Holocaust saviour dies.

[Wolf]

Incorrect

You wrote, "Besides negotiating with Allen Dulles and Jewish representatives in Switzerland, Himmler was also negotiating with Swedish officials, including Count Bernadotte."

Bernadotte and the white busses appeared at the very end of WWII

Himmler had been trying to initiate secret negotiations with agents of the Western Allies ever since 1943 (secret = behind Hitler's back). Himmler had realised by then that the war could not be won by Germany, and that the only way out was a negotiated peace with the Western Allies, leaving Germany free to fight the Soviet Union to a standstill.

Yeah right, and uncle Heinrich was not such a 'bad guy'...History showed that Himmler was a clown with a big C.

Only Himmler was in a position to organise all of that, although his role remains clouded in secrecy).

Allow me to smile. There is no proof , only a case of what you personally want to believe...

The "Jews for trucks" deal, proposed in May when the deportations from Hungary were only just starting, was also a signal from Himmler to the Western Allies of his readiness to negotiate.

Says who? Are you Himmler? How can you know this?

Another element was the fact that Himmler allowed the Wehrmacht plot against Hitler to proceed, even the Gestapo knew all about it. Himmler took no action against the plotters for a whole day, waiting to see what the outcome was, and only moved when it became clear that the assassination attempt had failed.

Himmler and the Gestapo knew about the plot against Hitler in advance? Is that what you are saying?

There subsequent smaller deportations to Austria, but these were for the purpose of providing a slave-labour force to build fortifications on the border.

...slave labour... the Nazis were out to kill the Jews of Europe. Eichmann was the 'grand organiser' and his intention was to complete the work in Hungary.

There is no evidence that Wallenberg had any influence whatever on the trnasportation of Jews to Austria that occurred from October onward. At most, he played a role in protecting Jews in Budapest from the depredations of the Nyilas gangs.

Sure he did. Frankly it doesn't sound as if you know the first thing about what Wallenberg did in Budapest.

However, the survival of the large Jewish community in Budapest cannot be attributed to the activities of Anger or Wallenberg. In the first place, the Germans had already extracted as many Jews from Hungary as they needed for slave-labour in Germany and Austria. In the second place, Himmler was concerned to preserve a large number of Jews to use as bargaining chips in his negotiations with the Allies.

Wallenberg played a BIG part in saving a substantial number of Jews in Budapest. If Eichmann had gotten his will through, there would have been no surviving Jews. As for Himmler's "half noble" intentions concerning the Jews... if it hadn't been such a horrible subject I would be laughing my head off.

The exact date of Himmler's order to cease the selections for killing in the concentration camps is not known, but according to testimony it was toward the end of October 1944.

More statements for which there is no proof? Another case of what you want to believe maybe...

Any statement that the activities of Anger and Wallenberg somehow "frustrated the Holocaust" is simply nonsense. At best their activities were marginal. They had no real influence on the outcome.

Wow, you really don't get it! Why don't you repeat that less than intelligent statement to some of the people Wallenberg, Anger and the others saved from the Holocaust. It's not like Eichmann and Himmler didn't try..

In my opinion, the most likely explanation is that the SOviets suspected that he was somehow involved in Himmler's negotiations with the Western Allies, particularly as he was trying to use Sweden as a conduit.

That is your opinion, and you are free to have it. The Swedish-Russian group responsible for investigating the Wallenberg case does not agree. They rule out your 'most likely explanation' because there is no evidence whatsoever to support it.

Whether Wallenberg was knowingly involved in such negotiations cannot be known.

Forget it. Wallenberg was sent to Budapest to save Jews, not negotiate a separate peace with Himmler.

But I think that his activity in issuing protective documents to Jews in Budapest, and his procurement of safe houses where they could be kept, was something that was surreptitiously allowed by Himmler in order to keep a substantial number of Jews "on ice" for the purpose of trading them.

You think! Eichmann wanted them dead.

Whatever Wallenberg's real role was, he was surely a very minor player in the convoluted series of events in Hungary between the German occupation in March 1944 and the Soviet conquest early in 1945.

I wonder how minor the people Eichmann could not lay hands on felt Wallenberg was...?

[michael mills]

Wolf,

I suggest you read the book "The Myth of Rescue", by the Jewish historian Bill Rubinstein.

Rubinstein shows that the fate of European Jewry during the Second World War was entirely in German hands. Whether a particular group of Jews was deported or left in place, whether particular groups were selected for killing or for slave labour, was entirely a result of German Government decisions. So-called "rescue" played an utterly minor role.

If a substantial proportion of the Jews of Budapest survived through the winter of 1944-45 until the capture of the city by the Red Army, it was because Himmler no longer had any interest in deporting them. From the autumn of 1944 onward, his concern was to preserve a substantial group of Jews whom he could use for trading. Again I refer you to the book "Jews for Sale" by Yehuda Bauer.

