Idővonal

TIMELINE 218

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The two mutually supportive pillars of the Etz Hayim exhibition concept are: 1. the Timeline, which creates a historical context, 2. the Thematic Rooms, which provide emotional-moral points of reference, as well as personal references and personal recollections.

The Timeline, with its 73 sections, provides brief textual summaries of the major events of the period 1867–2021.

It serves to continuously cling to the intellectual consciousness of the visitors, who wander from thematic room to thematic room, each eliciting an emotional response.

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Each section appears in the same framework, in a way that is predictable for the visitor. Each section has 1. a compelling, eye-catching title, 2. the date of the event, and 3. a text entry enriched with contemporary archival images and objects, 4. as well as personal contemporary citations.

Under some entries, additional information on the topic is presented on a “Shelf”.

The textual content of the posts is currently between 40 to 80 words. Following the comments of the Academic Advisory, these texts will go to a professional copywriter who will shorten the texts further, striving not to exceed 40 words.

Exceptions to this will be entries that are introductory texts for each gallery (100 words) as well as shelf texts.

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1. GOLDEN AGE GALLERY 1867-1914

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The Golden Age of the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire refers to the development between 1867, when legal equality was granted to Jews, and the outbreak of WWI in 1914. This flourishing period covers the creation of the dual monarchy and a novel, rarely experienced economic boom, and thriving Jewish communal and religious life with the development of diverse and sometimes conflicting forms of Jewish identity. The Hungarian Jews played a key role in the rapid development of Hungary in industry, arts, sports etc. Jewish communities increased rapidly both in urban and rural areas until World War I, in which the Jews took part bravely and proudly under the King’s flag.

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WERE JEWS GRANTED EQUAL 1.1. HOW RIGHTS? Date: 1867

Quote: 1§: The Israelite citizens of the country are granted the same civilian and political rights as the Christian citizens.

Law XVII. of 1867 concerning the emancipation of Jews 224

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Text content: Hungary became an equal partner with Austria in 1867. Progressive leaders eager to build a modern new state granted full civil and political rights to Jews. Although laws couldn’t eliminate antisemitism, most Jews embraced opportunities to integrate as Hungarian citizens.

AND CHANGE: 1.2. TRADITION CONFRONTING MODERNITY Quote: “New [experiments against tradition] are forbidden by the Torah.”

Moshe Schreiber, the Chatam Sofer, leading Orthodox rabbi of historical Hungary (1762–1839)

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ON THE SHELF:

There are no more Jews in Szeged. There is only a traditional Hebrew religion and its worshipers. The people speak Hungarian and think Hungarian (…) Even if they can’t walk ahead of us, when it comes to patriotism, they do not seem to be behind us at all.”

Mikszáth Kálmán: A szegedi zsidók “It is desirable that all Hungarian Jews would bear a Hungarian name by the Millenial Festival.”

Izidor Milkó, the President of the Jewish Community of Szabadka, 1895

Text content: Two years after acquiring equal rights, at the Great Jewish Congress of 1868–1869, there was a bitter division of Jewish religious movements, based on conflicting approaches as to how to integrate into modern Hungary, dividing them into different Orthodox and Neologue communities. The conflict reflected new options for Jewish self-identity.

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1.3. MODERNITY AND INTEGRATION Late 1800’S

Quote: „Only two things paid off; the heroism of our lads, and the performance of [the Jewish industrialist, Baron] Manfred Weiss.”

Count Istvan Tisza, Prime Minister, 1917

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Text content: The modern era allowed Jews to make important contributions to Hungarian modernization, in economy, science, medicine, sports and culture, often reinforcing a strong Hungarian identity among many sectors of Jewish society. While there were incidents of conversion, most modern Jews believed they could integrate Magyarization and Judaism. Orthodox Jews were highly reserved about integration, but made symbolic steps to demonstrate loyalty to Hungary.

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1.4. ANTISEMITISM: WAVES OF HATRED

Quote: “These ... are the facts that explain how this miscarriage of justice came about: [...] the ’dirty Jew’ obsession that is the scourge of our time.” Émile Zola’s famous article, “J’Accuse!” about the Dreyfus trial, 13 January, 1898

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Text content: The rapid integration of Jews into society, and age-old religious tensions often led to periodic social manifestations of the modern political phenomenon of Jew hatred, called antisemitism, a term coined by a German publicist, Wilhelm Marr in 1881. Eventually while some elements of Hungary’s political elite supported Jewish integration, those who suffered from modernization often opposed it.

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1.5. TISZAESZLÁR: BLOOD LIBEL IN HUNGARY Date: 1883

Quote: „The antisemitic agitation makes me ashamed as a human being and as a Hungarian” Lajos Kossuth to Lajos Urváry, 1883 (reaction to the blood libel case)

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Text content: The false accusation of 15 Jews killing a Christian girl, rekindled the false myth of ritual murder and scapegoating typical of the Middle Ages. Despite the acquittal of the defendants, the case resulted in widespread violence and the establishment of the Hungarian Antisemitic Party.

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1.6.

ZIONISM - HOMELAND FOR THE JEWS? Quote: If you wish it is not a dream; Ha akarjátok, nem álom;

‫ אין זו אגדה‬,‫אם תרצו‬ Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)

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Text content: Following frequent Jewish disappointments of integration in Western Europe, and violent pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe, Theodore Herzl (1860–1904) a Budapest-born assimilated Jew, founded political Zionism. This pioneering movement, which aspired to obtain a Jewish homeland, speaking Hebrew in Biblical Israel, received recognition by the British Balfour declaration in 1917.

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1.7.

“THE WAR TO END ALL WARS”?

Date: 1914–1918

Quote: “ […] There are men in this grave, who were awaited at home by old parents, trembling wives and crying children. […]”

From the speech of Ödön Kálmán, a Hungarian military rabbi over a mass grave in Galicia

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Text content: The unprecedented bloody conflict of a World War, included major civilian fatalities. It toppled centuries-old empires: Austria-Hungary, Russian, German and the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in post-war social, political, and economic chaos throughout Europe.

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2. IN-BETWEEN THE WARS GALLERY 238

By the end of World War I, chaos and revolutions spread throughout Europe, including Hungary. Following a radical two-year period of rapidly changing political systems, Admiral Miklós Horthy seized power as Regent and his regime marked a distinct era in Hungarian history. His rule was dominated by the popular and deep motivation to regain the tragic loss of ⅔ of Hungarian historical territory and its populations. His regime was burdened with the passing of Europe’s first post-war legislation against the Jews and a great economic depression because of the Peace Treaty of Trianon and later the great economic world crisis in the 1930s.

The short Silver Age under the premiership of István Bethlen had passed by the early 1930s, and the end of the decade brought undisguised rejection of Jews as equal members of society, resulting in several anti-Jewish laws before and after the outbreak of the Second World War.

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REVOLUTIONS — 2.1. INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL CHAOS Date: 1919

Quote: “I am not a Jew anymore, I became a socialist, I became a communist.”

Béla Kun, Hungarian Communists, the leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, 1919 240

Text content: The defeat of WWI, brings an era of chaos and revolutions to Europe and Hungary, notably, the 133-day reign of the Hungarian Soviet Republic dictatorship. The era of the “Red Terror” brought widespread violence against both Jews and non-Jews.

Led by Bela Kun, many viewed the communist dictatorship as a “Jewish conspiracy.”

During the ”White Terror” which followed, hundreds of Jews throughout Hungary were killed in retaliation, in acts of violence and pogroms carried out by officers of the National Army of Miklos Horthy.

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2.2. NAZI RACIAL IDEOLOGY Date: 1918-1924

Quote: “Blood mixture … is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; … contained only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.”

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, 1924

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ON THE SHELF:

For design: Here we would have an interactive about Hitler’s ideology regarding different races.

An interactive that starts off with Hitler’s quote attacking Jews and then a question: What do you think he thought of you?

“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe!”

Speech to the Reichstag January 30, 1939

“We cannot really export National Socialism to Hungary either. The Hungarian mass is equally as lazy as the Russians are. Their spirit is the spirit of the men of the plains.”

Adolf Hitler’s Tabletalks, 1941 Text content: The postwar chaos and the humiliating defeat of Germany created fertile ground for Nazism. Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1924) detailed Nazi ideology: Humanity is composed of races, of which the “Aryans” (Germans) are “superior”. As in nature, the superior race has an obligation to “living space” (lebensraum) at the expense of the “inferior” races. Some of the other races would serve as slaves, and some “parasite races” (e.g. Jews, Gypsies) must be “removed.”

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2.3. MIKLOS HORTHY: LEADER OF HUNGARY Date: 1920

Quote: “ ....we basically have no goods, trees, railways, salt etc. in the current territory of our country.”

Admiral Miklós Horthy to foreign journalists, Pesti Hírlap, 23. May, 1920

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Text content: Following the chaos after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the National Assembly seeks stability by electing Miklos Horthy as Regent and Commander-in-chief of Hungary. Over the next two decades the regime focused on the return of confiscated historical Hungarian territories, and the maintenance of old order. This resulted in the empowerment of the feudalistic elites at the expense of the workers, peasants, and ethnic minorities, and limitations on the legal rights of Hungarian Jewry.

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2.4. TREATY OF TRIANON: COLLAPSE OF HUNGARY Date: 1920

Quote: “We, Hungarian Jews [...] wish to take part [...] in the reconstruction of our beloved Fatherland!”

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Text content: Post WWI peace treaties included the Treaty of Trianon which limited Hungary’s armed forces and forced it to cede two-thirds of its territories. Hungarian public opinion bitterly opposed the treaty’s conditions, and its revision was a primary aim of Hungary’s interwar foreign policy.

Seeking support, Hungary became an ally of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the 1930s

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LEGAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST 2.5. FIRST HUNGARIAN JEWRY Date: 1920

Quote: “The debate is over [... unfortunately] it has been declared [...] that, despite the terminology of the emancipation law, the Jews are a race, a nationality. “ Egyenlőség, major Hungarian Jewish newspaper. September 25, 1920.

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I consider myself a Hungarian, of Jewish religion, I have no reason to be elsewhere but in Hungary. … I want to live here; I want to die here.

