Dancing with the Devil Himself:

Had Horthy decided to do his little dance with Hitler before the Italians pulled out, there might have been a small chance that Hitler would have overlooked his effrontery in attempting to pull Hungary out of the war. In the early Spring of 1944, Edmund Veesenmayer, Hitler’s envoy to Budapest had been reporting that, at best, Hungary was a hesitant and unreliable ally. At worst, Hungary was a liability. At seventy-six, the Regent was befuddled by age, and would have to be swept aside. Prime Minister Kállay had made the mistake of his predecessors in thinking that the Russians were the greater threat to Hungarian independence. Veesenmayer was made Reich plenipotentiary, and Hungary ceased, in effect, to be an independent country. Jewish matters would be administered by the SS, two detachments of which soon arrived in Budapest. Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann’s special unit arrived in the capital a few days later. Himmler had already decided to do away with the services of the Abwehr intelligence network, and to absorb it into the SS and the Security Service.

Before his arrest, the Abwehr leader, Winninger did however suggest to Brand and Kasztner that money and valuables might prove to be useful in dealing with the SS, in exchange for something of no value to them: Jewish lives. That was the first suggestion of what became known as the blood for goods deal. Despite what the Abwehr men had said, however, a Jewish community meeting at Samuel Stern’s house concluded that the Reich had greater problems than the Jews. They refused to accept that Hitler and Himmler had already ordered the liquidation of the Jews of Hungary, the last large Jewish population left in central Europe.

Above: Dohányi Street Synagogue

As long as Horthy was still in power, Stern believed, they would still be safe.The Hungarians would not abandon their Jewish citizens. We have lived here for a thousand years, he reminded his friends. Hungarian Jews were fully integrated at all levels of society, especially in manufacturing and commerce, the legal and medical professions, teaching, musical life and the media. Tom’s grandfather, Ármin Leimdörfer (Dádi) had been an officer in the imperial army in the First World War, serving in Serbia, as had many Jews. Nearly twenty per cent of Budapest was Jewish and even the aristocracy and the senior government figures had inter-married and had some Jewish relatives. There was also the poor Jewish quarter in Pest. It was true that these Jews had been prominent (along with other socialists) in the communist revolution of 1919, which had been crushed. There had been no further association with revolutionary violence, but these fears were easy to stoke up by home-grown fascists. The government under Regent Horthy was reluctant to agree to full-scale deportations, but was in no position to resist. Rezső Kasztner described the situation which existed from 19 April onwards:

From now on, the Gestapo ruled unhindered. They spied on the government, arrested every Hungarian who did not suit them, no matter how high their position and, by their presence, instilled fear into those who would have attempted to save the remnants of Hungarian sovereignty or protest against German orders. Concerning the Jewish question, the supreme, the absolute and the unfettered will of the monster ruled… the head of the Jewish command, Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann. 

Sam Springmann was one of the first to ‘disappear’. He had known that he would be high up on the list since, as he told Kasztner, they have me both ways. I am Polish and I am a Jew. Reviving the Europa Plan seemed the only hope now that the German Eagle had landed. Regent Horthy, whose train had been held up near Vienna while the Germans occupied Hungary, announced a new government under the protection of the Reich. Döme Sztójay was named PM. A devout follower of National Socialism, he was a vocal anti-Semite who had been Hungary’s minister in Berlin, where he had formed close relationships with several high-ranking Nazis. German cars sped like angry wasps from street to street, their back seats occupied by machine-gun-wielding SS men. They stopped in front of houses and apartment blocks, dragged people from their homes and took them to the Buda jail or to the Astoria Hotel. Not long before, there had been spring dances in the ballroom of the stately hotel; now the Gestapo had taken over all the floors. Prisoners were held in the basement, their piercing screams keeping pedestrians from the nearby pavements for more than a year following.

On 20 March, Wisliceny called a meeting of representatives of the entire Jewish community at which he instructed them to establish a council whose orders would be obeyed, with no questions asked, by all Jews in the country, not just in the capital. As a first task, the new council had to invite Jewish leaders from across the country to an information meeting to be held on 28 March. The Budapest Jewish leaders were impressed with the respect shown to them by the gentlemanly SS officers. Their job, unbeknown to the assembled Jewish leaders, was to annihilate every one of them as well as all the other Jews in Hungary. They simply wanted to achieve it as calmly and cleanly as possible, without the unpleasantness of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The means to do this lay with the Jewish Council. Despite this plan, more than ten thousand people were arrested during the following week, about a third of them Jewish. Their valuables, including furniture and paintings, were then put into trucks and transported to Germany. The prisoners were beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured.

On 22 March, PM Sztójay informed the government that Dr Veesenmayer had insisted that Jews throughout the country wear a distinguishing yellow star. Regent Horthy asked that, in future, such “requests” should not be made to him. He told Samuel Stern that his hands were tied and that Veesenmayer had told him that, in future, he would be excluded from all political decisions. He had held out for far too long on the Jewish question. The order  went into effect on 5 April. Members of the Council were exempted, together with war invalids and heroes, and those who had converted to Christianity before 1 August 1919. But on 31 March, after a meeting with Adolf Eichmann, the Jewish leaders were stunned by several new decrees regarding Hungarian Jews: they could no longer work as lawyers, journalists, or public servants, or in the theatrical and film arts; they were not allowed to own motor vehicles or to drive them, even if they belonged to someone else. Nor could they own motorbikes or bicycles. They also had to hand in their radios and telephones and all were now expected to wear yellow stars.