Eichmann had been sent to Hungary by Himmler in order to organise deportations. The deportations he carried out were those he had been ordered to carry out. He fulfilled his orders, no more, no less.

[Wolf]

Rubinstein shows that the fate of European Jewry during the Second World War was entirely in German hands.

And you accept this based on a single source... then it's just a case of selective perception, i.e. you believe what you want to believe...

So-called "rescue" played an utterly minor role.

Compared to the huge numbers of people the Nazi's were able to kill, those rescued were a drop in the ocean... it does in no way deminish the efforts of those who choose to do the right thing. Something you clearly would like to.

If a substantial proportion of the Jews of Budapest survived through the winter of 1944-45 until the capture of the city by the Red Army, it was because Himmler no longer had any interest in deporting them. From the autumn of 1944 onward, his concern was to preserve a substantial group of Jews whom he could use for trading. Again I refer you to the book "Jews for Sale" by Yehuda Bauer.

Sorry but I don't buy it. The Nazi's aimed for the destruction of the European Jews. Heinrich Himmler was up to his ears in this, weather you want to beleive it or not. If Himmler was really concerned for the Jews he could have done plenty. He didn't.

Eichmann had been sent to Hungary by Himmler in order to organise deportations. The deportations he carried out were those he had been ordered to carry out. He fulfilled his orders, no more, no less.

Eichmann failed. He was to make Hungary Judenrein. That he did not manage. Obviously.

[Richard Miller]

According to the Oxford Companion to WWII:

Wallenberg was sent to Budapest at the request of the US War Refuge Board to rescue as many Jews as possible.
The Refuge Board was headed by Henry Morgenthau.

This raises the question of why would the US be so concerned about saving Jews, when there were strict immigration policies in effect that would have prevented them from coming here anyway?

The Companion goes on...
"By the time Wallenberg arrived 437,402 jews had already been deported, leaving only 230,000 in Budapest. Soon after his arrival the deportations stopped."

Since Budapest was under Nazi control, what influence could Wallenberg have excercised to effect this?
Did the US make a deal with the German's through Wallenberg?

Is this why the Soviets were so interested in him?

I was under the impression that the saving of jewish lives would be looked upon with favor by the soviets.

[Roberto]

According to the Oxford Companion to WWII:

Wallenberg was sent to Budapest at the request of the US War Refuge Board to rescue as many Jews as possible.
The Refuge Board was headed by Henry Morgenthau.

This raises the question of why would the US be so concerned about saving Jews, when there were strict immigration policies in effect that would have prevented them from coming here anyway?

The Companion goes on...
"By the time Wallenberg arrived 437,402 jews had already been deported, leaving only 230,000 in Budapest. Soon after his arrival the deportations stopped."

Since Budapest was under Nazi control, what influence could Wallenberg have excercised to effect this?

I don't think he had any. It was the Hungarian government which called a stop to the deportations, IIRC. Wallenberg intervened when, after the coup in October 1944 that replaced Horthy with Szalasi and his Arrow Cross fascists, deportations recommenced (on foot, for by that time railway communications had broken down) and Jews were massacred by Arrow Cross militia.

I was under the impression that the saving of jewish lives would be looked upon with favor by the soviets.

Who or what gave you that idea?

[Roberto]

Many people know - although many of them very much want to forget, and many more want to make others forget - that the Nazis and their European accomplices murdered six million Jews by employing various methods, such as hunger, beating, hanging, shooting, gassing, etc. during the Second World War. Nearly one tenth of the victims were Hungarian Jews, which means approximately 550,000 people. This estimate is based on a sound research of archival documents.

Even the definition is strange: a "Hungarian Jew." A major element constituting the tragedy of the Jews in Hungary was that those people who after their Emancipation (1867) became unreservedly Hungarians regarding their language, customs, clothing, and most importantly, their feelings, were excluded from the community of Hungarian citizens. Horthy Miklós’s regime (1920-1944) carried out their gradual exclusion by a series of Jewish Laws passed after 1938. Those very same Jews, about whom Theodor Herzl stated with resignation at the turn of the century that they became a "dry bough" of Zionism, suddenly realized that their homeland for which they had fought with such devotion during the First World War (more than 10,000 Jews died and thousands upon thousands were wounded and disabled) regarded them as alien enemies. This was the case in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian Jewry, notwithstanding the orthodoxim, regarded themselves as Hungarians following the "faith of Moses."