MP Bródy Ernő, Parliamentary debate in 1920

Text content: September 26, 1920: The Numerus Clausus Law, restricts the number of Jewish students and other ethnic minorities admitted to Hungarian universities. The law implementation orders unprecedentedly considered Jews an ethnic group, resulting in a sharp decrease of Jews studying in higher education, falling from over 30% in the prewar years to under 8% in 1927. Due to international pressure and political considerations, the law was revised in 1928.

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2.6. RABBIS IN THE PARLIAMENT Date: 1928

Quote: “One must bow to the will of the public opinion: if so many say that I am a lawmaker, at the end of the day I am myself forced to believe so.”

Rabbi Immanuel Löw upon receiving his mandate, 19th of January, 1928

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Text content: 1921–1931: The so-called “Bethlen Era” and the “Silver Age,” a period of political moderation under Prime Minister Count Istvan Bethlen. He sought in Hungary’s interest a consolidation with the Jewish citizens, this included the repeal of Hungary’s anti-Jewish laws. The era was characterized by having two representatives – a neologue and an orthodox rabbi – from the Jewish community in the Upper Chamber of the Parliament.

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2.7.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE Date: 1929

Quote: “Black Thursday! Wall Street in panic as stocks crash! “ Headline of Daily News, October 24, 1929

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Text content: October 29, 1929 —The Great Depression, beginning in the United States with the collapse of financial institutions, and spreading worldwide, becoming an international economic crisis, resulted in massive inflation, unemployment and the wiping out of the middle class’s savings.

The massive economic crisis in Hungary ended the moderation of the Bethlen era.

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2.8. NAZI RISE TO POWER Date: 1933

Quote: “I cannot understand the passive response of the civilized world to this modern barbarism.”

Albert Einstein about the rise of the Nazis “One people, one Reich, one leader.”

A motto of the Third Reich 254

ON THE SHELF:

1928–1933 Election’s Diagram graphic

Text content: Nazi tactics used democratic apparatus to destroy democracy and gain unlimited power.

According to Nazi doctrine the ideal government has a centralized leader who expresses the will of the people, race, and God. After years of unrest and economic crisis, in January 1933, German President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor, although the Nazis were a minority. An “emergency rule” gave him almost unlimited powers. In July 1933 all political parties besides the Nazis were outlawed. After the death of President Hindenburg, in August 1934, Hitler appointed himself Fuhrer (dictator) and Commander of the Army.

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ON THE SHELF:

Jews were banned from journalism and music, broadcasting and theater –

and even farming. April 1 brought a boycott of Jewish businesses; the April 7th Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service barred Jews from the civil service.

SUGGESTED LIST (Needs to be turned into graphics) 1. April 1, 1933: The Nazis institute a boycott of Jewish stores and businesses.

Expected to last several days, it is suspended after one.

2. April 7, 1933: The Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service 256

bans Jews from government and civil service. Those excluded include doctors working for the national health organization, lawyers, university professors, and government workers.

3. April 21, 1933: The German government prohibits shehitah, the ritual slaughter of animals required by Jewish dietary law. Some German Jews evade the law and continue to perform kosher slaughtering of chickens clandestinely, despite the threat of severe punishment. Others pay the higher prices for imported kosher meat.

4. April 25, 1933: The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities restricts Jewish enrollment in German schools. The Jewish community responds by creating new Jewish schools and expanding existing schools.

5. May 10, 1933: German students and their professors remove and burn “un-Germanic” books from libraries and bookstores throughout Germany.

More than 20,000 books are burned. Authors include Jews, opponents of Nazism, and others defined as un-Germanic.

6. September 22, 1933: Jews are banned from journalism, theater, music, art, literature, and broadcasting in order to eradicate Jewish influence on German society.

9. June 26, 1935: The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases provides for compulsory abortions in certain instances.

10. September 15, 1935: The Nuremberg Laws are passed. The Reich Citizenship Law deprives Jews of their citizenship.

LAWS 2.9. NAZI FROM THEORY TO LEGAL

AND ACTIVE DISCRIMINATION

Quote: “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”

Heinrich Heine in his book Almansor, 1821

11. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibits Jews from marrying non-Jews and from employing German women under the age of 45.

Under its provisions, Jews are defined biologically based on the religion of their grandparents and not by the identity they affirm or the religion they practice.

12. November 14, 1935: In regulations clarifying the Nuremberg Laws, a Jew is defined as anyone who is a member of the Jewish community and has two Jewish grandparents or anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents.

13. September 7, 1935: All Jewish property is taxed by 25 percent.

15. March 28, 1938: Jewish community organizations lose governmental recognition in Germany.

16. April 21, 1938: Jews are eliminated from Germany’s economy; Jewish assets are “legally” seized in a process termed “Aryanization.”

18. June 15, 1938: German officials arrest 1,500 Jews for minor violations – including traffic violations – and intern them in concentration camps.

Text content: Upon ascension to power in January 1933, Nazis applied their racial antisemitic ideology into governmental and legal policy for the first time in European history. From 1935 anti-Jewish policy turned to even more explicit racism with the passing of the Nuremberg Laws. Nazis sought the removal of Jews from Germany by making Jewish living conditions unbearable and forcing their “voluntary” emigration. Often, after a flurry of antisemitic laws, conditions stabilized briefly, giving a false sense of optimism.

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2.10. THE BERLIN OLYMPICS, 1936

Quote: “We would have been very (loath) to hurt the feelings of our fellow Jews, by going to a land that would exterminate them if it could.”

Sammy Luftspring and Norman “Babe” Yack (Canadian-Jewish boxers), July 6, 1936

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Text content: In 1936, Nazi Germany hosts the Olympics, as previously determined. Nazis saw this as an opportunity for recognition. Before the Summer Olympics, Berlin was scrubbed, graffiti was painted over, gypsies (Roma) were expelled. This tactic worked, most were misled, despite the fact that many Jews were excluded from the competition. President Franklin Roosevelt told Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the World Jewish Congress: “...the synagogues are crowded and apparently there is nothing very wrong in the situation [of Germany’s Jews] at present.”

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2.11. EVIAN CONFERENCE Date: 1938

Quote: “The world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter.”

Zionist leader, Dr. Chaim Weizmann to the Manchester Guardian, 1936

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Text content: July 6–14, 1938: International Conference at Evian-les-Bains, France, called by U.S. President Roosevelt to discuss the “Refugee Problem”, a euphemism for Jews. Thirty-two nations attending are not asked to change any laws. To assuage British concerns, Palestine is not on the agenda. The results are highly limited and incommensurate with the growing need of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria.

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OF BROKEN GLASS 2.12. -NIGHT FROM LEGAL DISCRIMINATION TO VIOLENCE Date: November 1938

Quote: “For the first time, we became scared and began to fear for our lives... [A Jew was] an outcast. ...

There was nothing left that made you think you could possibly still be a German.”

Robert Behr, recall of the Kristallnacht (Yad Vashem archives) 262

“We were all very frightened. And [though we were not religious], on that day, for the first time … there were prayers.”

Ruth Winckelmann, recall of the Kristallnacht (BBC) Text content: November 9–10, 1938: Pogroms, known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Throughout Germany and Austria, some 1,400 synagogues are attacked, burnt and desecrated, Jewish stores are looted. 30,000 Jewish men, ages 16–60, are arrested and sent to internment camps.

Some 100 Jews are murdered. Violence became Nazi governmental policy endangering Jewish lives. German Jews desperately seek any foreign haven to escape.

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ON THE SHELF:

The first law, passed on May 29, 1938, limits the number of Jews in certain professional and white-collar positions to 20%; The second law, passed on May 4, 1939, determines Jews as a race (unlike the earlier law) restricting Jewish participation in certain professions to 6%; The third law, passed on August 8, 1941, calls for “race protection” and bans marriages and sexual relations between Jewish men and non-Jewish women; 264

The fourth law, passed on September 6, 1942, allows for the confiscation of land owned by Jews; Earlier on March 11, 1939: The Act of National Defense is passed for all Hungarian citizens and ethnic groups including Romani (Gypsies) and Communists, and ultimately leads to the discriminatory and brutal labor service for Jews.

2.13. ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION IN HUNGARY Date: 1938-1942

Quote: ““The (German) lions are being fed with Jews” MP Anna Kéthly opposing the 2nd Jewish Law in the parliamentary debate in 1939 Text content: From May 29, 1938 to September 1942, Hungary legislates a series of laws to limit Jewish participation in Hungarian society — from economic to ultimately racial antisemitism similar to Nazi Nuremberg Laws.

On March 11, 1939: The Act of National Defense is passed, which ultimately, leads to the discriminatory and brutal labor service for Jews.

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2.14. RETURN OF TERRITORY Date: 1938

Quote: “Hungarians! You are now free again! The era of misery and torture is over!”

Horthy’s welcome message to the local population of the returned territory, 1938

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Text content: November 2, 1938: First Vienna Treaty; Germany and Italy, Hungary’s fascist allies, agree to the return of sections of Slovakia to Hungary, which also occupied Transcarpathia in March 1939. The Second Vienna Treaty, August 30, 1940, awards Hungary parts of Transylvania, given to Romania in 1920. These territories are heavily populated by Jews. The inclusion of mostly Orthodox, Hasidic, and Zionist Jews into the fabric of Hungary’s Jewish community, ultimately will impact the future defiance of Hungarian Jewry.

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The outbreak of WWII, on September 1st, 1939 is a dramatic turning point of world history and the fate of the Jewish people. Persecution of Jews already an established policy in Nazi Germany, soon spread to most of continental Europe, which falls under German occupation or countries allied with Germany. The persecution of Jews is soon the standard almost everywhere, and the physical existence of the Jewish communities in the region is often in grave danger.

In Hungary contradictory policies towards the Jews are enacted. While anti-Jewish laws are passed, most of the Jews live in relative safety, and Hungary becomes a haven for thousands of Jews clandestinely escaping Poland and Slovakia with the aid of Hungarian Jewish organizations. In Hungary, Jews are not forced to wear an identifying badge, such as the yellow star, are not transferred into ghettos or subject to deportations and mass murder. Still, they suffer financially as a result of the anti-Jewish legislation. Antisemitic assaults become commonplace. Many of the able men are drafted into forced labor service units on the eastern front and elsewhere.

