Trudy Gold
Budapest, the Jews, and Horthy
Trudy Gold - Budapest, the Jews, and Horthy
- Good afternoon everyone, in this appalling time. At least in a way we are keeping safe. And the more I’m thinking of Hungary as I’m getting on with these lectures. And I’m going to echo something William said to you last week. You are looking at the collapse of empire at the end of the First World War. You’re looking at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You’re looking at the collapse of the Russian Empire. You’re looking at the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. And many of the problems that we face today in the Balkans, in Ukraine tragically go back to that horrific war, the First World war, ad what happened after it. 100 years later, we still haven’t created a proper peaceful solution to that terrible area of the world that kept on changing sides. And before I start, I’d like to very much thank, so I had five people getting in touch saying they would help me with my Hungarian pronunciation. I in fact phoned Ava. So bless you all for that. And when we come onto the Czech Republic, I’d also like help on that. It’s not a good enough to say as an English person, I’m very bad at foreign languages. It’s just true. Maybe it’s just me. But anyway, thank you very much Ava. And I’m going to try very hard with the pronunciation. And of course that is Horthy and the Jews. Now, can we have the first slide, please, Judy? Now this is a slide I showed you last time, but I just want to refresh you. It’s important that you understand the place that the Jews had in Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian Empire was created in 1867. And just to go through it, The period 1867 to 1914 was a real honeymoon for the Jews. They are emancipated.
They come from all over the empire. And the more east you go in Europe, the more you are dealing with an agrarian society and a nobility with the church as a separate function. And that’s one of the reasons Jews, they are the arbiters of modernity. We’ve discussed this many times before, but if you look at the figures in Hungary, they’re 5% of the population, but they’re nearly a quarter of the population of Budapest, Buda and Pest, as you will remember, were united and just go through those figures again. 89% of the stock exchange, 84% of journalists, 61% of the merchants, 54% of printers and publishers, 50% of the doctors and lawyers. Well, that’s pretty much the patent all over Europe. 42% of the innkeepers, very much a Jewish profession in the countryside. 40% of the factory owners. This is the arbiters of modernity. The butchers, the bakers, the musicians, the actors, the tailors, the major landowners. So Jews are building up a very strong base in Hungary, and they are becoming more and more attracted to Hungary. Many of them speak the language now. it’s only in the east of Hungary where Jews kept to their Yiddish. And in the 300 Jewish schools that were set up throughout Hungary, the three languages taught were German, Hungarian, and English. Of course, you still had characters like Theodore Hertzi and Max Nordau who turned to German culture and went to Vienna.
But of course, many Jews are turning to Hungarian culture, and then that terrible, terrible First World War. Can we go on with the next slide, Judy? Okay. What happens is, at the end of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is terribly defeated. And what that meant was Austria is going to lose majority of its land. The Austrian empire is now going to be, I beg your pardon, the Austrian empire itself is going to be completely truncated. When you look at Austria, from once being the centre of a huge empire, it’s now a population of 6.5 million. With Hungary, Hungary actually loses 72% of its land. And who does she lose it into? She loses it into the surrounding population. So Hungary suffers tremendously. It’s now completely landlocked. And in addition to that, 3.3 million Hungarian citizens were now in minority status in other states. This happens all over the empires that are collapsed. One of the problems of the Ukraine is down to this nationality issue, but that’s for another time. The treaty limited, and of course then after the war, the treaty limits the number of soldiers in Hungary’s army, only 35,000 men. Of course, the Navy has ceased to exist, and most of the territory went either into Czech lands, Slovaks, or Romania. So that is the situation. And the Jews now find themselves in a very uncomfortable position. They were once the most Hungarian of many other different groups within the empire. Now they are the only visible minority. And whereas in pre-war Hungary, they were welcomed by those who were pulling for Hungarian culture. Now they are the other.