On the morning of 3 April, British and American aircraft bombed Budapest for the first time since the beginning of the war. In response, the Hungarian security police demanded that the Jewish Council provide five hundred apartments for Christians who had been affected by the raid. Those Jews moving out of their homes were to be concentrated in apartment buildings in an area between the National Theatre and the Dohány Street synagogue. The following day, 4 April, László Baky and Lieutenant-Colonel László Ferenczy of the gendarmerie met to firm up plans for the ghettoisation and deportation of the Jews of Hungary. All Jews, irrespective of age, sex or illness, were to be concentrated into ghettos and schedules were to be would be set for their deportation to Poland. The few people who were still employed in armaments production or in the mines were temporarily spared, but only until suitable replacements could be found for them. Each regional office would be responsible for its own actions. The “rounding up” of the Jews was to be carried out by the local police and the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie units. If necessary, the police would assist the gendarmerie in urban districts by providing armed help.  It took until 16 April for the full directive and extensive explanations to be typed in multiple copies and sent to local authorities, but the ghettoisation had already begun on 7 April. The orders were marked “secret” and bore the signature of László Baky. He declared:

The Royal Hungarian government will cleanse the country of Jews within a short time. I hereby order the cleansing to be conducted district by district. Jews are to be taken to designated collection camps regardless of gender and age

This was the basis on which the Hungarian government agreed that the Gestapo could organise the removal of the roughly 450,000 Jews from the provinces, but not the 200,000 from Budapest. It was Adolf Eichmann’s task to organise the liquidation of Hungarian Jews. Between 7 April 1944 and 8 July 1944, we know (from the meticulous records kept) that 437,402 men, women and children of all ages were forced to leave their homes, first herded in to ‘collection camps’ or ghettos and then transported to Auschwitz. They were transported in 148 long trains of cattle wagons. Few survived, and of those who did, even fewer returned to their former homes. Once gathered in the collection camps, they were effectively doomed to annihilation, even before they boarded the trains. My wife’s mother avoided deportation herself because, although she had both a Jewish father and step-father, Imre Rosenthal, she was illegitimate and adopted, so there was no proof of her Jewish parentage. As a sixteen year-old, she remembers a Jewish family from the same apartment block in Békescsaba being taken to the detention camp. Some days later her mother made some stew for them and asked her to take it to them, as the camp was not far from the centre of the town. When she approached the guard, a Hungarian gendarme, at the gate to the compound, he raised his machine-gun and threatened to shoot her. She immediately knew this was no bluff, and never tried to make  contact with the family again. The story underlines the futility of resistance to the almost overnight operation which was put into effect across the Hungarian countryside.

Tom Leimdörfer’s Breuer great grandparents were spared the ordeal. They both died the year before and their daughter, Zelma cared for them in their last months. Tom’s grandfather Aladár spent much of his time on his allotment just outside the town, where he also kept bees, enjoying the simple life in retirement. Tom’s mother told him that we visited them in the early spring of 1944, when he was 18 months old, just a few weeks before they were taken. The story of the lively Jewish community in Szécsény was told by the photographer Irén Ács in a moving account and photos of her friends and family. She also survived in Budapest, but nearly all her friends and family perished. Early in May, the Jews of Szécsény were ordered to leave their homes and belongings apart from a small case with a change of clothes and essentials. They were restricted to a ghetto of a few houses near the school. On the 10 June 1944, they were taken under special forces’ escort to the county town of Balassagyarmat, some 20 km away. There were no Germans in Szécsény, the whole operation was carried out by Hungarian special forces. In Balassagyarmat, the Germans supervised the loading of the wagons from the whole region with ruthless efficiency. By nightfall, the long train of cattle wagons carrying over 2,500 men, women and children were on their way to Auschwitz. Tom is in no doubt that his grandparents would have been taken straight to the gas chambers on arrival. The memorial in the Jewish cemetery of  Szécsény has 303 names of those killed in the holocaust from that town of around 6,000 people. A similar fate befell villages across Hungary, where there was no time for any reaction, let alone organised resistance, by the Jewish families or their Christian neighbours. I have recently documented the recollections of the people of Apostag, and these appear in an article elsewhere on this site. The large village, roughly the same size as Szécsény, lost all of its six hundred Jews in one afternoon, transported on their own carts to Kalocsa, with their neighbours watching from the woods. Two weeks later, they were taken in cattle trucks from Kalocsa to Auschwitz.

Apostag

The deportations soon became common knowledge in Budapest and this terrible news was added to the rumours about the extermination camps. One of Tom’s German relatives, having escaped from Dachau had already given an account of the dreadful nature of the camps. Two Slovak men, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz on 7 April 1944. For a week they travelled at night, avoiding the local residents and hiding in barns or outbuildings during the day. When they reached Bratislava, they contacted the Jewish Council the next day. They told their incredible story, illustrated by drawings of the barracks, the gas chambers and crematoria. They reported on the selection process that sent women and children directly from the trains to be gassed, on the desperate attempts of people to save themselves, on the collection of valuables, and on the systematic disposal of bodies. Only twenty years old, Vrba was already a veteran of the most terrifying place on earth. He felt overwhelmed by the importance of his message to all surviving Jews, particularly the Hungarians: do not board the trains.

The Auschwitz Protocols, as Vrba and Wetzler’s report was labeled by the Bratislava Working Group, was translated into German and English within a fortnight. Then they tried to decide what to do with the information, knowing that anyone caught with the document in the occupied countries would be executed, along with its authors. For this reason, the awful truth about Auschwitz was not fully and widely told until after the war. By the time Tom’s second birthday approached, his mother suspected, but did not know for sure, that she had lost her husband and both her parents.

A significant birthday:

While the dreadful events were unfolding in rural Hungary, the Jews of Budapest were living with increasing fear and repression. All had to wear yellow stars and live in homes marked with a yellow star of David. Tom’s house was marked, so they were allowed to stay at home. His grandfather’s timber business was confiscated; his business partner (Imre Révész) had recognised the signs and emigrated to England just before the war. The warm summer of 1944 was also a summer of allied (mainly RAF) airstrikes. Tom often played outside in their small but secluded front garden. They had a radio and were generally the first to hear the air raid warnings. The bombers normally came from the south and the direction given over the air waves was: ‘Baja, Bácska, Budapest’. These were amongst Tom’s first words, acting as an air raid warning to people in the flats above us as he ran around naked in the garden shouting ‘Baja, Bácska, Budapest’! We would then all go down to the cellar, which served as a very inadequate air raid shelter.

Tom’s mother’s brother Bandi had emigrated in 1939 and was in the British Army. He left for a tennis tournament and did not return. He was an illegal immigrant in Britain, sheltered by tennis playing friends, till he had the opportunity to volunteer for the army, change his name to Roy Andrew Fred (R. A. F.) Reynolds and was allowed to stay. The RAF was bombing us, but they were not ‘the enemy’ even though our lives were threatened by them. My father was ‘missing’ on the Russian front, Russian troops were advancing towards Hungary with all the uncertainties and horrors of a siege of Budapest approaching, but they were not our ‘enemy’, but hoped-for liberators. Yet Tom’s maternal grandparents were taken by Hungarian special forces on the orders of the Gestapo with no objection or resistance from their neighbours. Looking back, the ‘enemy’ was war and inhumanity, hatred and anti-Semitism.