3. WORLD WAR 2.

GALLERY – 1939-1944 268

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3.1.

POLICY OF APPEASEMENT: SELF-DELUSION OR REALITY? Date: 1938 - 1939

Quote: “Peace In Our Time” - Illusion or reality?

British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s, policy of Appeasement, upon his return from the The Munich Conference, September, 1938, 270

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Text content: In the eyes of many Hungarians, Hungary’s alliance with Fascist regimes proves territorially successful. Based on the 1938 Munich Conference, British leader Chamberlain and Hitler, joined by French Premier Daladier and Italy’s Mussolini, settle on a policy of appeasement, granting Hitler Czech Sudetenland, mostly populated by ethnic Germans. Yet, the failure of appeasing Nazi Germany becomes evident on March 15, 1939, when German troops occupy Czechoslovakia creating the puppet state of Slovakia.

ON THE SHELF:

The Winds of War:

August 23, 1939: The Ribbentrop-Molotov (German-Soviet) Non-aggression Pact is signed allowing Germany to invade Poland. International surprise of treaty between Nazis and Soviets. In response, on August 25, 1939, Great Britain and France declare themselves ready to defend their ally, Poland, if it 272

was attacked.

September 1, 1939: World War II begins with the German invasion of Poland, and Great Britain and France declaring war on Germany on September 3.

September 6, 1939: German forces occupy Krakow, Poland. Germany’s use of Blitzkrieg tactics ultimately allowed swift occupation of most of Europe by June 1941. (map) September 17, 1939: The Soviet Union invades and annexes eastern Poland.

September 8, 1939: More than 6,400 of the 7,000 Jews in Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland, near Warsaw, join the flood of Jewish refugees fleeing east toward Sovietcontrolled territories.

September 19, 1939: The coordinating committee for Jewish Self-Help in Warsaw is established. It unites the various Jewish welfare and aid organizations.

September 21, 1939: Reinhard Heydrich, SS security chief, orders the establishment of Jewish Councils ( Judenraete), consisting of 24 Jewish men to be personally responsible for implementing German orders. All Jewish communities in Poland and with populations of less than 500 are to be dissolved.

September 27, 1939: German troops capture Warsaw, a city with 375,000 Jews-the largest Jewish population in Europe.

September 28, 1939: Poland surrenders and is partitioned. Germany absorbs parts of Poland and occupies central Poland, an area it calls the General Government. The Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland.

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3.2. THE OUTBREAK OF WAR Date: 1939 - 1941

Quote: “.. [Germany] should [concentrate] … on adequate Lebensraum (“livingspace”) for the next one hundred years.”

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924

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Text content: August 23, 1939: The Ribbentrop-Molotov (German-Soviet) Non-aggression Pact is signed allowing Germany to invade Poland. International surprise of treaty between Nazis and Soviets.

On September 1. Germany invades Poland. Two days later, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany, beginning World War II t. The Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. Germany’s use of Blitzkrieg tactics allowed swift occupation of most of Europe by June 1941.

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3.3.

POLAND: FIRST GHETTOS ESTABLISHED Date: 1939

Quote: “ … we went to bed in the Jewish quarter, and the next morning we awoke in a closed Jewish ghetto...”

Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim Aaron Kaplan, November 17, 1940

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Text content: September 21, 1939: Reinhard Heydrich orders the establishment of Jewish Councils to be personally responsible for implementing German orders. All Jewish communities with less than 500 residents are dissolved and relocated. To confront the numerous hardships of locals and relocated Jews the Coordinating Committee for Jewish Self-Help in Warsaw is created on September 19.

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CHART ON THE SHELF: October 8, 1939: The restriction of Jews to Nazi-enforced ghettos begins in Piotrkow Trybunalski.

April 30, 1940: First hermetically sealed ghetto established in Lodz (Litzmannstadt). The Warsaw Ghetto is closed on November 15, 1940.

“For the time being… [the plan] is the concentration of the Jews into the larger cities…. in each Jewish community a Council of Jewish Elders is to

November 23, 1939: Nazis order Polish Jews to wear yellow stars or 278

be set up…”

identifying arm bands with the Star of David. Eventually almost all Jews

Instructions by Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Security Main

under Nazi occupation are forced to wear yellow stars and to have the

Office (RSHA), regarding formation of ghettos in occupied Poland,

word “Jew” marked on identity papers. This policy is followed by all

September 21,1939

occupied countries except Denmark.

“November 15, 1940 Today the Jewish Ghetto was officially established.

For designers:

Work on the walls ... has already begun … Jewish masons supervised by

Two pictures across each other one a picture of Heydrich

Nazi soldiers are laying bricks… and are lashed… It makes me think of the

and one of Mary Berg

Biblical description of our slavery in Egypt. But where is Moses who will

When pictures flipped contrasting quotes from each

release us from our new bondage?”

Mary Berg, Diary of Mary Berg 1945

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3.4. LABOUR BATTALIONS Date: 1939

Quote: “A shot in the scrag - this is how you pass.”

Miklós Radnóti, noted Hungarian poet (victim of the labor service): 4th Razglednica (“postcard”)

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“I ordered them to stop treating the labor servicemen as prisoners…. and severely punished those who were brutal...”

General Vilmos Nagy de Nagybaczon, who attempted to ease the brutal and discriminatory conditions of the Jews in the Labor Service. Memoirs, 1947

Text content: The Labor Service system was originally legally established on March 11, 1939, for elements “dangerous to national security” to be included in the army for slave labor. Ultimately, most of the consist of Jews.

Denied weapons and uniforms, over 55,000 Jews die as a result of brutal treatment by their Hungarian commanders, wartime casualties and inhumane living conditions. The drafting of Jewish men has farreaching ramifications on Jewish families.

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3.5.

NOVI SAD MASSACRE Date: 11th of April 1941

Quote: „These crimes against humanity... are crying to the skies… [...] will (Hungary) avenge these crimes with the power of Hungarian Law … ” Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky MP to Regent Horthy, 4th of February, 1942

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Text content: In 1941, Hungary occupies parts of Yugoslavia adding some 14,000 Hungarian-speaking Jews.

Under the cover of the “retaliation against Serb partisans’’, the Hungarian gendarmerie and army brutally kill over 3,000 civilians, (2,550 Serbs and some 700 Jews) in Novi-Sad (Újvidék) and surrounding villages. The cruel massacre becomes public and causes a major outcry by opposition members of parliament, led primarily by Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, resulting in trials against 15 high-ranking army officers in December 1943.

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3.6. JEWISH REFUGEES IN HUNGARY Date: 1939 - 1942

Quote: “Vác was a Paradise itself” A child’s perspective as a Jewish refugee from Poland in the Hungarian city of Vác, 1943

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ON THE SHELF:

Underground Jewish Rescue Activities

Among prominent Jewish underground leaders are: Dr. Rezső (Israel) Kasztner, Joel Brandt and Ottó Komoly – President of the Zionist federation; Orthodox leaders include Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (the Satmar Rebbe), the Munkacs Rebbe, and Pinchas Freudiger –head of the Budapest Orthodox community. Freudiger, a wealthy businessman, and member of OMZSA, is involved in rescue efforts initiated by Slovakian Rabbi Weissmandl, Gisi Fleischman and their underground Working Group. The Group contacts rescue workers in Switzerland, Mandate Israel and America, who partially fund its activities. Zionist Youth organizations are extremely active in dangerous border crossings.

Text content: Autumn 1942: Rabbis, public activists and refugee representatives, establish the Rescue Committee (Va’ada), for clandestine rescue efforts. The Commitee’s efforts include successfully smuggling Jews from Poland and Slovakia including famous hasidic rabbis like Rav Aharon Rokeach, (Belz); aiding and hiding illegal refugees in Hungary, and preparing plans, in 1944, for the selfdefense of Hungarian Jewry. From 1942 onward, several rescue and relief organizations and projects are established.

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3.8.

MURDER IN KHAMENETSK-PODOLSKI Date: 1941

Quote: “Our corps shot down further 7000 Jews...”

Friedrich Jeckeln, 29, August 1941.

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Text content: From July to August 1941 Hungary brutally deports approximately 18.000 Hungarian Jews who “officially cannot prove” their Hungarian citizenship to German-occupied territories. The first mass murder of Hungarian Jews takes place at Kamenets-Podolski between 27–30 August by German mobile killing units murdering some 20,000 victims, including local Jews. These killing units (Einsatzgruppen) follow the German troops invading Soviet territories and conduct mass murder operations throughout.

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CONFERENCE 3.9. –WANNSEE PLANNING FOR TOTAL MASS MURDER Date: 1942

Quote: “Emigration has now been replaced by the evacuation of the Jews to the East…. Europe is to be combed from West to East…[for] the implementation of the Final Solution” From the Protocols of Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942 288

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Text content: January 20, 1942: The Wannsee Conference, Berlin, brings together 15 top Nazi governmental officials to coordinate and implement, under SS leadership, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” – the Nazi euphemism for the murder of all Jews. Two out of three of the attendees are university graduates; half have doctorates, mostly in law. The protocols target over 11 million Jews for annihilation; including Jews of England, North Africa and the Soviet Union.

THE UNIMAGINABLE: 3.10. CONFRONTING INDUSTRIAL MURDER OF MILLIONS Date: 1942- 1944

Quote: “Burning 2000 people took about 24 hours in the five crematoriums... we used gas chambers.”

Memoirs of Rudolf Höss, Commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1946

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Text content: Parallel to the Wannsee Conference, death camps are built for the arrival of Jewish masses and other politically “dangerous” groups. Millions of victims are brutally deported from occupied Europe to the 6 death camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and AuschwitzBirkenau located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Most are murdered on arrival. The massive Auschwitz-Birkenau death “factory” exterminates 1,300,000 people including 1,100,000 women, men, and children of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

291

3.11.

HUNGARIAN REFUSAL OF GERMAN DEMANDS FOR DEPORTATIONS Date: 1943

Quote: “The Jewish question in Hungary is not solved… the Führer could not convince Horthy at their personal meeting…”

Diary of Joseph Goebbels, May 8th, 1943 292

ON THE SHELF:

“One of your claims referred to the allegation that Hungary is too soft with the Jews. Regarding this question, I am proud to refer to that back in the time I was the first to stand up and speak against the destructive behaviour of the Jews, and since then did several actions to destroy their influence. […] The regulations ordered by myself practically took all opportunities from the Jews to further exercise their maleficent influence on this country’s everyday life. […] ….the commerce and the industry was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews. Further actions to remove them from the society are on course, and as soon as we will have the opportunity to remove and deport them, we will proceed accordingly.”