And we have a Catholic priest called Bela Bangha. He raised money to establish a Christian press. He said, “Too many of the press are Jews. Too many publishing companies are controlled by Jews. My aim,” quote, “is to crush Jewish rule in Hungary.” The fact was that 300,000 Jews had actually served in the army, and that fact tended to be forgotten. But in the collapse of the empire, this is thwarted nationalism. We’ve seen it so often in history. And when there’s thwarted nationalism, what do people do? They tend to look for the scapegoat. And who are the perfect scapegoat now? The only sizable non-Hungarian minority, and the tragedy was the majority of Jews in Hungary saw themselves as Hungarian. There’d been many conversions, much assimilation, over 300 of them had been ennobled. They saw themselves part of the body politic, and they bled along with the Hungarian population, but not all Hungarians. And of course, the inevitable happens, and there is revolution. And I’m taking you back now to November 1918 in a Moscow hotel, Hungarian prisoners of war, and other communist sympathisers form a special group. Now remember, revolution has broken out in Russia, the communist revolution, the two revolutions in one year. And if you think about what is going on, that terrible war, started by whom? Started by rival kings, a capitalist war. Think of the first line of “The Communist Manifesto.” “Workers of the world, unite.
You have nothing to lose but your chains.” And now you have a group in a hotel in Moscow made up, as I said, of Hungarian prisoners of war and other sympathisers, and at the centre of which, was a man called Bela Kun. They’re going to come back to a Hungary that is absolutely ravaged, that if you think about the loss of land, but also thinks what happens at the end of a war. Look, we’re seeing what’s happened in a war. There’s food shortages, there is water shortages. People are coming back from the front wounded. There are women and children without any protection. And that is the situation that Hungary was going through in 1918. Now, who was Bela Kun? And this is going to be very important, and it really helps you to understand, tragically, antisemitism. He was born in Transylvania, which of course, was part of the Habsburg Empire. His real name was Kohn, K-O-H-N. His mother, in fact, converted to Protestantism and he was really not brought up with any religion. He was a brilliant, brilliant student, one of those illui, as I often say. He went to the local gymnasium where he wrote an extraordinary essay on a Hungarian poet. And this is from an essay he wrote when he was a teenager. It’s about a poet, Sandor Petofi. “The storming rate of Petofi’s soul turned against the people’s oppressor and confronted them with revolutionary abandon.
The country would not be saved through moderation, but through the most extreme means available.” And his essay concludes like this. “His work must be regarded as the law of the Hungarian soul, the love of country.” So he writes that when he’s still at school, and then he goes to study law. So many of them were lawyers at Franz Joseph University. He magurized his name from con to con. He becomes a journalist. He has all sorts of different careers. At university, he meets with the Budapest Intelligentsia at the left because you have souls of young people from country to country to country in central Europe, looking at the lot of the people and feeling that something has to be done. He’s forced, of course, into the Habsburg Army. He was a prisoner of the czar. And at the end of the war, he is a prisoner of war in the Urals. And that is where he comes together with other groups. And he co-founds the Hungarian Communist Party within the Russian Communist Party. He’s very close to the Russians. This is international communism. It’s something that we will be talking about more as we go through our presentations because the majority of these internationalists were people of Jewish birth. Now he has completely thrown away his Jewishness. The problem was, of course, that those who are going to hate what he does are going to see him as a Jew. He’d travelled widely, he’d met with Lenin. He was really at the extreme edge of the party. He actually wanted, along with Trotsky, to continue the war because he believed if the war went on for another few months, then all the corrupt regimes would collapse like a pack of cards.
And what you would be able to create is an international socialist paradise. And this is what Lenin said of him. “We can see that this man comes from a country of poets and dreamers.” So Trotsky, by the way, who was commissar for foreign affairs, he was the man who signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which brought Germany out of the war. Now, interesting. He didn’t want to sign it. He begged Lenin. He said, “Let the war go on. If the war goes on, everything will collapse.” And Bela Kun was very much a Trotsky man. And that is going to lead to his downfall. Anyway, in the Russian Civil War, he fought for the Bolsheviks and dreams of a revolution in Hungary. And November 1918, with a group of Hungarian communists and money provided by the Soviets, he returns to Budapest. So his ambition is to create a revolution. Now what happens is he arrives in Budapest and already there is a social Democrat party, a broad left party that’s trying to pull together a power. But he and his colleagues has already established the Hungarian Communist Party. And immediately, they begin a propaganda campaign against the government. He tried to copy the tactics that Lenin had employed, against who? Against Korensky’s government, which of course, William has already talked to you about. He was a brilliant orator. He began to hold rallies, he began to hold marches, and he asked for Lenin’s help.