The reasons why the Hungarian Parliament agreed to pass the severely unlawful First Jewish Law is a subject of a historical debate. According to the traditional opinion it was meant to be a token of "good" intentions towards Hitler’s Reich, the neighbor of which Hungary became after the Anschluss (the Nazi Third Reich annexed Austria in March 1938). It is also possible that the right-wing conservative politicians aimed to take the wind out of the sails of the extreme right. It may well be that the example of the fascist Italy also exercised a considerable influence, since Mussolini in the same year passed anti-Semitic laws and decrees, with which he surprised even the members of his own party.



Three anti-Semitic laws completed the exclusion of the Hungarian Jews between 1938 and 1941. The first two laws made their economic situation more and more difficult; the Third Jewish Law, which was passed in 1941, however, was a real, Nuremberg-type, racial law introducing "race-protective" orders.

In July and August of 1941 nearly 16,000 Jews regarded as aliens or whose citizenship was stated to be unresolved, were deported to territories under German rule in Galicia where the Germans massacred them in the vicinity of Kamenec-Podolskij. This was the first "five-digit massacre" during the process of the Holocaust of the European Jewry. We do not have photos documenting this massacre. However, we have pictures about the second massacre which involved Hungarian Jews. In January 1942 in the Southern region (Délvidék, which was reclaimed from Yugoslavia) during an action taken against Serb partisans Hungarian gendarmeries murdered nearly 3,500 people. There were about 800 Jews among them. The gendarmeries shot their victims and threw their bodies into holes blown in the ice of the frozen-over Danube. Evidently, in order to frighten the civilians, they also hanged people in the public squares as we can see in the pictures.

Eichmann and his Sonderkommando of 200 men deported the Jews of the provinces to Auschwitz with the active help of the Hungarian clerks, policemen, solders and gendarmeries in the spring and early summer of 1944. The Jewry of the provinces, 437,000 people, made up more than fifty percent of the entire Hungarian Jewry. We have extremely few photos documenting this horrible "record achievement," since Eichmann and his "experts" were not "able" to deport so many Jews in such a short period from any other European country (between May 15 and June 6 of 1944).

According to archival documents, sporadic newspaper sources, and testimonies of survivors, the majority of the gentiles did not even try to help the persecuted people. There were only a few people who participated actively in the persecution besides the officials and functionaries. Their estimated number is greater, however, than the number of those people who tried to help actively. The photos documenting the deportation show that it takes only a few gendarmeries to march the obedient Jews to the railway station, to the cattle cars. We know from archival documents that after the deportation, the citizens began the looting of the deserted ghettos. In some places they acted defying the martial law; and in other places they had official permission. Obviously, the looters of Kôszeg belonged to the second category, since they happily allowed the taking of pictures. Both the looters and the loot indicate, that in this case, poor people were taking the belongings of other poor people.

Miklós Horthy put an end to the deportation of the Jews on the 6th of July, 1944. The reasons are still not entirely clear. It is possible that his decision was motivated by the landing of the allied forces on the shores of Normandy, or the offensive of the Red Army, or he was afraid that the capital would have been destroyed by a carpet bombing if the Jews of Pest had had been deported. Eichmann had a fit, but without Hungarian help he was not able to continue shipping "raw material" to the death factory of Auschwitz.

Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the Arrow-Cross Party and the Hungarist Movement came to power with the help of the Germans, after Miklós Horthy, the governor of Hungary, announced that he appealed for cease-fire. The members of his government, when their picture was taken, broke a tradition: they did not wear their Hungarian gala-dress. They put on simple civilian clothes. Maybe they had a premonition concerning their fate: the majority of them would be sentenced to death by the court of the Hungarian People within a period of less than one and a half years.

Nearly 200,000 Jews were terrified in Budapest by the coming into power of Szálasi’s Arrow-Cross men. The troops of the Red Army were not able to liberate the ghetto of Pest until the 18th of January, 1945. Up to then, hundreds of defenseless Jews were murdered by Arrow-Cross men every day as the photos show. Many Jews were tortured horribly before their death, others were simply shot and thrown into the Danube which was filled with drift-ice. They handed over nearly 70,000 Jews to the Germans for forced labor. They worked on the fortification system in the Sub-Alps in order to "protect" Vienna.

In the spring of 1945 Budapest was reduced to ruins as we can see in the photographs. Because of the meaningless war fought, on the Nazis' side nearly one million lives were lost. From 825,000 Hungarian Jews 550,000 died, and some of the returning survivors emigrated within the next few years. Thus, in the place where one of the most flourishing Jewish communities of Middle-Eastern Europe once existed, now only approximately 5,000-70,000 Jews exist.

Source of quote:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/hungarian-photos/

[Richard Miller]

I was under the impression that the saving of jewish lives would be looked upon with favor by the soviets.

Roberto wrote

Who or what gave you that idea?

In spite of the fact that Stalin may have been anti-jewish, he had many jews in high positions in his government.