Horthy’s letter to Hitler, 7th of May, 1943

Text content: Anti-Semitism has been an integral element of Hungarian interwar politics. And though for the most part, the Nazi policy of racial mass murder is rejected and Hungary refuses German pressure for deportations, antisemitic rhetoric and policy from the late 30’s created irreversible damage to Hungarian society, which has become indifferent and often supportive of intensified anti-Jewish actions, isolation and deportations.

293

DEFEAT OF THE 2ND HUNGARIAN ARMY 3.12. THE NEAR THE DON RIVER Date: 1943

Quote: “…you can only die here...”

General Jány’s Army Command at the beginning of the Soviet offensive

294

Text content: In November 1940, Hungary joins Germany, Italy and Japan in the Tripartite Pact. Hungary joins the German invasion of the Soviet Union sending its 2nd Army to battle in April 1942. Nearly 200,000 Hungarian soldiers and approximately 50,000 ill-equipped Jewish forced laborers suffer enormous losses. The Soviet offensive that destroys the Hungarian troops includes the defeat of the German army at Stalingrad in February 1943.

295

3.13. WARSAW GHETTO REVOLTS Date: January and April 1943

Quote: “The dream of my life arose ... resistance and revenge became a reality. I witnessed a wonderful and heroic war of the Jewish warriors.”

‘Letter from Mordechai Anielewicz to Yitzhak Zuckerman, leaders of Jewish Underground April 23, 1943 296

Text content: The first urban popular armed uprising against the Nazis is carried out by the Jews of Ghetto Warsaw starting on April 19, 1943, as a desperate response to the mass deportations of 265,000 Jews from the summer of 1942 from Warsaw to the Treblinka death camp.

297

ON THE SHELF:

The frustration of the Anti-Fascist Bloc to armed resistance during the deportations results in the establishment of the Jewish Fighting Organization ( JFO/ZOB) on July 28, 1942. The JFO, which by October includes most Zionist youth movements and, significantly, the anti-Zionist Bund and Communists.

Commanded by Mordechai Anilewicz, the JFO becomes the dominant authority in the ghetto and is supported by the masses.

298

The Jewish Fighting Organization ( JFO/ZOB) is established in the ghetto on July 28, 1942.

By late fall 1942, The Jewish Military Union ( JMU; ZZW), armed underground group is organized by Beitar, the Revisionist youth movement. On January 18, 1943, the Germans resume Warsaw deportations. Jews respond with armed resistance.

299

The situation of Hungarian Jewry drastically changes following Hungary’s attempts to exit the war. German forces occupy the country on March 19, 1944 and a new pro-German collaborating government is installed. Jews are soon subject to a number of regulations which isolate them from Hungarian society and limit their already difficult living conditions. These include the compulsory wearing of a yellow star and eventually being relocated to ghettos. These ghettos were temporary concentration points prior to their brutal deportation to their final destination. Some 437,000 Jewish men, women and children were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The overwhelming majority were killed on arrival.

4. HUNGARY OCCUPIED GALLERY 300

MARCH 1944 – – APRIL 1945

The most dramatic events of the Hungarian Holocaust transpire at the end of WW II. The tragic nine months from the onset of German occupation in March until the end of the war (February 1945 in Budapest), are both intense and historically complex.

1. March 19 –July 7: This is the period when the deportation and mass murder of most Hungarian Jewry takes place under the Sztójay government, until the deportations are stopped by admiral Horthy, when plans for deportations get to Budapest.

2. July 8 – October 15: Throughout the summer there is a constant fear among Jews that the deportations will restart. The Germans and the more right-wing fractions of the Hungarians demand, at least, to collect the remaining Budapest Jewry to detention camps in the countryside. More moderate fractions oppose this, since they understand that this is the first measure for the later deportation of Budapest Jewry.

3. October 16 – January 18: Horthy announces an unprepared armistice, which brings to the overthrow of his 24-year rule by the Arrow Cross leader Szálasi.

Deportations (from Józsefváros Rail Station, adjacent to the Museum) restart to Bergen Belsen and death marches are started to the western border of Hungary.

Jews of the capital are randomly rounded up and shot into the Danube. The Budapest Ghetto is established in November. Liberation of the Budapest Ghetto takes place on the January 18–19, 1945.

301

4.1.

HUNGARY INVADED BY THE NAZIS Date: March 19th, 1944

Quote: “I thought that the worst thing that could happen to me is that they will not let me race.

Apparently, this was not the case...”

Memoirs of Éva Székely, Olympic champion, March 19, 1944

Text content: In March 1944 Germany occupies Hungary with its approximately 800,000 Jews. Horthy appointeds Döme Sztójay, a known German collaborator, as prime minister and actively abandons the Hungarian Jewish citizens. Adolf Eichmann’s small group of deportation experts arrive in Budapest, to facilitate the murder process of Hungarian Jews, to be carried out in less than four months.

302

ON THE SHELF:

List of anti-Jewish decrees after March 1944

303

4.2.

ESTABLISHING HUNGARIAN COOPERATION WITH THE SS Date: From March 1944

Quote: “The Jews ... are destined to be deported.”

Kurt Becher, SS commander, 1944

304

“We received a short but very expressive response: ‘What the Germans want, must be fulfilled.”

Ernő Munkácsi, secretary of the Jewish Council Text content: Following the smooth occupation and Eichmann’s arrival, his team reaches out to potential Hungarian counterparts. At a high-profile meeting on April 4, 1944, two secretaries of state, László Baky and László Endre with Gendarmerie liaison officer László Ferenczy, make detailed plans how to implement the quick mass deportations to the death camps, starting with swift ghettoization in April and mass deportations in May.

305

4.3.

RELEASE OF AUSCHWITZ PROTOCOL Date: May 1944

Quote: “Deliveries of Jews from Poland arrived non-stop, all of them … were killed with poison gas ...

The [official] guests, … were extremely satisfied...”

Quote from Auschwitz Protocols on the opening of the first Crematorium in 1943

306

Text content: In April 1944 two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, escape Auschwitz to reveal the atrocities to the world. Their detailed accounts of the death machine, known as the Auschwitz Protocols, are smuggled by Hungarian and Slovakian Jewish leaders to the West; members of Hungarian clergy and leaders — including members of Horthy’s family.

The effect of the Protocols is tremendous. Apparently, it is a key factor for stopping the deportations in July.

307

4.4.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE NAZIS Period: March – August 1944

Quote: „We have no choice! We must sign this!”

Dr. Ferenc Chorin to his wife, Baroness Daisy Weiss, 1944

308

Text content: Applying the experience of bribing Nazis by the Slovakian Jewish underground leaders, Rabbi Weismandl and Gisi Fleischman, the Budapest leaders of the Relief and Rescue Committee, Rezsö (Israel) Kasztner and Ottó (Nathan) Komoly, begin dangerous discussions with Eichmann in spring 1944. The goal is to supply materials by the Western allies to Germany, in exchange for saving Hungarian Jewry. Ultimately, this plan is unsuccessful, but for a large bribe, Eichmann allows Kastner one train to Switzerland with 1685 passengers.

309

ON THE SHELF:

310

“Kasztner train” passengers are to pay a fee of originally 1000 USD, later 2,000 USD per person. This is partly paid by the richer passengers. Among the passengers are rabbis, Zionists, artists, journalists, scientists, former army officers as well members of Kasztner’s family and ordinary men and women, as well as 252 children. The train surprisingly arrives at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and after several weeks of tense waiting, finally is transferred to neutral Switzerland. Rezső Kasztner, their savior, is later accused and tried in Israel for his controversial involvement in the direct negotiations with the Nazis as well as his personal role in putting the passenger list together. The ruling in the original case of slander, brought by Kasztner, was a humiliation for Kasztner and was overturned on appeal. The 2nd verdict basically exonerated Kasztner, but not before he was shot and killed in March 1957, by a fellow Israeli.

311

4.5.

GHETTOIZATION: THE BEGINNING OF THE ROAD TO DEATH Date: April 15–16, 1944

Quote: “The Royal Hungarian Government will clean the country of Jews...”

Decree by László Baky, Interior Ministry Secretary of State, April 7, 1944.

The Jews just returned from Shabbat prayers … the gendarmes … closed the house and handed over the keys to the village council official … One by one everyone came (to the synagogue), husbands and wives and their little children, grandparents.”

Chaim Perl, In the Shadow of the Trees, p. 92

312

ON THE SHELF:

Caption for a picture: My mother stood petrified and stared at the house for a long time. The house where she gave birth to nine healthy children.

The mother who devoted her whole being to the fulfillment of the lofty role, now

Text content: The first stage of Hungarian authorities rounding-up Jews begins in the north-eastern section of Hungary. This orchestrated ghettoization process is a preparation for deportations. Jews are gathered in designated narrow sections of large cities, and soon forcefully evacuated to a site outside the city where they are starved, tortured and their possessions confiscated. After a few days under impossible conditions they are forced into crowded cattle cars.

313

4.6.

HANNA SZENES A SYMBOL OF JEWISH RESILIENCE Period: March – November 1944

Quote: “I am determined… to the life in Palestine, even though … it is painful to cut my Hungarian feelings” Hanna Szenes diary, November 12, 1938

314

Text content: Despite British reluctance to recruit more paratroopers, on May 13, 1944 four Palestinian Jewish parachutists – Abba Berdichev, Reuven Dafni, Yonah Rosen, and Hannah Szenes – are dropped into Yugoslavia for clandestine missions in Hungary. Hungarian-born Szenes is captured by Hungarian authorities and later executed in Budapest on November 7. She becomes a symbol for Jewish resilience and heroism. Her body is ultimately interned in Israel with full military honors in 1950.

315

4.7.

STARTING THE DEPORTATIONS - THE BEGINNING OF THE END Date: 15 May, 1944 – 9 July, 1944

Quote: “Hungarian Jewry lost more souls during the war, … than the entire armed forces of the United States on all fronts...”