He thought if Lenin could send him arms and men, he could easily take over the state, because at this stage, the communists only had 30,000 supporters, whereas the social Democrats had 700,000. In any extreme situation, this is another law of history, people polarise, and you’re going to see the extreme right and the extreme left. He realised that elections would be absolutely disastrous. So in February of 1919, he invaded the headquarters of the major socialist newspaper. There were dead, the people were killed, there were the people injured. And he proclaimed a communist government. There was a lot of sympathy for Kun amongst the very dissatisfied, dissociated, unhappy people. And it’s at this stage that the social Democrats came to him and said, “All right, let’s have a coalition government.” He was imprisoned. I should have mentioned, after the raid on the publishers, he was put in prison. Whilst he’s in prison, he’s so popular that the social Democrat leader comes to him and says, “Look, let’s please, let’s please try and make a coalition.” And of course, this led, finally, ‘cause Kun would have none of it, it leads to the establishment of a Soviet Republic, and Kun becomes commissar for foreign affairs. Once he takes power, he dismisses all Soviet Democrats from office, so he’s now ruling through a communist state. And what did he want to do? We’ve heard this before when we looked at Austria, nationalisation of private property, land has to be converted into collective farms. But it wasn’t redistributed to the peasantry, just as the same thing was happening in Munich. It was absolute chaos.
But he offered free education for everyone, language and cultural rights for all minorities. The problem was there weren’t any really left in Hungary. He nationalised industry. He nationalised the banks and commerce, socialist housing, free transport, free medicine. You will recall, this is also the programme that the Vienna city authorities were putting through. These are the dreamers of communism. They’re also ruthless. But they have a dream that if they take away the property from the owners and redistribute it, society would become more egalitarian. And this of course is where psychology comes in, because tragically it does seem that these fanciful ideas do not work. Now, the Soviets can’t help him because, as you all know, they’re embroiled in a war. So Kun establishes something called the Lenin Boys, the Red Guard. Can we have a look at the picture, Judy? These are the Lenin Boys, and they are the people who are really making sure there is law and order for the communists in Hungary, in Budapest. And of course the leadership, the man who runs it, is a person of Jewish birth called Max Joseph. Can I have the next slide please, Judy? Yeah, okay. What happens is, it’s at this stage that Kun, in his dream of international socialism, he invades Slovakia and declared the Slovakian Soviet Republic based on the belief that granting territory to the newly formed Czechoslovakia was unjust because of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
Later on, and I’m going to be talking about Slovakia in a week or so, later on, this is going to cause terrible problems because of course Kun is becoming a very hated figure. He’s much admired by some, but the majority hates him, particularly those who have something to conserve. And it must be said, he was desperately unpopular amongst the Jewish population as well. Of course he was because what is this man trying to do? Think of the Jewish factory owners, think of the Jewish capitalists as well. And also, the majority of Jews were bourgeois and liberal. And this is about extremism. So it’s at this stage that Romania, that was chaos. Romania invades Hungary. The French managed to broker a deal as they often do. If the Romanian Army would pull back, then Kun should withdraw from Slovakia. Now, Kun had many enemies in Hungary. I’ve already mentioned the capitalists, but the Catholic church, the army officers, the urban workers, and on the 24th of June Kun’s uprising is brutally suppressed. Before that, though, the Lenins Boys had been responsible for so many executions. And of course, because of all the reverses in the Ukraine, the Soviet Army was not helping.