If nothing else, I would think Stalin would give the appearance of caring about jewish atrocities, simply to appease his underlings. This would also have the effect of currying favor with the US, whose support he was receiving through lend-lease.

Just my opinion

[Hans]

Posts from Charles Bunch and Scott Smith were off topic and have been moved to the thread "Charles & Scott".

Hans
moderator

[alfrednicolosi]

Wolf wrote:

That was at the very end of the war. Himmler tried to save his own neck.

Incorrect. Himmler had been trying to initiate secret negotiations with agents of the Western Allies ever since 1943 (secret = behind Hitler's back). Himmler had realised by then that the war could not be won by Germany, and that the only way out was a negotiated peace with the Western Allies, leaving Germany free to fight the Soviet Union to a standstill.

Himmler's clandestine action in letting the Jews of Denmark flee to Sweden was a sign to the Allies that he was prepared to trade Jews in return for negotiations. (The action was clandestine in the sense that it was not carried out openly. A warning was given to the Jews by German officials that an action against them was imminent; then the normal German naval patrols were temproarily withdrawn, enabling the Jews to flee by sea. Only Himmler was in a position to organise all of that, although his role remains clouded in secrecy).

The "Jews for trucks" deal, proposed in May when the deportations from Hungary were only just starting, was also a signal from Himmler to the Western Allies of his readiness to negotiate. Another element was the fact that Himmler allowed the Wehrmacht plot against Hitler to proceed, even the Gestapo knew all about it. Himmler took no action against the plotters for a whole day, waiting to see what the outcome was, and only moved when it became clear that the assassination attempt had failed.

For details on Himmler's attempts to initiate negotiations, using the Jews as bargaining chips, I suggest you read the book "Jews For Sale" by the Jewish historian Yehuda Bauer.

By the time Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July, the main deportation to Auschwitz was ending. There subsequent smaller deportations to Austria, but these were for the purpose of providing a slave-labour force to build fortifications on the border.

In October, Eichmann obtained approval from the Hungarian authorities to send 50,000 Jews to Austria to work on fortifications. They were despatched by foot as the railway lines had been cut. Very few of the Jews sent actually reached the worksites in Austria; due to the harsh weather conditions, and the fact that the Jews were in poor condition to start with, many collapsed on the way, and many died. For that reason the attempt to send Jews to Austria by foot was called off, and those who had not reached the border or had not died on the way were returned to Budapest.

It is clear that in organising that particular deportation, Eichmann was implementing orders to provide a labour force for the fortification work in Austria. The attempt to send them by foot failed because it was not practicable, not due to humanitarian efforts by Becher or others.

Other small groups of Jews were sent from other localities in Hungary to various worksites in Austria. In these cases, the transportation succeeded because it was carried out by rail.

There is no evidence that Wallenberg had any influence whatever on the trnasportation of Jews to Austria that occurred from October onward. At most, he played a role in protecting Jews in Budapest from the depredations of the Nyilas gangs.

However, the survival of the large Jewish community in Budapest cannot be attributed to the activities of Anger or Wallenberg. In the first place, the Germans had already extracted as many Jews from Hungary as they needed for slave-labour in Germany and Austria. In the second place, Himmler was concerned to preserve a large number of Jews to use as bargaining chips in his negotiations with the Allies.

The exact date of Himmler's order to cease the selections for killing in the concentration camps is not known, but according to testimony it was toward the end of October 1944. Himmler's motive was to keep Jews alive for use in his attempts at negotiation. In any case, the Jews deported from Hungary subsequent to the German reoccupation in October were sent for slave-labour.

Any statement that the activities of Anger and Wallenberg somehow "frustrated the Holocaust" is simply nonsense. At best their activities were marginal. They had no real influence on the outcome.

The reasons for Wallenberg's arrest by the Soviets remain shrouded in mystery, until such time as former Soviet archives are completely opened. In my opinion, the most likely explanation is that the SOviets suspected that he was somehow involved in Himmler's negotiations with the Western Allies, particularly as he was trying to use Sweden as a conduit.

Whether Wallenberg was knowingly involved in such negotiations cannot be known. But I think that his activity in issuing protective documents to Jews in Budapest, and his procurement of safe houses where they could be kept, was something that was surreptitiously allowed by Himmler in order to keep a substantial number of Jews "on ice" for the purpose of trading them. Whatever Wallenberg's real role was, he was surely a very minor player in the convoluted series of events in Hungary between the German occupation in March 1944 and the Soviet conquest early in 1945.

Would like to learn more about Wilhelm Bohm (or Vilmos Bohm), Hungary's ambassador to Sweden after WWII.

Wilhelm Agrell's book says Bohm was a Soviet double agent who betrayed Raoul Wallenberg. I don't read Swedish. Couldn't find Agrell's book on amazon.com.

What's the back story? Any truth to Agrell's charges?