There were some signs of hope that summer. Regent Miklós Horthy could no longer stomach the activities of Eichmann. On 29 August he sent word to Edmund Veesenmayer that he had decided there would be no more deportations, at least for the time being. With the transportation of Jews from the provinces completed, there were only the Jews in the capital left. Himmler approved the suspension of deportations and the continuation of negotiations through Kasztner and Brand. Himmler, like the Hungarian government itself, had been thinking of an acceptable way of bringing the war to an end. Once back in his office in Budapest, Kasztner was astonished to learn from Dieter Wisliceny that Eichmann and his unit had been ordered out of Hungary. You have won, the Nazi officer told him, the Sonderkommando is leaving. Eichmann, furious with Himmler’s vacillations, retired to sulk at his estate near Linz. The latter later compensated him with the order of an Iron Cross, Second Class. Kasztner, unlike the members of the Jewish Council, had no faith in Horthy’s protestations that he had been duped into allowing deportations in the first place and even less faith in Himmler’s change of heart. He pressed on with his negotiations for the lives of the remaining Jews of Budapest, Bratislava and Kolozsvár. In the late summer of 1944 a bloody insurrection erupted in Slovakia. A few parachutists from Britain and two Soviet airborne brigades also took part in the uprising, as did some Jewish partisans, including Rudolf Vrba, one of the authors of The Auschwitz Protocols. The uprising failed and led to further reprisals against Bratislava’s Jewish community. In Budapest itself, there was what Kasztner thought of as a brief lull in the terror in the early autumn. Nevertheless, there was a widespread belief that the Germans would pack up and go home. The cafés and restaurants were full, and no-one left even when the sirens sounded.

By mid-October the Second and Third Ukrainian Fronts were ready to execute Stalin’s order to take Budapest quickly. Arrow Cross newspapers accused the Jews of signaling bombers from rooftops, directing bombs to specific targets. Raoul Wallenberg had opened the door of the Swedish Embassy and directed his staff to hand out Swedish protection papers to all Jewish applicants. The certificates claimed that the holders were Swedish citizens awaiting exit visas. The number of Jews with official Swedish papers exceeded 4,500 by the end of October, and another three thousand fake Swedish certificates were handed out by the Rescue Committee and its halutz workers. They all waited for permits to leave the country and be allowed into Palestine. The Swiss Red Cross had received over three million Swiss francs from the Jewish ‘Joint’ in the US to pay for food in the protected Star Houses bearing the Swedish colours, and in the Columbus Street camp.

Throughout the period of Géza Lakatos’ premiership, rumours abounded that Horthy was getting ready to exit the war, and that all he needed was an honourable way out. He wanted to sue for peace, but not if that peace included Stalin. The British and the Americans were not interested and insisted that nothing less than unconditional surrender would do. I have written elsewhere on this site about these unsuccessful diplomatic overtures and how Horthy’s insistence on hanging onto his German alliance, however reluctantly, did not help his country’s cause. In final desperation, Horthy sent Lieutenant General Gábor Faragho across the front lines to present Hungary’s case to the Russians. On 11 October, Faragho returned with a draft armistice agreement requiring Hungary to give up, once again, its historic territories in Transylvania, everything he had fought for during his years as head of state. His hesitation gave the Germans the time they needed to prepare a coup.

On Sunday morning, 15 October, Tom Leimdörfer’s second birthday, there were rumours that the Regent’s son had been abducted, together with a general and two senior officers. It was a warm, sunny autumn morning. German planes had dropped leaflets over the city urging a rebellion against the government. Politicians had also been arrested. Hungarian Radio announced that the Regent would make a general proclamation at 1 p.m. In a soft and shaky voice, Horthy gave a long, detailed statement, in which he announced his decision to sign a separate peace treaty with the Allies, that Hungary had withdrawn from the war and had declared that it is returning to its neutral status. All laws relating to the repression of the Jewish population were revoked. The Reich had lost the war and had also broken its obligations to its Hungarian partner when it had occupied the country in March and arrested many Hungarian citizens. He blamed the Gestapo for dealing with the “Jewish problem” in an inhumane way and claimed that his nation had been forced to persecute the Jews.  The news spread like wildfire on what was a glorious autumn afternoon: Anna Porter has described the scenes…

…the sun was shining and the trees along the boulevards displayed their startling red, yellow and deep-purple colours as if the horrors of the past few weeks had not happened, as if the houses lining the avenues had not been turned into rubble. People came out of their cellars, put on their best clothes and walked, holding hands and greeting each other as in peacetime. Many Jews who had been in hiding paraded their newfound freedom; some tore the yellow stars off their breasts and ordered shots of pálinka in bars where they used to go, or dared to use a public telephone and take rides on streetcars where the tracks had not yet been bombed..

But the atmosphere of general euphoria did not last long. The Germans had listened into every conversation in the castle, and were not surprised by the attempt to break free. They were aware of the plan to bring two Hungarian regiments into the city, and knew of the arming of the Jewish battalions. German troops and armoured vehicles appeared on the streets of Budapest and set up control points. A further announcement came over the waves: Horthy had been forced to abdicate, and the Hungarian Arrow Cross (Nazi) party has formed a government under its leader Ferenc Szálasi. Hungary was back in the war on the Axis side, and all anti-Jewish legislation was back in force. With the Arrow Cross in charge, the Jews realised that Eichmann would be back to complete their transportation and that random killings would be carried out by the Arrow Cross units themselves. Tom Leimdörfer recalls his family’s fears:

The lives of all of us were in immediate danger. What followed was six months of hell redeemed by some amazing bravery and kindness on the part of some who were willing to risk their lives for us.