And in August, 1920, according to Kun, I’m quoting him, “The Hungarian proletariat betrayed their leaders and also betrayed themselves.” The Romanian forces took over in Budapest. And we will then come on to the new regent of Hungary, the fascinating Miklos Horthy. Just to tell you what happens to Kun. Kun flees. He flees back to Russia where he rejoins the Communist party of the Soviet Union. He becomes a leading figure in the Comintern. He’s a very close ally of Zinoviev. Zinoviev, of course, was one of the major figures in the early years of the Russian state. Of course, he was also born Jewish. And Kun was sent by Lenin, remember he spoke many languages. He’s a brilliant orator. And Kun is sent by Lenin to Germany to advise the German Communist Party. Those of you who were with me last week will remember that in Munich, there had been three revolutions, and the last one was a Soviet revolution. And consequently, all these individuals are working together. And from the point of view of anti-Semitism, tragically, so many of them are of Jewish birth. The fact that they’ve repudiated their Judaism and their Jewishness is completely irrelevant to those who believe that being Jewish is about blood and race. And please don’t forget that this is the period when the protocols of the elders of Zion, that notorious, ghastly forgery. I shouldn’t call it a forgery, because of course that presupposes there was a proper document. It’s this nefarious idea that the Jews of the world are plotting together to take over the world.
Anyway, he works for various communist groups in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia. In 1928, he was arrested in Vienna. He was sent back to Stalin’s Russia. Lenin, by the way, had lost faith in him because he didn’t manage to create a successful revolution in Germany. And he comes to Stalin. Now what does that tell you? And we’ll be spending a lot of time on Soviet Russia and the Jews next after Pesach. He falls foul of Stalin during the Great Purges. And on the 28th of June, he was accused of Trotskyism. And what happens to him? He was executed in the Great Purges. And who is to be the new saviour of Hungary? Admiral Horthy. But the problem for Admiral Horthy is he didn’t, in fact, have a navy, because why? Hungary is now a small landlocked state. I’m just looking for my pronunciations. I can’t see them at the moment. Oh dear, I have to find them. Anyway, I’m going to tell you a bit about Horthy before we get onto his career. Horthy is an incredibly complicated individual. He lived a long life. His background, he came from the lower Hungarian aristocracy. He entered the Imperial Navy, Habsburg Navy, when he was 14 years old. He’s a brilliant linguist. He spoke Hungarian, German, Italian, Croatian, French, English. He travelled the world as a diplomat for the Habsburgs, and mainly in the Ottoman Empire. He was married with four children. He was a very conservative, upright man. As his career advanced, he actually becomes an aid to come to Franz Joseph, who he absolutely adored.
And by March, 1918, he is the commander of the imperial fleet for the Habsburg Empire. But of course, at the end of the war, the Hungarian Horthy, how can you be an admiral in a landlocked country? He has a smaller estate, so he retires to his state. Can we have a look at the next slide, please? Yeah. This is just to reiterate what I was talking about before. It’s very important that you take this on because look at the dismemberment of Hungary. Do you see just how much of it is lost? As I said, only 28% is left of the Hungarian entity prior to the First World War. And this is going to be the biggest fall in the side of Hungarian nationalism. What do you do with this kind of country? But the same is true of Austria. And when we look at the problems of the Ukraine, much of the problems of today tragically can be traced back to what was happening at this period. Now, the counterrevolutionary government of Kohn, you can imagine what the feelings were. And Karoly, who was temporarily prime minister, he begged Horthy, the war hero, to become minister of war and take over command of the Kohn Army. Now after the communist collapsed and the French supported the Romanian troops, in retaliation for the Red Terror, we now have the White Terror. Can we go back to Horthy’s picture, if you don’t mind, Judy? Thank you, I think. Now, what was the White Terror? It’s organised by army officers. Just as in fighting the Soviets, you have the White Army. And who is in the Hungarian whites?
