belongings, and then assembled at temporary collection points. The provisional ghettos were set up in school buildings, synagogues, or factories outside the towns. In the large Jewish population centers, ghettos were established in the vicinity of the towns, mainly in brickyards, barracks, or out in the open.

Ghettoization was immediately followed by an inventory of the movable property and the sealing of the houses that had belonged to Jews. The Jews were permitted to add a few items of food and clothing to their scanty baggage during the inventory, which in most cases was accompanied by gendarme brutality and looting by the civilian auxiliary personnel. In this first phase of the ghettoization, the Jews in the villages were evacuated to temporary ghettos (collection points) set up exclusively in, or outside towns (from two to four collection ghettos per county). The second phase consisted of the evacuation from the collection ghettos to the larger, central ghettos.

About 8,000 detainees were interned in a number of concentration camps (e.g., Kistarcsa, Sarvar). The inmates were partly political prisoners and partly Jews from the provinces rounded up in Budapest. They also faced deportation along with the Jews of the ghettos. The living conditions of over 400,000 Jews forced into makeshift ghettos were characterized by overcrowding and lack of elementary hygienic facilities. Some of the inmates had no roof over their heads, and some ghettos were erected entirely outdoors. During the short period that ghettos existed in the provinces, inhuman conditions and torture claimed a number of victims and there were also numerous cases of suicide. When the next phase of the deportation began, the majority of the Jewish population was already in a state of physical and mental exhaustion.

The deportations, which started on May 14, were jointly organized by the Hungarian and the German authorities; but the Hungarian government was solely in charge of the Jews' transportation up to the northern border. Between May 14–15 and June 7, about 290,000 persons were evacuated from Zone I (Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia) and Zone II (northern Transylvania). More than 50,000 Jews of northwestern Hungary and those north of Budapest constituting Zone III were deported by June 30. Zone IV (southern Hungary, east of the Danube), with about 41,000 persons, was also evacuated by the end of June. The last phase was concluded by July 9 with the deportation of more that 55,000 Jews from Zone V, comprising Transdanubia and the outskirts of Budapest. According to Veesenmayer's reports, a total of 437,402 Jews were deported from the five zones. (There appears a slight difference, within a few thousand, between Veesenmayer's figures and other sources.) The bulk of the transports reached Auschwitz via central Slovakia by freight train. Each freight car was to carry about 45 persons, but actually in most cases 80–100 persons were crammed in under hardly bearable conditions. Thousands of sick, elderly people, and babies died in the trains during the three to five days of the journey, due to lack of water and ventilation.

The ghettoization and deportation were not condemned by Hungarian public opinion; instances of overt sympathy and willingness to help and rescue were an exception to the rule. Noteworthy among the few protests was the outspoken plea of Aron Marton, the Catholic bishop of Alba-Iulia. Hungarian authorities expelled him from Kolozsvar (now Cluj) in May 1944 for preaching in defense of the Jews. Attempts were made throughout the country to evade deportation, but only in northern Transylvania were most of them successful, due to its common border with Rumania. The number of Jews who managed to cross the south Transylvanian border and escape to Rumania in April–June may be put at about 2,000–2,500. In addition, a few hundred Jews went into hiding in the countryside, especially in northern Transylvania. Likewise some hundreds of Jews were spared deportation, when exempted by the authorities on grounds of military or other merit. A few thousand provincial Jews managed to evade deportation by either hiding in Budapest, or living in the Budapest ghettos alongside the bulk of the capital's Jewish population. About 95% of the deportees were directed to Auschwitz, where, under camp commander Rudolf Hoess, large-scale preparations had been made for their mass murder. The able-bodied were dispersed to 386 camps throughout the German-held Eastern territories and in the Reich. A small percentage of provincial Jewry managed to evade deportation to Auschwitz. In the framework of a deal made by Kasztner with Eichmann, some transports totaling several thousand (mostly from Debrecen, Szeged, and Szolnok) were directed to Austria. This group was spared selections, families remained united, and the majority survived.