Holocaust survivor and Historian, Randolph Braham, 1994 316

“Four generations were in the cattle car – Grandma Esther seventy-six years old, Grandma Miriam fiftyeight years old, my mother who was then less than forty; my siblings and I were the fourth generation.”

(Yitzhak Eldar, Emunah Shenagoza, p. 52) Text content: On May 15, the first deportations, from Carpatho-Ruthenia, depart for Auschwitz. By July 9, the authorities deport 437,000 Jews: Some 425,000 are brutally transported in cattle cars to Auschwitz Birkenau. Approximately 15,000 Jews are deported to eastern Austria. By early July all Jews in the provinces have been deported and Budapest’s Jews are to be deported in the final phase of the operation.

317

ON THE SHELF: To be used in the wagon theme room “There were seventy people in our cattle car. We held hands with the whole family ... on our way to Auschwitz, the existence of which we did not know at the time.”

(Leah Langelben, Jewish Women in Hungary, p. 115) 318

“Papa said it would be alright ... and that we were seventy souls in the cattle car, just as the number of our fathers that went down to Egypt. I added that indeed we were seventy-one, because God is with us. Father smiled a slight smile... [and said] we will be saved as our ancestors were rescued, and will reach the Land of Israel.”

(Pnina Hefer, For My Memories, p. 79)

319

4.8.

CONFRONTING HELL: AUSCHWITZ Date: 15 May, 1944 – 9 July, 1944

Quote: “…there was a huge chaos, we were … exhausted ... and could barely think, just held the hands of our relatives.”

Testimony of a 15 years old girl from Huszt

320

Text content: After being brutally interned for weeks, most still believe their deception that resettlement is for “work in the East”: Forced into crowded cattle cars, and several horrific days of travel without basic needs, results in numerous deaths. Arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau, shocked victims are herded from trains, their valuables confiscated. Guards separate men and women, and “select” those for slave labor. Most are murdered in the gas chambers within hours.

321

4.9.

“D-DAY”: A TURNING POINT OF THE WAR Date: June 6, 1944

Quote: “They fight not for the lust of conquest. … They fight to liberate.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President, June 6, 1944

322

Text content: On D-Day, June 6, 1944, massive allied forces land in Normandy, France. In the context of the Soviets defeating the Germans a year earlier in 1943, this creates a war with multiple fronts in Europe for the first time, weakening the German army’s resilience. It is an important milestone on the way to the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945.

323

4.10. CHRISTIAN CHURCHES’ RESPONSES

Quote: “Whoever denies the ... basic teachings of Christianity ... and promotes the torture of people, shall they be black or Jews, … is a pagan and full of sins.”

Baron Vilmos Apor, the bishop of Győr in a public speech for Pentecost, 1944

324

Quote: “This solution of the Jewish question… challenges the eternal laws of God ...”

Memorandum by the 9 bishops of the Convent of the Protestant and Evangelical Church to the Prime Minister, June 23, 1944 Text content: The shrinking influence of the churches in modern times, as well as the emancipation of the Jews, was often considered by some Church leaders as a negative social process. Hence Church representatives voted for the first two anti-Jewish laws, but opposed the clearly racist 3rd Law which included converted Christian Jews. Some of the objecting voices were weak and late, but there were brave and self-sacrificing voices as well, such as the example of Bishops Vilmos Apor and Áron Márton.

325

OF MAJDANEK – UNCOVERING THE 4.11. LIBERATION MASS MURDERS Date: July 23, 1944

Quote: ““I have just seen the most terrible place on Earth.”

H. W. Lawrence, New York Times, 30. August, 1944

326

Text content: July 23, 1944: Soviet troops liberate the Majdanek death camp, outside Lublin, in German-occupied Poland. Remnants of the gas chambers, crematorium, and survivors of the camp reflect the system of industrialized mass murder. Newspaper reports in the West are met with suspicion of Soviet propaganda.

327

4.12. CLANDESTINE PICTURES BY SONDERKOMMANDO Date: July 23, 1944

Quote: “Who was prepared to believe that a whole people was being led to destruction … by a gang of contemptible criminals?”

Zalman Gradowski’s Auschwitz diary, 1943-1944: “From the Heart of Hell”

328

Text content: Summer 1944: Sonderkommando ( Jewish inmates forced to work at the gas chambers and crematoria) take clandestine photographs of the murder process and burning of corpses on an outside pyre at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The photos are taken by Greek and Polish Jews, and smuggled out of the camp by the Polish underground, which hopes that the images will motivate the Allies to action.

329

REVOLT OF THE SONDERKOMMANDO IN 4.13. AUSCHWITZ Date: 6-7th of October

Quote: “Comrade Roza [Robota], I would like you to contact the women who work in the… munitions factory, and ask them to smuggle gunpowder into the camp” Testimony of Zionist leader, Noach Zabludovits, January 1997 330

331

Text content: October 6–7, 1944: Jewish Sonderkommando workers using smuggled explosives stage an uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau. One of the four crematoria is set on fire. Although no inmates are able to escape, the uprising is a major success in the given circumstances. On January 6, 1945, Germans hang four Jewish women in Auschwitz for having smuggled explosives used in the camp revolt.

THE BUDAPEST STORY

332

The story of Budapest Jewry is distinct. After the completion of deportations in the countryside, preparations were made for Budapest. Jews were forced to move into designated buildings, called “Starred Houses” as a preliminary step for concentrating them. Changes in international climate and a heightened awareness of the mass murder, resulted in Horthy’s unexpected decision to halt deportations in early July 1944.

After an unsuccessful armistice on October 15th, Horthy was forced by Germany to cede power to Szálasi’s Arrow Cross.

Deportations restarted in early November from the Józsefváros Railways station (adjacent to the Museum) and major death marches towards the western border.

A central Ghetto was established early December in Pest for the remaining Jewish population, until their liberation on January 18.

Also liberated were Jews sheltered in the “protected buildings” of several diplomatic missions.

333

HOUSES IN BUDAPEST – INITIAL 4.14. STARRED ISOLATION Date: June 1944

Quote: “…on the front ... of every building ... a yellow star must be set up...”

Order of Tibor Keledy, the Mayor of Budapest, June 17, 1944

334

Text content: The authorities prepare Budapest Jewry for deportation following its completion in the countryside. On June 15, Jews are ordered to move within 9 days into 2,681 designated buildings, called “Stared Houses” marked with a Jewish star, forcing 200,000 people to relocate into over-crowded apartments. 3000 gendarmes are sent to Budapest to execute the deportations, originally scheduled for July 8–9.

335

THE DEPORTATIONS 4.15. -HALTING RESCUE OF THE JEWS OF BUDAPEST Date: 7th of July 1944

Quote: “I won’t tolerate this anymore! … The deportations of the Budapest Jewry must be halted!”

Miklós Horthy at the Crown Council, June 26, 1944 Text content: German defeats, international pressure, bombings of Budapest and a growing awareness of the death camps result in Horthy’s decision on June 26 to halt deportations. Despite this, deportations continue and in early July gendarmerie forces are concentrated in Budapest. Concerned that a coup is being planned, with the support of loyal troops, Horthy expels the gendarmerie from the capital, simultaneously stopping the deportation of Budapest Jewry.

336

ON THE SHELF:

Flyers from the time of the American bombing planes

337

4.16. ATTEMPTS OF NAZI ALLIES ABANDONING THE WAR

Quote: “When Romania changed sides … I knew, that I can’t ruminate any further ...”

Géza Lakatos, Prime Minister of Hungary, 1944

338

Text content: After German defeats in Russia, and allied forces landing in France in June 1944, some German allies realize they need to exit the Axis before the total destruction of Germany. In August 1944 Marshal Ion Antonescu is overthrown, Romania abandons the Axis and joins the Allies. Horthy replaces the Germanfriendly Sztójay government on August 29th, planning to imitate Romania.

339

ARMISTICE 4.17. -UNSUCCESSFUL APPOINTMENT OF FERENC SZÁLASI Date: October 15-16, 1944

Quote: “I decided to protect the honor of the Hungarian nation… we will sign an ... armistice with our ... enemies.”

Miklós Horthy, 15th of October, 1944 340

Text content: On October 15, Horthy announces Hungary’s exit from the war. The news gave a brief relief for the imperiled Budapest Jews. Germany forces Horthy’s resignation and the transfer of power to the fascist Arrow Cross. This results in violent anti-Jewish actions, including the shooting of Jews into the Danube. An armed revolt in Pest, by Jewish Labor servicemen is quickly squashed. Deportations and death marches resume on October 21.

341

4.18. RESCUING JEWS - WALLENBERG AND OTHERS Date: May 1944 – February 1945

Quote: “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5

342

ON THE SHELF:

Yad Vashem has recognized over 800 Hungarian rescuers. The list also includes individuals who endangered their own lives like lieutenant colonel Imre Reviczky. Swedish diplomat Raul Wallenberg, Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz or the Spanish diplomat Ángel Sanz Briz as well as others who saved thousands of Jews.

They are symbolic figures of this form of resistance.

Text content: The International Community and humane Hungarians can hardly keep pace with the unfolding murder process of the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators. Rescue efforts with the cooperation of the underground Zionists gain momentum after the Arrow Cross October coup, when widespread brutality becomes more prominent. The main forms of rescue in Budapest, by diplomats and the Red Cross, are the protection of entire buildings, or the issuance of protection letters (Schutzpasse) to individuals. Underground Jewish activists forge ID papers.

343

OF JEWISH UNDERGROUND 4.19. ACTIVITIES IN BUDAPEST Date: May 1944 – February 1945

Quote: “the Zionist movement in Hungary never had widespread support, but … it won the hearts of youngsters...”

David Gur (Endre Grósz), underground Zionist activist, 2004 This is how the generation of the flood probably tried to hold on to Noah’s ark ... The house was small, three stories high ( just like Noah’s ark), and whoever passed it from the outside would never believe that it could hold thousands of people inside.”

Meir Hirschfeld, From the Gates of Weitz to the Gates of Zion, Haifa 2000, pp. 230–231.

