Zoltán Vági - The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide

n United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

Documenting Life and Destruction

Holocaust Sources in Context

Series Editor

Jrgen Matthus

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Jan Lambertz

Documenting Life and Destruction

Holocaust Sources in Context

This groundbreaking series provides a new perspective on history using firsthand accounts of the lives of those who suffered through the Holocaust, those who perpetrated it, and those who witnessed it as bystanders. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museums Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies presents a wide range of documents from different archival holdings, expanding knowledge about the lives and fates of Holocaust victims and making these resources broadly available to the general public and scholarly communities for the first time.

Books in the Series

1. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume I, 19331938 , Jrgen Matthus and Mark Roseman (2010)

2. Children during the Holocaust , Patricia Heberer (2011)

3. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume II, 19381940, Alexandra Garbarini with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt (2011)

4. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia, Wendy Lower (2011)

5. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume III, 19411942 , Jrgen Matthus with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Leah Wolfson (2013)

6. The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide , Zoltn Vgi, Lszl Cssz, and Gbor Kdr (2013)

A project of the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Sara J. Bloomfield

Director

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

Paul A. Shapiro

Director

Jrgen Matthus

Director, Applied Research

under the auspices of the

Academic Committee

of the

United States Holocaust Memorial Council

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Chair

Doris L. Bergen

Richard Breitman

Christopher R. Browning

David Engel

Zvi Y. Gitelman

Peter Hayes

Sara Horowitz

Steven T. Katz

William S. Levine

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Michael R. Marrus

John T. Pawlikowski

Menachem Z. Rosensaft

George D. Schwab

James E. Young

This publication has been made possible by

support from

The Gerald M. and Mary L. Fisch Fund for Study of the Holocaust in Hungary

The William S. and Ina Levine Foundation

The Blum Family Foundation

and

Dr. Alfred Munzer and Mr. Joel Wind

The authors have worked to provide clear information about the provenance of each document and illustration included here. In some instances, particularly for journals and newspapers no longer in print, we have been unable to verify the existence or identity of any present copyright owners. If notified of any items inadvertently credited wrongly, we will include updated credit information in reprints of this work.

Documenting Life and Destruction

Holocaust Sources in Context

The Holocaust in Hungary

Evolution of a Genocide

Zoltn Vgi, Lszl Cssz, and Gbor Kdr

Foreword by Randolph L. Braham

Advisory Committee:

Christopher R. Browning

David Engel

Sara Horowitz

Steven T. Katz

Alvin H. Rosenfeld

AltaMira Press

in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

2013

For USHMM:

Project Manager: Mel Hecker

Translator: Zsfia Zvolenszky

Research Assistants: Greg Wilkowski, Kathryn Cornelius, Holly Robertson, Chris Henson, and Ryan Farrell

Published by AltaMira Press

A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Front cover: (top row, left to right) courtesy of FORTEPAN; USHMMA RG 39.013M, reel 25 (HJA XX-F-1, box D 6/1); USHMMPA WS# 28215, courtesy of Ivan Sved; (bottom row, left to right) image no. 1012010205385956, CENTROPA ( www.centropa.hu ); map produced by Bla Nagy, Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archives, photo album FA268/49

Copyright 2013 by AltaMira Press

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vgi, Zoltn, author.

The Holocaust in Hungary : evolution of a genocide / Zoltn Vgi, Lszl Cssz and Gbor Kdr.

pages cm. (Holocaust sources in context ; 6)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7591-2198-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7591-2200-0 (ebook)

1. JewsPersecutionsHungary. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)Hungary. 3. HungaryEthnic relations. I. Cssz, Lszl, author. II. Kdr, Gbor, author. III. Title.

DS135.H9H587 2013

940.531809439dc232013014479

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Readers Guide

T his volume is part of the Documenting Life and Destruction series, designed to present original historical documents on the Holocaust within an explanatory narrative. It provides cogent clues about the context and distinctiveness of each selection, material hitherto largely inaccessible to an English-speaking public. The chapters for the most part move chronologically, highlighting developments of particular relevance to Hungarys unique position in the war and its political and social history. Other parts of the book, especially the glossary and bibliography, add further context for a better understanding of the subject.

The documents in this volume have been printed in a distinct format to set them apart from our commentary. We have reproduced the form and content of the originals as faithfully as possible, working to provide clear information about the provenance and copyright of each selection. We have retained emphases used by the authors of the actual documents and corrected obvious orthographical mistakes made by the authors of English-language texts. In cases where we could not print a document in its entirety, we have marked any omitted text with bracketed ellipses ([...]). For documents not clearly dated by those who produced them, we provide an estimated date in the header (in parentheses) based on indirect evidence drawn from the document itself or supplementary information.

All the documents in this volume have been translated from Hungarian unless otherwise noted. Many terms used by Hungarian commentators during the interwar period and the war carry complicated meanings that are often difficult to capture in English. Sometimes they represent distinct political configurations or the peculiaroften racializedbureaucratic terms of a wartime regime. Sometimes, however, they simply constitute the distinctive vocabularies of sentiment, identity, mood, and so forth that pertain to every language. The nuances of particular terms can be important for understanding both the rhetoric of public appeals and the language of private reflection, and in some cases we have indicated the difficulty of translation by adding the original word or phrase in brackets after its English equivalent. Furthermore, owing to the difficulty of the Hungarian language, we have supplied references to all available English translations of published sources.