In hiding…

Edit Leimdörfer, Tom’s mother, in 1957

Tom continues the family’s story:

By now, my grandparents (Sári and Ármin) and my aunt Juci all lived in our flat. Juci’s husband Gyuri was in a labour camp. He had a dreadful accident there in March 1943 when he fell off a scaffolding. For some time, his life was in the balance, but he recovered albeit with a back injury which gave him much pain for the rest of his life. He was allowed home when he was in plaster recuperating, but was then back again in the forced labour camp outside Budapest. As the family wondered what to do on the evening of my eventful second birthday, Dr. Groh arrived. A kindly medical consultant, he was one of my grandfather’s customers who became a friend. He was a Roman Catholic who was appalled by the treatment of Jews and by the apparent acquiescence of his church. He said we were in danger and should leave our home immediately as Jews were being herded from ‘marked’ houses to designated ghettos. He insisted that we should all (15 of us!) go into hiding with his family even though that risked their lives

.

Dr.Groh and his wife had six children. They made a room available for us and kept its shutters closed. For the next eight days we huddled together in that room, joining the family when there was nobody around who might report our presence. With Arrow Cross gangs and police raids everywhere, this was not a safe hiding place and the Groh family were at great risk. In spite of their protests, we crept back to our home one night to pick up some essentials and left for different destinations. Soon after we left, an Allied air raid hit the Groh’s house and tragically one of their daughters was killed. The room where we had been hiding was a pile of rubble.

My mother and I first headed across the Danube to the Pest side, to a house protected by the Swedish Embassy, where Feri bácsi and Manci néni (my grandparents younger siblings) were already staying. The Swiss and Swedish embassies as well as some churches had tried to set up ‘protected houses’ outside the overcrowded main Jewish ghettos. These were not always ‘safe’ as the Arrow Cross raids were unpredictable and (depending on the particular gang commander) would carry out atrocities without respect for any foreign diplomacy or even orders from their own Nazi puppet government, with its very thin veneer of legality. There were no more trains for Auschwitz, but there were the ‘death marches’ towards Austria organised by Eichmann as well as the random Arrow Cross raids. Diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg did all they could to thwart the murderous onslaught by distributing Swedish and Swiss passports and demanding safety for their ‘citizens’, by declaring houses as being under their protection and by threatening allied retribution after the war. With the Russian army advancing, this had some effect.

One Arrow Cross raid resulted in tragic losses for our wider family. On Christmas Day 1944, six members of the family were marched to the banks of the Danube and shot into the river. This included my grandmother’s sister Erzsi, her husband and son as well as three members of Juci’s husband Gyuri’s family. Gyuri’s  mother (Ilonka néni) had a miraculous escape. The shots missed her, she jumped into the freezing cold water and managed to swim far enough downstream to clamber ashore unseen. It was a compassionate policeman who found her shivering and took her along to the Swiss embassy.

My mother followed her instincts as she balanced risks in those desperate weeks as she moved between places of hiding. When she ventured out she did not wear the compulsory yellow star, gambling on her Aryan looks and her false identity documents with no trace of Jewish origin and using her hungarianised maiden name of Lakatos. She told me she had a narrow scrape on one occasion when she was stopped and interrogated and the papers were carefully examined. Even though my mother was a devout  Jewess, I was not circumcised precisely because my mother could foresee the possibility of having to negotiate checkpoints. On this occasion, my genitals were part of the ‘proof’ that we were not Jewish.

For a while, my mother joined Juci and others at a flat provided by Emil and Mary Hajós, which was like a crowded refugee camp. Gyuri (Juci’s husband) managed to get away from the labour camp as a result of Sári mama’s brave and brazen ingenuity and the use of more forged documents. Emil and Mary were friends of the family. They were a Jewish couple who became Christians and worked for a Presbyterian (Calvinist) mission known as ‘Jó Pásztor (Good Shepherd)’, helping to shelter Jews and at the same time-sharing their newfound Christian faith. Their bravery, kindness and fervour had a great influence.  Juci first, then Gyuri embraced Christianity during those times of crisis and Edit, my mother, gradually moved in that direction. While my father’s family were secular Jews (observing the festivals but not much else), my mother was brought up as an observing, though not orthodox, Jewess. Unlike Juci and Gyuri, she did not get baptised till much later. She did not wish to change her religion while still hoping for my father to return.

Day by day, the dangers shifted. By January, the siege of Budapest was in full swing. As the threats from the Arrow Cross and the Gestapo reduced, the danger of being killed by shelling increased. We huddled together crowded in cellars, hardly venturing out to try to get whatever food we could. At least the freezing temperatures helped to preserve any perishable supplies. I am told that I provided some welcome entertainment in those desperate days. Amidst the deafening noise of artillery, I appeared to display premature military knowledge by declaiming: ‘This is shelling in!’ or ‘This is shelling out!’

Budapest was liberated by Russian troops on the 26 February. Those days were a mixed experience for the population as a whole depending on contact with the actual units. There were instances of rape and other atrocities, but also acts of kindness. The soldiers who found us were keen on acquiring watches. When some were handed over, they became all smiles and one of them gave me a piece of chocolate.

Gradually the remains of the family found each other and counted the loss. Altogether sixteen members of our wider family were killed in the holocaust by one means or another. Those of us who remained started to put our lives together. Our flat was intact, but empty. Gradually, some items of furniture and possessions were returned by neighbours who said they kept them ‘safe’ in case we came back. There was much that was not returned. Amidst all the tragedy of war and losses I could not guess at or comprehend, I knew that I had lost my lovely large panda bear. Whatever happened to it, my mother told me ‘it was taken by the Germans’. On more mature reflection this was  unlikely, but for years I had the image of German troops retreating, blowing up all the bridges over the Danube (which they did) taking with them priceless treasures (which they did) and worst of all – my panda. Perhaps my panda was for my mother just one symbol for her happiness – ‘taken by the Germans’.

By contrast, Tom recalls the happier times he experienced as a young child growing up in Budapest after the war:

Paradoxically, my early memories of the post war years were mostly happy. Children can be very resilient. The love and care I received soon healed the scars left by the horrors. The remnants of the family became very close-knit. I was the first of my generation in the family on my grandmother’s side. One small baby second cousin was separated from her parents during an Arrow Cross raid and tragically starved to death. On my grandfather’s side, my second cousin Éva survived but lost her father and three of her grandparents. She is two years older than me and we had great fun playing ‘hide and seek’ on the monthly ‘family days’ while the adults discussed the latest political turn of events and sorted out how help could be given to anyone in the family who was in need.