Very similar to who’s in the Soviet whites, they were mainly army officers. They were also anyone who’d been a victim of the communists. And really I think the church was backing them. So this is the White Terror as opposed to the Red Terror. It was a terrible time for the Jews because many Jews in Hungary, even those who had absolutely nothing to do with the revolution, they were considered suspect. And in fact, one of the main leaders, a man called Pronay, he writes in his diary, “The whites were planning a citywide programme.” Remember, Budapest is 23% Jewish. Horthy discovers the plan. And he says, “This will never happen.” But this is what Pronay wrote in his diary. “Horthy reproached me for the many Jewish corpses found in various parts of the country, especially in Transdanubia.” 'This gave the foreign press extra ammunition,’ he told me. ‘We should stop harassing small Jews. Instead, we should kill government Jews such as Kohn.’ In vain, I tried to convince him that the liberals would be against us anyway. It didn’t matter if we killed one revolutionary or all of them.“ Now how much did Horthy have to do with the White Terror? It’s completely disputed. And it must be said that many Jews went on record later on who survived the war of saying that he was not really involved in the White Terror, but he couldn’t hijack what he called his best men, the army officers. It’s a very complicated story, this. And the question is, if you’re looking for morality, you’re not going to find it. It’s all about gradation.
And frankly, the terror does not abate until the summer of 1920. Thousands of people are murdered. So first you’d have the communist terror, then you have the White Terror. And this is Horthy. He wrote his autobiography. "I had no reason to gloss over deeds of injustice and atrocities committed when an iron broom alone could sweep the country clean. The communist in Hungary, willing disciples of the Russian Bolsheviks, indeed let hell loose.” He’s violently anti-communist, remember. He is a conservative. He wants law and order in his country. And following allied pressure, finally, Budapest is freed from Romanian troops. Back in March 1920, the National Assembly of Hungary reestablished the Kingdom of Hungary. The allies would not allow the throne to be offered to the remaining, the Habsburg heir. Instead, who are controlling parliament, but the army officers, and they ask Horthy to become regent. He makes some very serious demands. He says, “I will only become regent if I’m given really the prerogatives of a king.” He wanted the power to appoint and dismiss parliament. He wanted the power to appoint and dismiss prime ministers and to command the armed forces. Because of the weakness of the country, and because he was a war hero, and because he was loved by the army, he was seen as the man to do it. So they gave in.
And he’s going to remain regent and head of state right up until 1944. One of the biggest problems was of course the stabilisation of the economy. If you think about it, Hungary’s lost so much of its territory. And ironically, it’s going to be Kornfeld and Turin, who I mentioned to you last week, who are going to be so helpful to the Hungarian government. Many of the conservative Jews did back Horthy at this stage. The League of Nations lent Hungary 250 million gold coins. And despite the loss of land, Hungarian agriculture was incredibly efficient and they managed to export more wheat than any other European country. This is important. When you’re feeding people, revolution becomes less important. The rules of history do not change. Now what we’re going to see between 1924 and 1928 is relative stability. In 1928, unemployment was only at 5%. But then, I don’t have to tell you, you know what happens next. Wall Street crashes. By 1933, 18% of the population of Budapest are now in poverty. And obviously it’s going to be a gradual shift to the right and it’s going to lead to the resigning of the relatively liberal prime minister, Istvan Bethlen. Now, can we see his face please, Judy? He was a relative moderate. He came from a noble Transylvanian family. He had been elected to Hungarian parliament back in 1901. He’d been a representative at the Paris Peace Conference. And during the communist government of Bela Kun, he assumed a leadership of one of the anti-communist factions in Seghet.
So basically, he’s got a good record and he’d been appointed prime minister by Horthy in 1921. It was a party of national unity. It managed to unite the two major political parties, which included the major aristocrats and the wealthy Budapest industrialists that many of whom were Jewish. And it reached a chord with the labour unions. So for a brief period between 24 and 28, you had a period of stability. He was the man who led Hungary into the League of Nations and also into an alliance with fascist Italy. He very much, one of his aims, of course, he’s a liberal, but he’s still a Hungarian patriot. And what he wants to do is to win back territory seated in the Treaty of Trianon. And of course, as a response to the Great Depression and the swing to the right, he becomes more and more isolated. And Horthy replaces him by Gyula Karolyi. And he becomes increasingly isolated. And he was totally against an alliance with Nazi Germany. He sat out the war, but in 1945, he was taken into custody by the Nazi, beg your pardon, by the Soviets, and he was arrested. Now, his successor, Karolyi, again was an aristocrat, because what has now come into the picture is Germany has a new dictator, Adolf Hitler, over the border. And Adolf Hitler is looking for alliances. He’s already signed a deal with the Vatican. In July 1933, Eugenio, nuncio for foreign affairs, the man who later became Pius XII, had signed a concordat, but he’s also looking for an agreement with the Hungarians.