344

ON THE SHELF:

List of specific names of the Budapest Jewish resistance

Text content: Despite unimaginable obstacles, individuals and Orthodox and Zionist groups make heroic rescue efforts. They distribute thousands of authentic and forged identity papers, and establish hundreds of hiding places, especially for children. A particularly dangerous action is wearing Arrow Cross uniforms to rescue Jews. A major rescue site is the Budapest “Glass House”, initiated by an Orthodox Zionist activist, Moshe Krausz, and protected by Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz.

345

4.19. THE BUDAPEST GHETTO

Date: 29th of Nov. – 10th of December 1944 to January 1945

Quote: “They … beat us like a bunch of cows and shouted: Now we will finish with you … Jews!”

Community archive (DEGOB) testimony given by V. R., November 1944

346

Text content: In early December the Arrow Cross regime forces nearly seventy thousand Jews into a central ghetto in the historical Jewish Quarter. Those under Red Cross and diplomatic protection, especially in designated children’s houses, are in buildings located outside the Ghetto. The Jewish Council faces the impossible responsibility for internal affairs and Jewish activists attempt to relieve the dire shortage of food, water, medical and hygienic needs.

347

4.20. KILLINGS AT THE DANUBE BANKS

Quote: “The Arrow Cross … took them [boys of the orphanage] to the Danube barefoot, and started to shoot them into the river. They shot down four of them, and the others cried and shouted loudly...”

Community archive testimony (DEGOB) given by T. A., 1945

348

Text content: Terror by Arrow Cross members intensifies against Jews, especially after Soviet troops surround Budapest in late December 1944. Frequently Arrow Cross tie up their victims, drag them to river, and shoot them as they fall into the freezing river, which survivors referred to as the “red Danube”, paraphrasing Strauss’s waltz “The Blue Danube”.

349

4.21.

DEATH MARCHES TO THE WEST Date: November 6, 1944

Quote: “We walked the road towards Vienna, in endless lines: men, women and children. “ Community archive testimony (DEGOB) given by K. M., 1945

350

Text content: On November 6, the first death marches organized by the Arrow Cross began.

Thousands of Jewish civilians and forced labor brigades – including women between the ages of 16 and 40 – were driven west. The exhausted, sick, tormented people were driven on foot. Those who lost their strength were executed. Upon reaching the Hungarian-Austrian border, they were assigned to fortification work and then sent to concentration camps.

351

4.22. THE LIBERATION OF BUDAPEST GHETTO Date: 18th of January 1945

Quote: “May God give us that some other relatives would report us alive… […] … there is no single survivor … who would not be in grief.”

Letter of Lili Korda written to Budapest from Stockholm, where she was sent to recuperate, 1945

352

Text content: On January 17, 1945 the Red Army occupied the Pest side and liberated the Budapest ghetto and “protected houses” in Pest with some 90,000 survivors. Jews on the Buda side of the city liberated by Soviet forces on February 13, 1945. The completion of Soviet occupation of Hungary took place by April 13, 1945. Soviet military made massive random arrests of civilians, including Jewish survivors. Officials arrested Raoul Wallenberg, who is never again seen as a free man, His fate will remain in dispute.

353

5. POST WAR GALLERY 354

In the summer of 1945, the remnants of Hungarian Jewry are scattered among the Displaced Persons [DP] camps in the West, soviet prisoner-of-war [POW] camps, and the ruins of Budapest. About half a million Hungarian Jewish lives have been lost, homes destroyed, but many of the survivors start to rebuild a new personal and community life. Some Jews feel the Communist system will assure them safety and accept the unarticulated but very much felt demand to give up their Jewish identity, while others realize that the communist regime will not allow them to practice their faith. The fall of Communism in 1989, allows a more overt antisemitism to surface alongside the rebirth of the Jewish life in Hungary, where a blossoming community welcomes the new millennium.

355

GERMANY SURRENDERS, 5.1. VE (VICTORY IN EUROPE) CELEBRATED WORLDWIDE Date: May 7-8, 1945

356

Quote: “The things I saw beggar description... first-hand evidence … if ever there develops a tendency to [deny and] charge these allegations merely to propaganda.”

General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander Allied Forces, after visiting Ohrdruf concentration camp. April 12, 1945 Text: On January 27, 1945, the Soviets liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau. Germany surrenders and May 8 is declared Victory in Europe [VE] day, primarily with celebrations worldwide, except for the bittersweet experience of most Jewish survivors. Allied troops find abandoned concentration and death camps with evidence of indescribable horror. The world has a hard time digesting the reality of the Nazi death machine. Hungary, with other Eastern European countries, are converted into Communist satellite states.

357

5.2. TRIALS AND SHOCK OF THE WORLD Date: 1945-1949

Quote: “Civilization can no[t] ... compromise with the social forces which would…[be] renewed if we deal… indecisively ...”

Justice Robert Jackson, US prosecutor at Nuremberg Trials

358

Text: Shortly after the end of WWII, the Allies convene major war crimes trials, notably the Nuremberg Trials, as a symbolic attempt to use an international court of law to prosecute unprecedented crimes as well as inform the world of the Nazi atrocities. This results in the implementation of the legal concept, “crimes against humanity”. The indictment of the defendants, however, does not focus on the Holocaust as the tragedy of the Jewish people.

359

5.3. HUNGARIAN TRIALS AFTER THE WAR Date: 1945-1967

Quote: “I never saw anyone acting more cowardly and miserably as he did.”

US Colonel Martin Himler’s recalling László Endre’s behaviour upon his capture Text: From February 1945, the new Hungarian leadership arrests major figures of the Arrow Cross and the Horthy era, who face trial by the “People’s” Courts. Mainly led by communist functionaries operating under Russian occupation, some of the culprits are sentenced for political reasons, but many were seriously involved in the Holocaust. Some are sentenced to capital punishment, including senior officials like Ferenc Szálasi, László Baky, László Endre, and Andor Jaross.

360

ON THE SHELF:

People’s Courts slowly stop operations, the last one in April 1950 in Szeged. Later, in 1967, a large trial is held, in which members of the Arrow Cross Party group of Budapest’s District XIV (Zugló) are taken to court, and in a long, 7-month trial receive sentences for their brutal activities back in 1944.

361

BITTER-SWEET JEWISH EXPERIENCE OF 5.4. THE LIBERATION Date: 1945

ON THE SHELF:

362

The Kielce Pogrom results in the mass flight of some 100,000 Jews from Poland and neighboring countries to DP camps in the West. Despite the traumas of their lost childhood most survivors try to recreate families and a vibrant Jewish life.

Zionism offers survivors a hope for a national future. Even if some are not to make it their home, they ardently support and embrace the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Israel as their cause.

Hungarian survivor Rabbis like the Klausenburger (Kolozsvár) Rebbe, Rabbi Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam, and the rabbi from Vác, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels, also have a major role in strengthening the survivors and in the rebuilding efforts of creating schools and religious institutions in the DP camps. .

Quote: “[We had] no joy at our liberation. We had lost our families, our homes. We had no place to go to, nobody to hug. Nobody was waiting for us anywhere.”

Testimony of Hadassah [Bimko] Rosensaft who had lost her husband and son at Auschwitz “We had literally lost our ability to feel pleased and we had to relearn it slowly.”

Viktor Frankl, An Austrian-Jewish psychiatrist recalls a conversation the evening of his liberation,1945 Text: Following liberation Jews face daunting challenges. Survivors returning home face the heartbreaking reality of loss of families, homes, and communities. Often, they encounter hostile attitudes by neighbors who have occupied their homes and possessions. In Poland, this accelerates into numerous acts of anti-Jewish violence, killing hundreds of Jews. In Kielce, on July 4, 1946, a major pogrom kills some 42 Jews, while police look on.

363

ON THE SHELF:

364

Religious, spiritual, communal, and cultural life are all in ruins, as is the general financial state of the country. Many of the survivors have not only to struggle with reestablishing their families or starting a new life after losing all their beloved ones, but also to wrestle with the shadows of the horrific experience of the war years, that their fellows were most typically not interested in listening to. No wonder that most survivors – especially those that stayed in Hungary – adopted silence in an effort to escape their troubles.

After the war, antisemitic sentiments erupt in Hungary, leading to violent incidents against the Jews, who are still dealing with the terrible consequences of the Holocaust. These feelings stem from the antisemitic propaganda of the Horthy and Szálasi era, and the tensions created after the liberation: the defeat of the war, the economic crisis and especially Soviet occupation and the violence perpetrated by Soviet soldiers. On the other hand, antisemitism is also cynically fueled by the communists themselves by placing the blame for post-war financial problems on “capitalist Jews”. These phenomena also exist in other Communist-controlled countries in Eastern Europe.

November 1945: Blood libel in Kaposvár December 1945: Antisemitic tensions and brawl in the National Theatre May - November 1946: Blood libel spreads in Budapest 20-21 May, 1946: The pogrom of Kunmadaras May 1946: Blood libel in Hajduhadhaz and Debrecen June 1946: Blood libel in Mezőberény and Dömsöd July 1946: Antisemitic campaign in Szolnok July 1946: Blood libel in Komló July 1946: Pogrom in Miskolc November 1946: “Renewed” Numerus Clausus regarding scholarships at the university of Pécs February 1948: Desecration of the Synagogue of Zugló

5.5 WHERE AND HOW TO CONTINUE Date: 1945-1949

Quote: “I felt that my former home country which I have been loyal to…. betrayed me… So I was under no obligation to go back ” Testimony of Joseph Hausner, Hungarian Jewish Survivor “One man in uniform asked for my ticket. ...I told him, I have no money, I am coming from abroad… from Buchenwald.”

Imre Kertész: Faithlessnes Text: In 1945, Hungary annuls anti-Jewish regulations. Nevertheless, Jewish survivors face various hardships.

Tragically many have lost family members or never learnt their fate. In many cases their property has been confiscated by others. Rising social and economic distress has cynically raised again the “Jewish card” in the political dialog. Survivors face a dilemma: to stay or leave for the West or the Holy Land.

By 1949, Hungary has become a Stalinist regime and borders have been sealed for years.

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ON THE SHELF: Quote: “By the time I came back to Keresztúr, we already had an entire congregation… [...] The memorial date of Reb Shayele was in May, by that time I was already elected as Rabbi.”

