The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later (review)

Randolph Braham has published a third scholarly volume marking the passing of another decade after the Holocaust in Hungary and Transylvania. Each volume, prepared in collaboration with one or another colleague, is a tribute to Braham’s staggering achievements: not only is he a great academic organizer, but he has written or edited at least forty-five books and hundreds of essays. His many disciples can boast of excellent books themselves despite the fact that—as the historian Radu Ioanid and the archival specialist Ferenc Katona of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum complain in this volume—many original documents remain unavailable to this day. Such documents have either fallen victim to the ravages of time or (Ioanid and Katona suspect) were deliberately destroyed. Possibly some are being withheld due to their incriminating contents.

Authors representing several generations and countries contributed the twenty-one essays in this volume. Encouragingly, some of the younger writers are not of Hungarian background, though several speak and write impeccable Hungarian. The volume is the result of two consecutive conferences in 2004, one in Washington, the other in Budapest. The keynote addresses, reproduced in the book, were provided by Elie Wiesel and Randolph Braham, both Transylvanian victims of the German-Hungarian effort in 1944 to rid Hungary of its 800,000 Jews. Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz; Braham was drafted into forced labor for the Hungarian military. Both survived because by that time neither Germany nor Hungary could completely dispense with the forced labor of the remaining healthy Jews.

Wiesel forcefully raises the issue of why Hungarian Jewry was not saved when survival was a matter of only a few months before the arrival of the Red Army. His wrath is directed not only at the German and Hungarian murderers but also at the Jewish leaders of Hungary who kept the truth from the other Jews. It is directed as well at the Western Allies, who failed to help. Wiesel is particularly critical of the Zionist leader Rezs&ógrave; (Rudolf) Kasztner, whom he accuses of having failed to warn others about their danger, concentrating instead on secret negotiations with the SS to save some 1,600 mostly influential and wealthy Jews: “Many of us could have, would have found hiding places with Christian friends or in the surrounding mountains” (p. xvii).

Seemingly no stone has been left unturned in the arguments that started in 1944 and continue today. Undoubtedly, more people could have found refuge in the mountains; but historical experience dictated to the Hungarian Jews, and not only to their German-appointed “elders,” to seek salvation from their rulers, in this case the government of Regent Miklós Horthy. Christian homes would have been open to only a few Jews in spring 1944, when order still reigned. In the chaotic conditions prevailing after fall 1944, Christian Hungarians hid perhaps 30,000 Budapest Jews and Jewish deserters from labor service, the only Jewish groups left in Hungary. Nor is it easy to agree with Wiesel that Allied bombing of the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz, which would have been almost impossible to achieve, would have saved many lives.

In his address, Braham sounds several themes that other writers today emphasize—among them that the main goal of the Hungarian authorities in 1944 was plunder, and that a large part of the Christian population “gave vent to their rapacious instincts, eager to acquire the homes, wealth, shops, and professional offices of the Jews” (p. xxviii). In their excellent Self-Financing Genocide¹ Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági argue that the Hungarian government hoped to balance its budget through the confiscation of Jewish property.

That material gain was the main motivation for the persecution of the Jews is also argued by, among others, Jan...