In January 1943 a Zionist relief and rescue committee was formed in Budapest to help Jews in the neighboring countries. Otto Komoly was president of the committee, Kasztner its vice-president, and Joel Brand was responsible for the underground rescue from Poland. Shortly after the German occupation, Kasztner and Brand established contact with Eichmann. Their names, especially that of Kasztner, became linked with the transaction known as Blut fuer Ware ("Blood for Goods"). Brand was sent to Istanbul to mediate between the Allies and the Germans for war materials, particularly trucks, in exchange for Hungarian Jewish lives, a mission doomed to failure. Kasztner went to Switzerland several times to meet with representatives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Jewish Agency, and War Refugee Board in order to work out a rescue plan and arrange its financing by Jewish organizations. Kasztner succeeded in concluding a deal with Eichmann, which resulted in the transport on June 30, 1944, of 1,658 Jews from Hungary to Switzerland at the fixed price of $1,000 per head and two further transports on August 18 and December 6, consisting of 318 and 1,368 Jews respectively, most of whom were of Hungarian and Transylvanian origin. The first group was first detained at Bergen-Belsen, but, as a result of Himmler's intervention, finally reached Switzerland by the end of December.

After deportations from the provinces were completed, preparations went under way for the deportation of Budapest Jews. The timing of the Budapest deportation to follow the completion of the "Entjudung" ("ridding of Jews") of the provinces, was set for technical, economic, and tactical reasons. On June 15, 1944, the Ministry of the Interior ordered the concentration of the Budapest Jews in some 2,000 houses marked with a yellow star and designated to enclose about 220,000 Jews. On June 25 a curfew was ordered for the capital's Jews, who from this date led the life of prisoners in utter destitution. The series of foreign interventions in May increased in June, taking on a more organized form and exerting a favorable influence upon the fate of Budapest Jewry.

In June the Swiss press, and subsequently the press in other neutral states and in the Allied countries, published details about the fate of Hungarian Jewry. The press campaign and the activity of Jewish leaders in Switzerland brought about a series of interventions with Horthy. Among others, the king of Sweden, the Vatican, and the International Red Cross intervened. Among the Hungarian personalities who interceded with Horthy for the cessation of the deportations were Protestant bishops and Prince-Primate Justinianus Seradi. These interventions, along with the concealed intention of the Hungarian government to create favorable conditions in case of a separate armistice treaty with the Allies, brought a halt to further deportations on July 8. At the same time Baky and Endre, the chief Hungarian organizers of the "Entjudung," were dismissed. At the end of July, Himmler also gave his approval to the suspension of the deportations. Meanwhile, as many Jews as possible were successfully placed under the protection of some neutral states (e.g., Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal).

In August a turning point was reached when Horthy and his supporters dismissed the Sztjay government. A new government less servile to the Germans was formed under General Geza Lakatos, with the aim of preparing the armistice with the Allies. Throughout July and August the situation of the Budapest Jews and of the labor conscripts appeared more hopeful. However, on September 4, the Lakatos government declared war against Rumania, which had joined the Allies (August 23). Hungarian units crossed the south Transylvanian border and perpetrated acts of savagery against the Jewish residents in the strip occupied up to the beginning of October. They committed murders at Ludus and Arad, and made preparations for the introduction of anti-Jewish measures in the temporarily occupied territories.

On October 15, the fate of the Budapest Jews took a dramatic turn for the worse. After Horthy's unsuccessful attempt to extricate Hungary from the war, the Germans activated the Arrow-Cross Party of Ferenc Szalasi, which immediately initiated an unprecedented reign of anti-Jewish terror. Eichmann, who had been obliged to leave Hungary on August 24 (after succeeding in deporting the inmates of the Kistarcsa and Sarvar camps, against Horthy's orders), returned to Budapest on October 17 and resumed his activity for deporting the capital's Jews. After October 15, the Budapest Jews were divided into two groups: the majority were enclosed in a central ghetto, while the smaller segment lived in the blocks and quarters "protected" by various neutral states (e.g., by Switzerland and Sweden). As a preliminary step in the deportations, the Jewish male population aged 16 to 60 was ordered out to work in fortifications. In accordance with the deportation plans, two transports of about 50,000 each were to leave in November for Austria and the Reich. However, these plans were thwarted by the military situation on the Eastern front. On November 2, Soviet troops reached the outskirts of Budapest. Under these circumstances the labor battalions were driven toward western Hungary, and on November 8, a group of about 25,000 Budapest Jews were directed on foot toward Hegyeshalom at the Austrian border. They were later followed by other contingents of up to 60,000. A high percentage of persons on this "death march" perished on the way. From the Arrow-Cross seizure of power until the Soviet occupation of Budapest (Jan. 18, 1945), about 98,000 of the capital's Jews lost their lives in further marches and in train transports, as well as through Arrow-Cross extermination squads, starvation, disease, and cases of suicide. Some of the victims were shot and thrown into the Danube.