So, this man, Karolyi, can we go onto the next slide please? Thank you, Karolyi was only in power for a little while. He’d been foreign minister under Bethlen, but the financial scandals, and he resigned. So Horthy appointed Gyula Gombos as prime minister. Can we see him, please? Now he was a totally reactionary man. Publicly, he was a terrible anti-Semite. Horthy tells him to publicly renounce his anti-Semitism and work with Budapest large Jewish community. He also made, Gombos, remember, it is Horthy who has the real power, put some of Bethlen’s compatriots and friends in key positions. He wants more liberals. And he also insisted that some Jews be in the government. Most of his support, most of Gombos’ support comes from medium and small farmers, refugees who fled into Hungary from their lost territories. Very much, can you imagine the national pride? They’ve been forced into Slovakia, they’ve been forced into the Czech lands, they’ve been forced into Romania. They come back and they’re panellists and they want the glory of Hungary to be put together. And of course, Gombos, his main platform is a total renouncement of the Treaty of Trianon and to create a one-party government. He admired Hitler. He wanted social reform. It’s almost like a national socialism. Yes, he’s being nice to the industrialist, but what he’s realised is if the people are behind him, it’s nationalism and socialism. He also wants to withdraw from the League of Nations.
In the main, he was thwarted by Horthy and by parliament, but he was the first prime minister of any state to actually go and visit Adolf Hitler. And in 1934, he has a bilateral trade agreement with Nazi Germany. Now, that’s very useful. And if you look at Hungary’s position economically, it’s a big agricultural country. Hitler’s looking for alliances. Gombos, who is very much an authoritarian figure who worships Hitler, Hitler sees this man as a potential ally, so treats him well. He goes to Berlin. He’s given a lot of kudos. So he enters into a trade agreement with Germany. So he goes to the polls in 1935, and elections give him much more support in parliament. And he replaces many of the liberals and Jews with his own supporters. In September 1936, he informs Hitler, he will establish a Nazi-like state, but he dies. But by 1938, 52% of Hungary’s import and export business is with Nazi Germany. So what else is there to say about Gombos? Post-World War, he was violently anti-communist. And in many ways that’s what turned them into anti-Semitism. He was one of the officers who formed a self-defense unit against Bela Kun. Also, he did worship Horthy and he did help. He was involved in the purge against the communists. He supported all the actions against the Jews. As I said, when he was prime minister, Horthy forced him to recant much of his anti-Semitism. However, and ironically, Hitler regarded him as too Jewish. Anyway, can we go on to the next?
Yes, Pal Teleki. There’s an interim prime minister. Remember Horthy, all these characters are of course appointed by Horthy, a man who’s born into… I’m talking about a man called Kalman Daranyi. He tried for a short period to steer a middle path. He banned the extreme right wing party, the Arrow Cross, and had Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the Arrow Cross, imprisoned. Now this is important, and I’ll be talking about the Arrow Cross later on. He wanted to play both against the middle. He tried to strengthen ties with England and with France to balance the pressure from Nazi Germany. He also had a close relationship with Italy. But after the Angelus, Hungary is now… After the Angelus, remember, Vienna, Austria, you now have Nazi Germany on your border, and it’s a gradual shift to the right. And it was he who actually creates the first anti-Jewish laws in March 1933, which cuts all Jewish participation in the economy and professions by 80%. You can just imagine what that did to the Jewish community. And look when it is. It’s 1938. Now let’s talk about Pal Teleki. He also came from an aristocratic political family. I want you to think about what’s going on in the world now. Hitler is on the march. He supported Germany taking Czechoslovakia because he hoped to reclaim territory lost at the Treaty of Trianon.
