The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, Condensed Edition

Notes

Notes Chapter 1 1. Braham, Politics, 2. 2. The Jews of Hungary were emancipated under Law No. XVII of December 22, 1867. On October 1, 1895, the Jewish faith was legally recognized by the state (Law No. XLII) as a “received” (i.e., recognized) religion having a status equal to that of the Christian churches. 3. For example, of the 4,807 physicians in Hungary in 1900, 2,321 (48 percent) were Jewish. While between 1890 and 1900 the total number of attorneys in Hungary grew by 7.2 percent, the number of Jewish attorneys increased by 68.6 percent. Braham, Politics, 9. 4. This view was articulated by Count Pál Teleki, one of the key political figures of the interwar period. Ibid., 145. 5. Lévai, Zsidósors, 17. 6. On November 20, 1940, Hungary was the first country to join the Tripartite Pact, which had been concluded by Germany, Italy, and Japan two months earlier. Shortly thereafter, Hungary also joined the Anti-Comintern Pact and left the League of Nations. 7. According to the census of 1941, the Felvidék area had a Jewish population of 67,876; Carpatho-Ruthenia, 78,087; Northern Transylvania, 164,052; and the Délvidék, 14,202. For some details on the acquired territories, see Braham, Politics, 133–35, 148–51, 167–76, 184–85. 8. For details on the many ramifications of these laws, see ibid., 125–30, 151–60, 200–201. 9. By far the most important among these were the National Jewish Aid Campaign (OMZSA), basically a fund-raising organization, and the Welfare Bureau of Hungarian Jews (MIPI), supported primarily through OMZSA funding. 10. The Neolog (also known as Reform or Congressional) congregations consisted primarily of the assimilationist strata of Hungarian Jewry that adopted “more modern, progressive” ecclesiastical practices. The adherents of the Orthodox congregations clung to the traditional rituals and practices of Judaism. The relatively small Status Quo (also known as Status Quo Ante) congregations were composed of those who rejected the positions of both major groups. For details, see Braham, Politics, 86–92. 11. Ibid., 129–30. 12. For a detailed statistical overview of the losses of Hungarian Jewry, see ibid., 1296–1301. See also László Varga, “The Losses of Hungarian Jewry: A Contribution to the Statistical Overview” in Studies on the Holocaust in Hungary, Randolph L. Braham, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 256– 65. For a different accounting of the losses of Hungarian Jewry, providing 267 268 Notes to Chapter 2 much lower figures, see Tamás Stark, Magyarország második világháborús embervesztesége (The human losses of Hungary during the Second World War) (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1989). Chapter 2 1. Braham, Politics, 77–79. 2. For details on the congregations and communal organizations, see ibid., 86–92. 3. According to the terms of this law, the Israelite Confession was no longer identified as equal in law with the Christian denominations. The bill went into effect as Law No. VIII on June 19, 1942. Under it, the representatives of the Jewish community in the Upper House were deprived of their seats, and the payment of dues by Jews to their congregations could no longer be enforced. 4. The Relief and Rescue Committee (Vaadat ha’Ezra ve’ha’Hatzalah) of Budapest identified the number of Jewish refugees in Hungary in November 1943 as approximately 15,000. Of these, 6,000 to 8,000 were from Slovakia; 1,900 to 2,500 from Poland; 300 to 500 from Yugoslavia; 3,000 to 4,000 from Germany and Austria; and 500 to 1,000 from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Der Kastner-Bericht, 45. 5. For details on the KEOKH, see Braham, Politics, 206–7. 6. For further details about the deportation of the “alien” Jews and their massacre near Kamenets-Podolsk, see ibid., pp. 207–14. See also Judit Fejes, “On the History of Mass Deportation From Carpatho-Ruthenia in 1941,” in The Holocaust in Hungary. Fifty Years Later, Randolph L. Braham and Attila Pók, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 305–28. 7. OnJanuary17afullerandmoreauthenticaccountoftheeventsintheSajkásarea was given to Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky by Rezső Ruppert, a fellow member of the Lower House. The two parliamentarians communicated their findings to Prime Minister László Bárdossy two days later. See also Enikő Sajti, Megtorlás vagy konszolidáció? Délvidék 1941–1944 (Reprisal or consolidation? The Délvidék...