 Tom with second cousin Kati at New Year, 1946?

Secondary Source:

Anna Porter (2007), Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust. London: Constable (2008).

Documentary Appendix Part Five:

Hungary’s Second Attempt at ‘Breakaway’ from Nazi-German Hegemony, 1943

 

A. Important Hungarian and International Events, January-December 1943:

1 January – Institute for the Research of the Jewish Problem

12-14 January – Casablanca Conference (Churchill-Roosevelt)

24 January – Collapse of Hungarian 2^nd Army (Don-Army)

31 Jan – 2 February – Capitulation of Field Marshal Paulus at Stalingrad

12 April – Two new Cabinet ministers (Lukács and Antal)

17-18 April – First Klessheim Meeting; Horthy and Hitler

30 April – First Veesenmayer Fact-Finding Report

15 May – Dissolution of the Communist International (Comintern)

May (second half) – Unofficial discussions between Bethlen, Barcza and the British

June – Dissolution of Communist Party in Hungary; replacement by the “Békepart” (Peace Party)

12 June – Minister of National Defence, V. Nagy, replaced by Gen. L. Csatay

9 July – Landing of Anglo-American units in Sicily

24 July – E. Ghycy, Minister of Foreign Affairs

15 July – Mussolini arrested; Badoglio Cabinet

August – Secret negotiations between Hungary and Britain in Istanbul

8 September – Unconditional surrender of Italy; Hungary issued with terms for surrender by Great Britain

9 November – Pact of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) signed by 44 nations

22-25 November – First Cairo Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Chang Kai-Shek)

28 November – Teheran Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin)

29 November – Tito, Chairman of National Defence

12 December – Benes signed Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty in Moscow

December (Late) – Veesenmayer’s second Fact-Finding Report in Berlin

 

B. On The ‘Provocation’ of Germany, February-April 1943:

The Government by now (February 1943) had arrived at the point where it became necessary to give to its agents and emissaries instructions appropriate to the new situation… Ullein gave the instructions Frey had received before leaving Budapest in January:

“… Hungary did not intend to oppose Anglo/American or Polish troops if they reached the Hungarian frontier and advanced into the country. Hungary wished for nothing in return for this… Frey left Budapest in the last days of January, arriving in Istanbul on 1^st February… The National Bank had… legitimate business abroad, and one of its officials, Baron Antal Radvánszky, was due to go to Switzerland on its affairs in Early February. Kállay… gave him oral instructions to ask Mr Allen Dulles and Mr Royall Tyler what diplomat they would accept as a permanent partner for secret talks. He was to emphasise to the Americans the Hungary was very anxious to enter such secret talks ‘with a view to preparing the ground for continuous co-operation between Hungary… and the Americans and British, this co-operation to lead eventually to Hungary leaving the Axis camp… Other people were being sent abroad at this time… A. Szent-Györgyi, Nobel Laureate went to Istanbul; he was keen to keep his eyes open as well as to ‘enlighten the Allies on Hungary’s standpoint’. …

“It was a mixed bag of emissaries, and the results of their missions were various … the most unfortunate of them was Szent-Györgyi. The famous Professor was contacted in Istanbul by persons representing themselves as American agents who were, in fact, agents of the Gestapo. To them he told his whole story, which thus reached Hitler within a few days… although he appears to have talked also to some genuine agents of the Anglo-Saxons, as well as bogus ones, his conversations had… no practical sequel.” (Macartney)

Day after day, week after week followed without getting any positive result out of the manifold negotiations and contacts.

“Kállay was already irritated by the delay and nervous on account of what appeared to have been leakages. He was also extremely perturbed by the fact, which Frey reported, that the agent chosen by the British to receive the communications was M. Pálóczy-Horváth, who was all too well known in Hungary. In the 1930s he had, evidently, been a man of Gömbös’: later he had moved Left-ward and was credited with Communist sympathies; the Government strongly suspected him of being in Russian pay. He was extremely hostile to the Hungarian regime.” (Macartney)

“The wonder is, not that the Germans reacted, but that they did not do so earlier. It was only in March, when numerous reports… on Kállay’s negotiations with the West came in from the German missions in Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey, that Ribbentrop sent his expert for South-Eastern Europe, Vessenmayer, down to Hungary to check these, and to make a general survey of the situation… Meanwhile, the definite refusal to send troops to the Balkans and the demand for the return of the Second Army, formulated on 31st March, had reached Germany… on about the 10th April Hitler sent Horthy an invitation to meet him at Scloss Klessheim, Salzburg, ’to discuss the military situation and the question of Hungarian troops’.” (Macartney)

C. On The First Klessheim Horthy-Hitler Entrevue, 17-18 April, 1943:

… The accusations brought up by Hitler and Ribbentrop against the Kállay regime were presented in writing to Horthy. Besides the military co-operation of Hungary, the main topic of the conversations was the alleged “Hungarian defeatism”. The paper presented bz the Germans contained the names of certain well/known Hungarians who had been allegedly sent abroad by Ullein to inform the Western Allies about the real sentiments and intentions of the Kállay regime. That was the first fiasco of the policy of drawing-away as carried out under the direction of Ullein: it did not bring any advantage for Hungary but on the other hand it aroused the suspicion of the Germans which then led to the catastrophe of Hungary in 1944-46…

Macartney:

“… Hitler asked that at least a joint communiqué should be issued, ‘to show the world that Hungary had no intention of cutting adrift and was standing squarely and unmistakably on the side of the Axis Powers.’ Horthy agreed to this; but the text submitted to him by Ribbentrop also contained a phrase which expressed Hungary!s ‘determined resolve to continue to continue the war until the final victory’ not only ‘against Bolshevism’ but also ‘against its Anglo-Saxon allies’… the Germans issued a communiqué in… fuller terms while the Regent was still on the train…:

‘Hungary, Italy and Romania have now made it perfectly clear that they will continue the war until victory. They make no distinction between the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union’s Westen Allies, who both pursue the same aim – destruction.’ When the Germans rang up the Hungarians, said what they were publishing… and asked the Hungarians to publish the same text, Kállay refused to publish anything until Horthy came back. He then got the Regent’s assurance that he had not agreed to this wording and then issued a short text which, besides appearing a day later than the German, omitted any reference to the British and Americans. Later an official comment in the ’Pester Lloyd’ confined itself to enlarging on Hungary’s defensive study against Bolshevism. Thus a concentrated spotlight was thrown on the glaring discrepancy in the attitude of the two States towards the West.”