Testimony of Rabbi Rubin Beeris, 1945

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Rehabilitation activities mainly include three areas: 1.

rescued by Hungarian rphanages during the war. Efforts are made to return the children to their family and their people, and to build educational institutions for all ages. The activity carried out by different streams - Orthodox, Neologs and Zionists. The Zionist youth movements work to train the youth to immigrate to Eretz Israel. An additional difficulty is the absence of rabbis and religious leaders, most of whom perished and most of whose teachings was lost. Only a few dozen of them survived and returned to the community, out of a sense of mission and a desire to serve as a support for survivors in their community. The first yeshiva is established in Budapest, after hundreds of yeshivahs were destroyed in the Holocaust: it was a Yeshiva of Eger (“Erlau”). The Neolog Rabbinical Seminary reopens on March 22, 1945.

Establishing an infrastructure for religious life for the individual and the public - synagogues, kosher kitchens and kosher slaughterhouses, ritual baths (mikvah). Religious courts are established to solve the problematic status of women and men whose spouses have disappeared 3. Mutual aid: The communities set up aid organizations for (“agunot”). the survivors,. These activities are supported by Jewish 2. Concern for children: Without children, the survivors from relief organizations from the United States: the Joint and the Hungary see themselves as a generation without a future.

Rabbinical Rescue Committee.

Outside Budapest, 87 percent of Jews under the age of twenty were murdered, and hundreds of children were

5.6 JEWISH LIFE AFTER LIBERATION Date: 1945-49

Quote: “Where are the community institutions: its study halls, its yeshivas? ... the memories do not give rest, rise and fall without letting go.”

Meir Hirschfeld, a native of Vác, For the sake of telling, (Safed 1987), p. 94 Text: Holocaust survivors find their communities devastated. Small groups begin to rehabilitate the communities and within a few months are able to establish the main institutions of public life. During the period of 1945-1950, communities that seemed to have been destroyed, come to life again: 288 communities out of 700 that operated in Hungary before the War. However, these small communities last only a short period.

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THE STATE OF ISRAEL 5.7. FOUNDING EMERGENCE FROM POWERLESSNESS Date: May 15, 1948

ON THE SHELF:

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The 20th century saw the end of the era of Europe, North Africa, and Asia as the central focus of Jewish history, and their replacement with two new major centers of Jewish life in Israel and the US. Perhaps the most striking juxtaposition regarding the reality of the Jewish world is the emergence from powerlessness. The Jewish State is the center of religious, spiritual, cultural and scientific life. It also has the possibility to protect Jewish interests and independently act on behalf of endangered Jews worldwide together with assertive and influential Jewish communities outside of Israel. This Jewish activism is undoubtedly a transformative development in the post-Holocaust era.

Quote: “By virtue of our historical and natural right, and based on UN General Assembly resolution we declare on the establishment of a Jewish State in the land of Israel” David Ben Gurion, 14th of May 1948 Text: 1948 marks a post-Holocaust transformational event, the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land after nearly 2,000 years. The young state, with a population of just 600.000, focuses first on defense against its Arab neighbors and absorbing over one million Jewish refugees from Europe and Muslim countries. Today, Israel is the center of Jewish life, a democracy of 9 million, that continues to be a haven for all Jews around the world.

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5.8. POSTWAR HASSIDIC JEWISH RENAISSANCE Date: May 15, 1948

ON THE SHELF:

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In Israel among the Hassidic sects that flourish is the Hungarian Klausenburg (Kolozsvár) sect – which establish the Laniado hospital and the Kiryat Sanz community in Netanya, and the Polish Vizhnitz, Gur, and Belz dynasties.

In the US, the Hungarian Papa, Satmar, as well as the Polish Bobover dynasties flourish. The Hassidic Square Town residential community is created in suburban Rockland. In Canada, the Hungarian Tosch (Tass) dynasty creates a vibrant community. The Russian Chabad movement led by the “Lubavitcher Rebbe”, with thousands of his followers as his “emissaries” around the world, reaches out and builds on the ruins of hundreds of once flourishing communities as well as establishing new outposts of Jewish life in the far east.

Quote: “If we rebuild and raise a proud Jewish generation, we will have triumphed.”

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneersohn zz”l Text: Orthodox Hassidic leaders after the Holocaust seek to recreate the communal environment reminiscent of the “old home” in the “new world”. Others develop a broader approach, focusing on Jewish outreach to strengthen Jewish identity. Most noteworthy is the Hassidic leader of the Chabad movement, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneersohn, the “Lubavitcher Rebbe”, who starteds an unprecedented “return to the traditions’’ movement.

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5.9. THE EICHMANN TRIAL IN JERUSALEM Date: 1961

Quote: “…. I am not standing here alone. With me are six million accusers. …and cry: ‘I accuse.’ “ Opening statement of Prosecutor Gideon Hausner, 1961

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Text: Many high-ranking Nazi criminals escape after the war to the west, or to South America.

Ultimately, the State of Israel and individual survivors seek to hold them accountable. Adolf Eichmann, the major figure behind deportation is captured by the Mossad in Argentina. The internationally-televised Jerusalem Eichmann trial in 1961 marks the first time that the tragic experiences of Jewish survivors are revealed to the world.

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ON THE SHELF: Quote: “At Jerusalem the victims speak and the Holocaust is at the center of the trial.”

Telford Taylor, American lawyer at the Nuremberg trials, reporting for the Spectator, 21 April 1961.

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“For the first time the story of what happened to the Jews of Europe was at the center of the narrative…. The sight of survivors giving testimony and the sympathetic reception of their stories emboldened Jews within and outside of Israel...”

David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann, (2004), p. 325.

“Only with the capture of Adolf Eichmann was a younger generation of Israelis obliged to confront this terrible chapter in Jewish history. Holocaust survivors were finally given the chance to speak...”

Haim Gouri, “Facing the Glass Booth”, (1994) p. 154

“Of greater social and historical meaning was the parade of witnesses, survivors of the Shoah, who took the stand and riveted the attention of millions. Ordinary men and women, to whom no one had paid attention till then… The murder of the European Jews became suddenly the story of individuals, not huge numbers; and Israeli society would never be the same.”

Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats (2002), p. 1 Several survivors of the Holocaust, including Simon Wiesenthal and Tuvia Friedman dedicate themselves to hunting Nazi war criminals. Their activities continue for decades and have brought dozens of war criminals to justice in different countries, including some Hungarian collaborators as Sándor Képíró (2011) and László Csatáry (2011).

These trials are generally of great international interest and reflect the continuous crimes against humanity and the Jewish nation, as well as reflecting Jewish empowerment. The Eichmann trial is especially a symbolic assertion of Israel’s right to represent Jews past and present, a display of Jewish sovereignty that was impossible before Israel’s independence in 1948.

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CHURCH AND LEGACY 5.10. THE OF THE HOLOCAUST Quote: “For this failure that took place during the catastrophe 50 years ago, we apologize now in front of God.” Pope John Paul II, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 2000

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Text content: Recognizing after the Holocaust the impact of thousands of years of Jew-hatred, Pope John XXIII leads a transformation of the Vatican’s teachings. A Vatican Council proclamation in 1966, Nostra Aetate [In Our Time] absolves the Jews from the centuries-old blame for the crucifixion of Jesus. John Paul II addresses Jews as “older brothers”. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, in 2000, he apologizes and condemns antisemitism as anti-Christian. Other Churches also examine their teachings.

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ON THE SHELF:

history, and urges us not only to remember, but also to ask for atonement. …in this tragedy, not only the representatives of this unreasonable wickedness are guilty,

“The Catholic Church …is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution, and displays of antisemitism ... by Christians at any time and in any place.”

Pope John Paul II, who experienced the events of the Holocaust in Krakow, Poland, at Yad Vashem, March 2000 “French-Jewish historian, Julius Isaac, studied the origins of antisemitism, which 378

led to changing the teachings of the Church. His research (1948) played a major role in revoking the “Teaching of Contempt” regarding the Jews. French Bishops went even further in their condemnation of the Holocaust, as did German clerics.

In the USA, the American Lutheran Church renounced the teachings of Martin Luther on the Jews, lest they perpetuate antisemitism.”

Joint Statement by the Bishops and Pastors of the Hungarian Churches about the Holocaust and its Remembrance, December 1994 “… The Holocaust, as per the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, is considered an outrageous crime by us all, a crime, that is a burden on our communities and our

but also those, who claimed themselves to be the members of our churches, but due to personal fear, cowardice or opportunism did not raise their voices against the mass humiliation, deportation and murder of their fellow Jewish countrymen. For this failure that took place during the Catastrophe 50 years ago, we apologize now in front of God. … In the spirit of the gospels, we must do our best to form real humanism, and to cease, once and for all, the antisemitism, all sorts of discrimination, so that the crimes of the past shall never repeat themselves.”

379 Budapest, 1994.

5.11. COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY Date: 1949

Quote: “...Hungary never had a Jewish king. It seems to us that you would like to be one. … we will never tolerate this.”

Lavrenti Beriya, Head of the KGB to Mátyás Rákosi, First secretary of the Hungarian Worker’s Party, in 1953, June 13 380

Text: By 1949 Hungary was transformed by election fraud into a Stalinist dictatorship led by Mátyás Rákosi, a Jewish-born communist. Despite the fact that in the 1945 elections, approximately 20-25% of the Jews voted for the Communist Party, and that the Communists regime practically destroyed reestablished Jewish life, the Jewish presence seemed highly visible in government agencies, reviving in many a repressed sense of antisemitism.

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5.12. 1956 REVOLUTION Date: 1956

Quote: “After the Red Army suppressed the revolt, we left everything... hand in hand we arrived, through uncharted routes, to Vienna ... in 1957 … we kissed the grounds of the Holy Land.”

Meir Hirschfeld, a native of Vác, For the Sake of Telling, (Safed 1987), p. 141

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Text: On October 23, 1956, a nationwide revolution breaks out against the Communist regime resulting in 2,500 Hungarian fatalities and 200,000 refugees fleeing, among them 20,000 Jews. Many orthodox. The revolution unleashes a wave of anti-Jewish incidents. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government brutally suppresses opposition. After the revolution many of the reestablished Jewish communities cease forever to exist.