From the mouth of the beast himself:

EICHMANN'S STORY PART I
By Adolf Eichmann


All told, we succeeded in processing about half a million Jews in Hungary. I once knew the exact number that we shipped to Auschwitz, but today I can only estimate that it was around 350,000 in a period of about four months. But, contrary to legend, the majority of the deportees were not gassed at all but put to work in munitions plants. That is why there are thousands of Jews happily alive today who are included in the statistical totals of the "liquidated." Besides those we sent to Auschwitz, there were thousands and thousands who fled, some secretly, some with our connivance. It was child's play for a Jew to reach relative safety in Rumania if he could muster the few pengö to pay for a railroad ticket or an auto ride to the border. There were also 200,000 Jews left in a huge ghetto when the Russians arrived, and thousands more waiting to emigrate illegally to Palestine or simply hiding out from the Hungarian Gendarmerie.
It is clear from statistics, then, that our operation was not a battle fought with knives, pistols, carbines or poison gas. We used spiritual methods to reach our goal. Let is keep this distinction clear, because physical liquidation is a vulgar, coarse action.

Soon after we arrived in Budapest I met a Dr. Lászlo Endre, then a Budapest country official, who was eager to free Hungary of the Jewish "plague," as he put it. One evening he arranged a little supper for me and my assistant, Captain Deiter Wisliceny. Tow or three other Hungarian officials were present and an orderly in livery who stood at Dr. Endre's side. On this evening the fate of the Jews in Hungary was sealed.

As I got to know Dr. Endre, I noticed his energy and his ardent desire to serve his Hungarian fatherland. He made it clear that in his present position he was unable to do positive work toward solving the Jewish question. So, I suggested to Major General Winkelmann, the ranking SS officer in Hungary, that Dr. Endre be transferred to the Ministry of the Interior. The transfer took several weeks, which I spent conferring with various Jewish officials and learning about Jewish life in Hungary. Then one day Dr. Endre became second secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, and a certain Lászlo Baky became first secretary.

Over the years I had learned through practice which hooks to use to catch which fish, and I was now able to make the operation easy for myself. It was clear to me that I, as a German, could not demand the Jews from the Hungarians. We had had too much trouble with that in Denmark. So I left the entire matter to the Hungarian authorities. Dr. Endre, who became one of the best friends I have had in my life, put out the necessary regulations, and Bakay and his Hungarian Gendarmerie carried them out. Once these two secretaries gave their orders, the Minister of the Interior had to sign them. And so it was no miracle that the first transport trains were soon rolling toward Auschwitz.

The Hungarian police caught the Jews, brought them together and loaded them on the trains under the direct command of Lieut. Colonel Lászlo Ferenczy of the Gendarmerie, who came from an old, landed family. If I may digress for a moment, I remember that he invited me once to his country estate, where we had a little Hungarian snack of slices of bacon and onion stuck on sticks and roasted over a fire. We ate them with wine from the lieutenant colonel's vineyards. I since have read that he was hanged after 1945.

I never watched the Jews being loaded onto the trains. It was a minor matter for which I had no time. Since the job was the responsibility of the Gendarmerie, it would have constituted an interference with the internal affairs of Hungary if I had even observed the loadings. After all, the Hungarian government was still a sovereign power, although it had reached certain agreements with the Reich.

Himmler's instructions were for me to comb the Jews out of eastern Hungary first. The two secretaries gave the appropriate orders to the Hungarian police. I was also instructed to send almost all transports to the railroad station at Auschwitz, and I ordered Captain Novak to draw up a timetable and arrange for the necessary trains from the Reich's transportation ministry. To each train I assigned a squad of Orpos - uniformed German police - from the several hundred assigned to me.