Bárczy tells us how it came that two different communiqués were published… the Regent had refused his approval to the text of the communiqué as drawn up by Ribbentrop and he had repeated his refusal when he was boarding the train which was to take him back to Budapest.

From the time Hungary entered the Second World War, and in particular since Hungary’s occupation by Germany on 19 March 1944, practically no secret could be kept without the Germans becoming aware of it. Most of the important telephone lines were tapped and every important office and bureau the German Fifth Column had its own informant…

D. On the Re-establishment of Contacts with Britain, May 1943:

In the second half of May 1943, Barcza finally succeeded in establishing contact with the British. He presented himself to his interlocutor as a private person, representing a group, headed by Count István Bethlen,… a patriotic opposition to all pro-Nazi policies in Hungary, whether governmental or party-political. He also placed stress on the impossibility of Hungary breaking away from the Axis camp for the time being…Other contacts were… of a nature to discourage Premier Kállay.

Macartney:

“… the ferocious communications which he was receiving from Pálóczy-Horváth and the incessant objurgations lavished on him by the BBC… and the Voice of America, both of which ceaselessly and abusively denounced him and every other member of the regime… for ’Quislings’… left all Hungary under the impression that the only element in the country which the West was not determined to destroy was the extreme Left. It may well be that the nervous irritation produced in Kállay by these outpourings… aroused in him a determination even stronger than he would otherwise have felt to preserve every possible detail of the regime and to refuse any concession to democracy.”

As secrets could no longer be kept very well in Hungary, not only Kállay, but also other individuals were frightened by the aspect of the victorious Western powers eliminating and destroying everything of past and present Hungary…

E. On the period of the ’Second Attempt’, Summer 1943:

… in the Summer of 1943… with the re-shuffling of the Foreign Ministry, a new period in Hungarian foreign policy, that of the Second attempt began. The appointment of Ghyczy to Foreign Minister preceded by just one single day the fall of Mussolini (25 July 1943)

(The editors: ‘Mussolini’s fall was preceded by a series of defeats Italy suffered on the fronts. By 1943 the Allies pushed the Axis powers from North Africa; in July 1943 the British and American forces marched into Sicily and bombed Rome as soon as 19 July; and preparations were underway for the Normandy landings… Mussolini was arrested and… kept under house arrest. On 3 September… Badoglio concluded an armistice with the Allies. The German army subsequently occupied Central and Northern Italy…rescued Mussolini from prison, and he was made head of the Nazi puppet state…)

It was an event which considerably influenced Hungarian foreign policy of July 1943 – March 1944.

Macartney:

“On the morning of 27th July Hungary suddenly learned that Mussolini had fallen. The effect of the news, which was quite unexpected, on the volatile national public opinion, was electrifying. All Hungary jumped to the conclusion that within a few days Italy would have joined hands with the Allies, whose triumphant forces would be within a few days’ march from the frontiers of Hungary, or a few hours by parachute.

… The Allies apparently shared for a few days the illusions of the Hungarian Opposition about the situation in Italy. All the broadcasting stations, Western as well as Russian… thundered abjurations at Kállay to act while there was still time, and most of them… denounced him ferociously… when he failed to do so.”

Under the effect of the events in Italy, Hungarian activities in Istanbul, Lisbon, Stockholm and Switzerland gained new impetus… but all these activities… remained fruitless. Not only were the ’negotiators’ “representing Hungary”… of secondary importance and quality, but so too were the foreign personalities.

Macartney:

“… a Trade Union official called Gibson, who after a visit to Stockholm found fit to announce in ’The Daily Telegraph’ that he had been meeting ’politicians from Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, who had direct contact with their own countries. He had conveyed to these ’politicians’ ’ the views of the British Labour movement, which has… representatives in the Cabinet’. Mr Gibson went on to tell the journalist who was interviewing him that… Hungary must give a guarantee that she will return to Czechoslovakia and other Allied nations territory she had acquired since the start of the war… Mr Gibson made it clear to those whom he met… that only on these lines would Hungary and the Balkan countries under Axis domination be able to command the support and goodwill of those nations which could rescue them from the grip of the Axis… The fact was that all this was the outcome of the unofficial negotiations initiated in the preceding summer… The Hungarian ’politician’… was simply M. Böhm,… now… engaged in reading the Hungarian Press for the British Government. The ’views’ had been concocted between… Gibson and M. Böhm. When all this came out, the Hungarian Right had the time of its life… Firstly, it pointed out with gusto that in spite of her hypocritical assurances to the contrary, Great Britain had now herself ’authoritatively’ declared that it was her intention to mutilate Hungary again at the end of the war. Secondly, it was able to enlarge on its familiar theme of the treachery… of all Hungarian Jews… and of the Social Democratic Party. No incident during the whole summer gave it so much pleasure, or brought it so much advantage.”

With the exception of Teleki, Bethlen, Barcza, Baranyai and a few others, there were very few Hungarians with influential friends and connections abroad…

Passing through Rome, Barcza went to Switzerland where he established himself in Montreux and soon began contacting Royall Tyler. It was Tyler who brought about a personal meeting between Barcza and a certain gentleman, described by Barcza as “Mr H.” who… was cleared to talk to him. The contacts and conversations between Barcza and ’Mr H’ started in May 1943 and were continued in 1944. Already in 1943, Mr H was stressing the attitude of the British Government which wanted action and not promises. In July 1943, after Mussolini’s fall, Mr H went on to declare that Hungary should follow the example given by Italy taking all possible opportunities to bring about such a conclusion, as he put it was Hungary’s ’last chance’…The Hungarian Government was now considering the possibility of leaving the Axis… The military was strictly opposed to such an action; they viewed it as very dangerous and impractical. Then came the news that the King and Badoglio had declared their loyalty to the Axis… Kállay came to the conclusion that an open rupture with Germany was not only unfeasible but it would produce disastrous results. The Germans would simply occupy Hungary and install a quisling Government… Even the British accepted the realities of the new situation. On 16 September 1943 “Mr H” told Barcza that London was no longer expecting Hungary to jump ship immediately.