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SIX DAY WAR 5.13. TURNING POINT IN RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL Date: 1967

Quote: “some of the party membership…[in relation to Israel] did not respond as true Communists.

I don’t want to link this to any racial elements” János Kádár, the Soviet appointed leader of Hungary, addressing the Political Committee, 1967 384

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Text: On June 5, 1967, war breaks out between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries.

Surprisingly, in just 6 days, Israel is victorious. The embarrassing losses to Soviet’s allies, Egypt and Syria, results in a diplomatic war. The Soviets demand the cessation of diplomatic ties with eastern bloc countries. Hungarian-Israeli relations remain hostile until 1989. The anti-Israeli sentiment often becomes a new international form of postmodern antisemitism.

OF COMMUNISM 5.14. -FALL THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA Date: 1988-1990

Quote: “We had to face the extensive wish of people that wanted to talk about [their Jewish identity]” Györgyi Bollman, a founder of MAZSIKE, 1999 386

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ON THE SHELF:

From the 1990s important educational and legislative steps by the state for the national remembrance of the Holocaust and initial steps for Jewish restitution are made. While antisemitic sentiment unfortunately is still present in Hungarian society, violent acts of antisemitism are rare. Budapest in 2021 has approximately 100,000 Jews, with 4 Jewish schools, 2 Jewish universities and some 20 active synagogues.

Text: From 1989, with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, Communist rule ends in Hungary. Diplomatic relationships are renewed with Israel. In 2004, Hungary joins the European Union. The democratic changes, the right of free speech and religion results in significant developments in Jewish cultural and religious life, notably Holocaust commemoration. Meanwhile, antisemitic sentiments also become more visible.

ON THE SHELF:

From the 1990s important educational and legislative steps by the state for the national remembrance of the Holocaust and initial steps for Jewish restitution are made. While antisemitic sentiment unfortunately is still present in Hungarian society, violent acts of antisemitism are rare. Budapest in 2021 has approximately 100,000 Jews, with 4 Jewish schools, 2 Jewish universities and some 20 active synagogues.

1990-2021 REVIVAL OF JEWISH LIFE / TIMELINE

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“Foundation of MAZSIKE, the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Organization (1988)

Inauguration of the renovated largest European synagogue,

Arrival of the first Shaliach (emissary) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (1989)

the historic Dohany Temple (1996)

Foundation of the Lauder Yavne Jewish School (1990)

Establishment of the Military Rabbinate within the Hungarian Defense Forces (1994)

Foundation of the JDC Camp in Szarvas (1990)

Ordination of new, young Neolog and Orthodox rabbis (1999, 2003, 2005)

Foundation of the orthodox American Endowment School (1991)

Renovation of the historic Mikvah (Ritual bath) of Budapest (2005)

New Jewish Journals (Múlt és Jövő, Szombat, Egység, Gut Sabesz) (1990-)

Formal re-opening of the historic Old Buda Synagogue in 2010

New Jewish youth organisations since 1990 (Habonim Dror, Hashomer

Establishment of the Jewish Action and Protection League,

Hatzair, Hanoar Hatzioni, Bnei Akiva, Atid etc.)

to combat Hungarian antisemitism (2012)

Foundation of JCC Budapest – Bálint Ház (1994)

Opening of major kosher meat processing factory, Csengele (2017) New synagogues open in Budapest and suburbs (2019-2021)

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LEGACY 5.15. CONTEMPORARY OF THE HOLOCAUST Quote: “… the lowest depth and the biggest shame of our history.” Árpád Göncz, President of Hungary in Csurgó, 18th of April, 2000

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“We have a difficult history behind us… Hungary committed a crime...… we decided to collaborate with the Nazis instead of protecting the Jewish community. This shall never happen again.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, July 18, 2017, Budapest Text: Holocaust survivors responded to survival in the most Biblical of ways: Remembering evil and suffering to deepen international conscience, by enlarging memory and broadening responsibility. The ancient Israelites responded to slavery and the Egyptian Exodus in this exact way. Hence, survival required Jewish empowerment; it accelerated the need of creating Israel and its army. The Holocaust remains an event singular in its relevance, and therefore Holocaust remembrance has increasingly become a basic part of national memory in most western countries. In 2005, the United Nations, declared January 27 as international Holocaust Remembrance Day. Because of Holocaust denial and antisemitism, countries have intensified the emphasis on Holocaust commemoration and education..

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MAJOR INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST RELATED EVENTS: •

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December 9, 1948: The Convention for the Prevention of Crimes of Genocide is adopted by the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights will follow the next day. Both these come in the wake of the work of Jewish lawyer, Rafael Lemkin.

•

April 12, 1951: Holocaust and Resistance Memorial Day is established by Israel’s Knesset (parliament).

•

Establishment of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), 1952.

•

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April 1978: American TV broadcasts the docudrama The Holocaust over four consecutive nights, bringing the event to the attention of tens of millions of viewers worldwide.

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May 14, 1978: US President Jimmy Carter announces the establishment of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust to recommend an appropriate American national memorial.

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September 4, 1979: The Office of Special Investigation (OSI) is established in Washington to investigate Nazi war criminals who have escaped to the United States.

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October 1980: The United States Holocaust Memorial Council is established by a unanimous act of Congress to plan and build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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June 1981: More than 6,000 survivors gather in Jerusalem for the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

May 18, 1953: The cornerstone ceremony is held in Jerusalem for the Yad Vashem Memorial. Four years later in 1957, the first buildings at Yad Vashem are opened to the public. They include an archives and library building, and in 1961 the Ohel Yizkor (Hall of Remembrance).

•

April 1983: More than 20,000 American Jewish Holocaust survivors gather in Washington for the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Among the speakers are President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush.

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1954: Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner Trial. Kasztner (a Hungarian leader of the Zionist group during the Nazi occupation) is accused of collaborating with the Nazis. On appeal he is exonerated. (See text)

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1985: French movie director Claude Lanzmann releases Shoah, a 9½ hour documentary on the Holocaust.

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1961-1962: Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem (See text).

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May 5–7, 1985: U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s ceremonial visit to a Bitburg, Germany, cemetery where Waffen-SS troops are buried provokes an international controversy.

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1989–1990: Communist rule throughout Central and Easter Europe, ends, allowing true confrontation with the singular fate of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, replacing the generic reference of “Victims of Fascism”

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August 1998: Swiss banks agree to pay $1.25 billion to compensate Holocaust victims for stolen assets.

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August 19, 1998: The Italian insurance group Assicurazioni Generali agrees to pay $100 million to Holocaust victims as compensation for previously unpaid insurance.

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February 1993: The Beit HaShoah / Museum of Tolerance opens in Los Angeles.

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April 19, 1993: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opens in Washington, D.C.

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October 1993: Schindler’s List, a film directed by Steven Spielberg, opens in U.S. theaters, where it is seen by tens of millions of Americans, as well as millions of people worldwide. It will win seven Academy Awards.

December 3, 1998: At a meeting in Washington, 44 nations agree to return fine art looted from victims of the Nazis.

•

1994: With the profits from Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg establishes the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to record on videotape the personal testimonies of 50,000 Holocaust survivors. Within five years, 52,000 testimonies will be taken in 32 languages in 57 countries.

February 16, 1999: Germany establishes a $1.7 billion Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future Fund.

It is financed by the German government and major German corporations that had profited from forced labor during the Nazi era.

•

May 1996: Swiss bankers and the World Jewish Congress decide to look into the misappropriation of Jewish funds during and after the Holocaust.

January 2000: The prime minister of Sweden convenes an international conference of 21 heads of state and delegations representing 46 countries to promote Holocaust education. Today known as IHRA

•

April 2000: In a British court, Holocaust denier David Irving loses the libel suit that he brought against historian Deborah Lippstadt. The court finds that Irving did indeed falsify the historical record, and that he is an antisemite and a racist. Because Irving has been the most erudite and visible proponent of the denial movement, this is a major defeat for groups and individuals who have followed his lead.

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November 1, 2005: UN General Assembly designates January 27 as Annual International Day of Commemoration to Honor Holocaust Victims. The date coincides with various national days of memory marked by many countries using the date Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated in 1945.

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•

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October 23, 1996: Peter Hug, a Swiss historian, shows how Switzerland used funds of Holocaust victims to settle claims by Poland and Hungary.

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September 1997: The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust opens in New York City.

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October 1997: Accused former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon goes on trial in France for the deportations of Jews from France, including children

395

MAJOR HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST RELATED EVENTS: •

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April 16, 2005- On the 60th anniversary marking the liberation of Budapest,, The Hungarian Government erects The Danube Memorial of shoes adjacent to the Parliament. Plaques in various languages note: “ TO THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS SHOT INTO THE DANUBE BY ARROW CROSS MILITIAMEN IN 1944-45.”

• 1975: Hungarian survivor Imre Kertesz’s novel, Fatelesness, describing his wartime experiences in Hungary and the concentration camps, is published. He is the first Hungarian awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.

December 2009 – Elie Wiesel visits Hungary to attend a conference at the Parliament about the Hungarian-Jewish coexistence.

•

December 1986: Hungarian survivor Elie Wiesel is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as Holocaust witness and his international efforts for human rights and human dignity.

Hungary’s radical right party, Jobbik, which was founded as a party in 2003, receives considerable support and becomes the third most popular party in the 2009 EU and 2010 national elections.

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February 2016: Hungary wins its first foreign language Oscar since the fall of Communism. Son of Saul (Saul fia) produced in 2015, a drama set in a death camp, depicts the dilemmas of the Jews forced to work in the gas chambers.

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The first official visit of an Israeli PM to Hungary since the fall of communism: Benjamin Netanyahu pays an official visit to Hungary on the July 18, 2017.

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March 2021: World-famous Hungarian Olympic champion, Ágnes Keleti who has lived in Israel since 1957 has been decorated with the Commander’s Cross and the Star of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

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1994: The Hungarian government officially apologizes for Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust.

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1994: Joint Statement and apology of the Hungarian Churches

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1997: Establishment of MAZSÖK for Holocaust restitution, the Hungarian Jewish Heritage Public Foundation.

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1999: The Hungarian government agrees to establish a Holocaust Memorial Center. The Museum on Páva St. opens in 2004.

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2000: The Hungarian government declares April 16, as Hungary’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day.

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