My men had as one of their basic orders that all necessary harshness was to be avoided. This fundamental principle was also accepted by the Hungarian officials. In practice they may not have adhered to it 100%. But that did not and could not interest me, because it was not my responsibility.

Oh, and please refute me with facts, not unfriendly attitude.

[Dan]

Spam. Lots of words may convince the herd, but not thinking people. Let's get a list of unambiguous names, otherwise please admit you just regurgitated a bunch of hearsay.

[Apocalypse_Now]

Spam. Lots of words may convince the herd, but not thinking people. Let's get a list of unambiguous names, otherwise please admit you just regurgitated a bunch of hearsay.

Spam? Hearsay?

So, people who believe documented facts, as opposed to revisionist beliefs are of a lower intellectual capacity then, say, someone like yourself?



Well let's see what you can produce to prove your revisionist view's, instead of avoiding the bullet.

But, given what I have seen from your post's, I will expect more of these short, rude retorts. Perhaps some of our other revisionists can provide facts to support Dan's questions.

[Michael Miller]

I'm just as guilty as anyone else of getting into bitter urination competitions on this and other forums. But I've joined a 12-step group and have come to accept that I have had a problem in that regard.

Seriously, though- can we all just try to get along? Can one day pass on this forum without our descending into a free-for-all of bickering and petty one-upsmanship? We're all here to learn and share knowledge- I hope- so let's try to maintain that spirit.

Thanks for your time. Sorry to steer things away from the topic at hand.

Sincerely,
~ Mike
(posting this just as "Mike", not as "Michael Miller, Moderator")

[xcalibur]

Thanks for the info on Mittelbau-Dora, Heinz. I'd not seen that before.

[Dan]

No need to steer clear from the topic. Let's just get a little proof for a half million Hungarian Jews murdered. That should be pretty simple, as it is unambiguous, no? To VanHoot, it is as clear as the sun shining, to me the jury is out. I tend towards around 100,000 murdered, and the rest put to slave labor. But VanHoot has heard bad things about me, and this is his chance to establish his credentials as a serious layperson.

[Apocalypse_Now]

No need to steer clear from the topic. Let's just get a little proof for a half million Hungarian Jews murdered. That should be pretty simple, as it is unambiguous, no? To VanHoot, it is as clear as the sun shining, to me the jury is out. I tend towards around 100,000 murdered, and the rest put to slave labor. But VanHoot has heard bad things about me, and this is his chance to establish his credentials as a serious layperson.

Is making fun of my name tolerated by this forum?

Anyway, I wont stoop to your level Dan.

You tend towards whatever makes you feel good about the amount of victims, but without some sort of documentation, I will take the word of real and credible historians and schoolers to that of a rude revisionist.

[Dan]

OK, Mr. VanHoon, do you have a list of the half million Hungarian Jews that were murdered? I make this clear to you, since you mocked me, and I want to give you a chance to prove that you are polite.

[Apocalypse_Now]

OK, Mr. VanHoon, do you have a list of the half million Hungarian Jews that were murdered? I make this clear to you, since you mocked me, and I want to give you a chance to prove that you are polite.

I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions.


Yet again he makes fun of my name, hello moderation?

[Michael Miller]

Dan, you've been around as long as me- you know better. Stop making fun of people's names.

Is this a research forum or "Axis Romper Room"?

~ Mike

[Dan]

Dan, you've been around as long as me- you know better. Stop making fun of people's names.

Is this a research forum or "Axis Romper Room"?

~ Mike

Yes, and a new fellow comes and says

No, if you look at the fate of the Hungarian Jew's, one would think the use of them as industrial cannon fodder is absurd.

Then he says it is unambiguous that a half million Hungarian Jews were murdered. I've tried several times now for him to prove it; after all, 400,000 people are quite a few, and all we get is spam. Why not a list of names? The Germans needed labor, just like the French Jews they twisted the arms of the French for. Some were killed, the majority were used for labor, right?

[Michael Miller]

At the moment I'm not very interested in the topic of the thread. My focus now is unkind manipulation of another poster's name. That's about it.

As for "a list of names"- that's not very reasonable, is it? I believe that over 60,000 Germans were killed in the Hamburg firestorms of July 1943, with or without "a list of names".

~ Mike