F. On the Hungaro-British Negotiations in Istanbul (Macartney):

“On his own admission, he (Kállay) had temporised… in favour of a diplomatic agreement with the West. He had even vetoed as too dangerous proposals for more vigorous action made by Szombathelyi and Kádár themselves, who had wanted to send down an officer to arrange for an Allied parachute landing, under cover of which Hungary should rise.          

Finally, however, the British in Istanbul had sent an ultimatum. Something definite must be done by 20th August or they would break off negotiations altogether. Kállay did not dare risk this happening before the alternative line through Barcza was secure, and at the beginning of August he… sent Veress down… to wait in Istanbul. If he received, via the Consulate General, a coded telegram with a pre-arranged meaning, this meant that he had ’full powers to negotiate’… also on behalf of the General Staff,… to give… whatever undertakings the demands of the British made unavoidable.

On 7th August… the military themselves agreed that it was unsafe to cut the Istanbul line. Veress was sent his telegram, which he received ’some time between the 10th and 16th’. He and Ujváry now pressed for a meeting with some ’authorised and responsible British representatives’, indicating that they had an important message to convey. They concocted this between them, using as a basis Veress’ earlier message and later instructions; but since Veress was convinced that ’there was no basis on which conversations, political or military, could take place unless Hungary decided to bring her interests fully into line with the political and military interests of the Western Powers’. The message ran as follows:

’… if the Western allies reached the frontiers of Hungary she would in no case oppose them, but would turn against Germany to the extent of placing her airports and transport system at the disposal of the Allies. She would accept the guidance and instruction of the Allies, and although at the moment no General Staff officer was available, she would establish wireless contact and provide information. She asked that this offer should be taken as an advance notice of unconditional surrender, and asked the British to communicate their ’preliminary conditions’.

On 17th August the two Hungarians met Mr Sterndale-Bennett, Councillor of the British Embassy, and handed him this message, which he took away for communication to the competent quarters. While this was going on, an unofficial approach… had also been made to the Russians.The Hungarian concerned was the honorary Consul in Geneva, M. Honti… It was actually a British diplomat who advised M. Honti to turn to Russia, saying that ’it was there that the fate of Hungary would, for the present, be decided’.

G. On Hungary’s attempts at Rapprochement with Romania and Yugoslavia:

In mid-July Count Miklós Banffy, Bethlen’s Foreign Minister in 1921, was sent to Bucharest…

(Editors: ’Motivated by an identity of interests vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, the idea of a Romanian-Hungarian reconciliation was initiated by Crown Prince Nicolae of Romania, who lived in Switzerland and advocated British-American orientation. Rapprochement on an official level was opened with bilateral negotiations between Ion Antonescu and… Miklós Kállay in December 1942 concerning a possible joint pull-out of the war… However, negotiations broke down on the issue of Transylvania, which ruined the possibility…)

… The views of the two Governments were very far apart and since the Romanians had, just like the Czechs and the Serbs, much better connections and standing in London than Hungarians, they were not in haste to arrive at a settlement with Budapest… As to Hungary’s southern neighbour, secret contacts had been established between the Hungarian Government and the Mihailovic camp, which also remained fruitless, mainly because… of the growing support given to Tito by the USSR and Great Britain.

H. On The British Conditions for Hungary’s Surrender, 8 September 1943 (Macartney):

“The British had kept Veress waiting a long time for his answer; if the Hungarians understood aright, their messages had been submitted to the Quebec Conference and also passed to Moscow. On the 8th September, Veress was told to meet Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugesson at midnight on the latter’s yacht in the Sea of Marmara. Sir Hugh, after showing Veress his own authorisation in the form of a telegram from Mr. Eden, informed him in the name of the United Nations that HM Government had ’taken note’ of Hungary’s communication, and read out the… ’preliminary conditions’ which Veress took down from his dictation:

… The agreement to be kept secret until published at a moment to be agreed, which in no case should be before the Allies reached the frontiers of Hungary.

… Hungary progressively to reduce her military co-operation with Germany, to withdraw her troops from Russia and to assist allied aircraft flying across Hungary to attack targets in Germany…

… Hungary to resist if Germany attempted to occupy her, and to that end to reorganise her High Command so that her army should be able to attack Germans…

… At a suitable moment, Hungary to receive an Allied air-mission, to advise on the preparations for the breakaway…

It was only on the 14th that Veress reached Budapest, with a memorised account of the document and two wireless transmitters… Kállay objected on principle to the formula of unconditional surrender. Keresztes-Fischer, however, pressed strongly that the agreement should be ratified, and eventually Kállay consented… (However), he regarded the agreement as a political gesture from which Hungary expected political consequence… to be ’struck off the list of enemies’ and given ’British Protection’… to operate as much against Russia as much as, or even more than, against Germany; while the Allies ’sought only to derive military advantage’ from it… he (went on) to complain with acerbity of the way in which the British, in particular, sought to obtain this military advantage. It is true that they had given up asking for an immediate ’jump-out’; there is fairly good evidence that they had dropped this demand as early as August… But they insistently demand(ed) actions in various fields, in particular sabotage on a serious scale. Kállay… maintained at the time that fulfillment of these demands would at once have brought about the occupation of Hungary by Germany, and rejected it stubbornly because he thought that the Allied agents were actually anxious to see this come about, in the calculation that would provoke resistance from the ’democratic elements’ in Hungary (whom, according to their view, Kállay was holding back), hamper production and tie down an appreciable German occupying force in Hungary.

Kállay’s reply was that… the regime was not… holding the forces of resistance back…. an occupation would entail frightful sufferings for precisely those elements whom the Allies desired to see spared. Consequently, he could not undertake any action that would provoke an occupation. These arguments, however, did not convince the Allies, who retorted that Kállay was simply stringing them along. He was giving them fair words and excuses, while really collaborating against them with the Germans. His only real object was to save his regime.

There was one point of the agreement – and it was, of course, a very important one – which the Hungarians honoured in full from the first. They refrained scrupulously from interfering with the Allied aircraft which, after the beginning of October, were flying over Hungary almost daily; they for their part leaving Hungary unbombed. This tacit mutual understanding was observed throughout the entire autumn and winter, being also applied to the Soviet aircraft which in the later months were flying to and from Yugoslavia (a journey which … used to carry them directly over Budapest).”

I. On the pro-German Backlash in Hungary and Veesenmayer’s Second Report:

On 1^st October, Imrédy presented the Government with a long memorandum in which he maintained that ‘in the event of an Anglo-Saxon victory all Eastern Europe would be handed over to Russia’ and adding… that it was useless to dream that when that happened only the extreme Right would be made the scapegoats… only those elements which had gone over to Communism would be rewarded.’… Kállay… refused to accept such a thesis ‘or to strengthen in their belief those inside or outside Hungary who reckon on this.’”

It was in early October that the MFM (Hungarian Independence Movement) received the first alarming news of the growing dissatisfaction of Germany about the “over-optimistic pro-Anglo-Saxon atmosphere” in Hungary… it was at this time that we were informed about a planned second mission of Veesenmayer to Hungary… the Germans would undertake military occupation of Hungary should the Kállay regime continue its hazardous policy. Veesenmayer’s stay in Hungary this time was this time considerably longer than in April of the same year… This time Veesenmayer spent more time on writing his report and it was only in January 1944 that his report was read by Ribbentrop, Himmler and Göring… Veesenmayer’s conclusions and suggestions were as follows:

… in consideration of the given situation and circumstances the only route to take was to win the co-operation of the Regent and persuade him to replace Kállay with a more pro-German politician…

… As the Kállay regime had already been in secret negotiations with the Western Democracies, the “Hungarian problem” needed solving soon.

During and after Vessenmayer’s second fact-finding mission, the negotiations of the Hungarian emissaries and agents were continuing. Their reports, however, were misleading and increased the optimism in Government circles in Hungary. Thus, still after the Teheran Conference of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin (28 November…) Wodianer’s reports remained optimistic and he assured his Government that the settling of Central Europe’s problems had been assigned to Great Britain and the United States.

Eckhardt… told Bethlen in December 1944 that ‘the fate of Hungary was sealed and it would pass under Russian rule for many years’. Bethlen replied on 19 March that ‘he was confident that Eckhardt would prove mistaken’.

J. On the Changing Attitude of the British:

On 12 December Benes signed in Moscow a Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty which carried the message in Hungary… that Czechoslovakia was becoming the most western outpost of Pan-Slavism as well as Pan-Bolshevism, both dangers which had always been the most feared bugaboos in Hungarian public opinion. In addition, through “reliable, secret” sources it was soon known in Hungary that Stalin had promised Benes to back Romania’s claims on the whole of Transylvania. Maniu even went as far as to declare that as a compensation for losing Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Romania was to get at the final settlement not only Transylvania but also the adjacent territories up to the Tisza river. Here we quote again Macartney:

“The West – this was the worst – did not seem to be opposing all this. Mihályi Károlyi spoke on the BBC, advising Hungary that her road led through Prague and Moscow… The British were obviously uneasy, but were… not opposing the Russian demands in full, nor opposing her suggestion that Poland’s frontiers with Germany should be shifted westwards. Then came Mr Churchill’s extraordinary statement that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to Germany as a matter of right, nor forbid territorial transferences or adjustments in enemy countries.”

The result of the attitude of Britain and her Press alienated a great part of the pro-Anglo-Saxon sentiments from the Western Democracies… The result of the not very encouraging attitude of Great Britain and the fateful advance of the Red Army had its effect on political parties… and circles: the criticism exercised upon the Government’s, theoretically secret, negotiations abroad became sharper and many former Kállay regime supporters turned away from the Government’s policy.

At this stage of negotiations the situation was that the Government, or at least a circle in the Foreign Ministry, was engaged in talks with emissaries and agents of the Western Democracies, while Hungarian public opinion and even Kállay, himself, were concentrating their attention on the approaching Soviet danger. And Kállay declared (to Ullein):

“We have repeatedly explained that so long as the Russian menace is not only unchanged but constantly increasing, we cannot turn against Germany, and the execution of the three conditions involved (in the British surrender plan) would inevitably involve this. Faced with a choice between Russia and Germany, we cannot opt against the latter, for we cannot identify the Russians with the Anglo-Saxons.”  

Macartney:

“The Hungarian diplomats who had been in contact with the Allies now realised that their role would soon be ended, and it was in these days that, under Barcza’s… auspices, a shadow organisation of ‘dissident diplomats’ took form, with the purpose of providing some sort of machinery for the continuance of diplomatic contact if Hungary was occupied… Barcza got from the British and American Governments assurances that they would regard such an organisation with favour… “

K. On the Secret ‘Parachute’ Plan of Prince Sapieha and Col. C. T. Howie:

Prince Sapieha, a fugitive, represented the Polish Underground Army… Col. Howie, a South-African was a POW who… was permitted to stay in Budapest as a free man. Howie had escaped from Germany and after some adventurous travels arrived safely in Hungary.

(Editors: Polish aristocrat Prince Andrzej Sapieha arrived in Budapest in 1943 as the representative of the Polish government-in-exile in London. He had free access to the highest political circles… He stayed in Budapest until its Soviet occupation. He was last seen in spring 1945. He disappeared amidst mysterious circumstances.)

Sapieha succeeded in acquiring a wireless transmitter, and now the two men… began exchanging messages with the British. In a few days…the…Americans, British and Poles were working together. As the British had promised that the mission as planned, American and British officers to be parachuted over Hungary, would not involve organising sabotage, Kállay finally gave his assent… Col. Howie… wanted to act at once… the arrangement was reached by means of the transmitter set of Sapieha and Howie with the British in Istanbul…

L. On the Military Situation, Autumn-Winter 1943:

The Red Army, during the fall of 1943… was continually advancing. The question for Hungary was not any longer whether the Russians would reach the Carpathians, but when they would… Kállay’s idea remained the same: fight the Russians until the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon forces. Thus Kállay’s strategy was to prepare for the defence of the Carpathians and arrive at an agreement with the British and American military leaders for an Anglo-Saxon airborne landing in Hungary… As Kállay wrote in a letter:

“Everyone, including the pro-British circle, agrees that we must, if need arises, defend the Carpathians against the Russian danger. No one regards this as a question on which opinions might differ. It is simply a question of the vital interests of the country.”