He becomes prime minister in 15th of February, 1939. Now in August 1939, the world is absolutely stunned when Hitler and Stalin make a pact, The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the non-aggression pact, that if Hitler moves from the west into Poland, the Soviets will move east. This is the non-aggression pact. He refuses to cooperate with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. He said, “I would sooner block the railway lines than participate in attack on Poland.” And this is what he said to the German ambassador. “Consequently, hundreds of thousands of civilian and Polish soldiers have escaped to Hungary.” What he does is he permits the Polish Red Cross and the church to operate in the open. He’s very brave, actually. But he allowed German troops to cross Hungarian lines into South Romania. Do you see the problem he’s got? He’s not going to fight with the Germans against the Russians because… He’s not going to fight with the Germans against the Poles. He loathes communism. He was also part of the anti-coup. Think about it, that he’s in an absolutely impossible situation. And he does have to allow Hungarian troops, he had to allow German troops to march through Hungarian lands in August 1940. And as a response to that, Germany gave back to Hungary part of Transylvania. But when he learnt that German troops had entered Hungary en route to invade Yugoslavia, he committed suicide. He decided that that was enough. If he was a man with an absolutely impossible task, he said this, “We broke our word out of cowardness.
The nation feels it and we have thrown away all its honour. We have allied ourselves to scoundrels. We will become body statures, a nation of trash. I did not hold you back. I am guilty.” Now, as far as his Jewishness, how did he regard the Jews? Well, after the Treaty of Trianon, and please remember the notion, the association of Jews with communism. He said, “Jews are a problem of life and death for the Hungarian people.” And he’d had a very brief period office in 1920. And we had been responsible for introducing the first numerous classes act. This is the first anti-Semitic act passed by any post-World War I state. Jews were only to be allowed into the universities in relation to the percentage in the Hungarian population. He was only in power a little while. Ironically, what it meant was an awful lot of very, very smart young Jews got out of Hungary. They went to study in all sorts of other universities in Europe. And if you think of the kind of Hungarian Jews who escaped at this period, and many of them went on to make the most extraordinary careers. He’d been a professor at Budapest University from ‘21 to '38. He was a professor of geography. And when journalists asked him about the anti-Jewish violence at the university, because when the numerous classes was put in, you can imagine the nationalist students on the march.
He said, “The din does not bother me. In any case, the students take exams that test their knowledge of the sea. And the din is aptly suited to the sea.” Do you see the moral maze we’re in here? This is a man who is deeply anti-Semitic. He’s also very anti-communist. On the 16th of February, 1939, he passed the second anti-Jewish law that’s going to be enacted by Bela Imredy. And he defines Jews in racial terms. Jews could no longer hold any government positions, be editors, publishers, producers. Think of the Hungarian film industry, think of the game that Britain and America. Think of some of the great Hungarian producers and directors. He restated, he reinforced the numerous classes at university. He extended the provisions. And of course, this affects many of the Jews of Hungary. Hungarian Jewry is now in a vice. But the point is, in that vice, what can be done? Back in July 1938, the Evian Conference had basically said, “We’re not going to do anything.” You will recall that in July 1938, after the Angelus, the countries of the free world met under James P. McDonald, the Commissar of Foreign Affairs for the League of Nations to discuss the plight of Jewry. And basically it was summed up by the Australian delegate. He said, “Australia does not have a race problem. We will not import one.” And Golda Meir, who was one of the observers, the Jews were not given any delegates. She said, “The day will come when the world will no longer pity Jews.”
So you see the kind of problems that they’re facing. Now, an all young Jewish men of arms bearing age are to be forced into labour battalions. Later, it’s to be extended to all able-bodied Jewish men. And thousands and thousands of Jews in the acquired parts of Czechoslovakia. Now, Hungary’s getting back more and more territory from the Germans. Jews in the acquired part of Hungary, of Czechoslovakia who didn’t have Hungarian citizenship were deported. Those without citizenship tragically are later going to become the victims of the Einsatzgruppen. He signs 52 anti-Jewish decrees during his role. He gave amnesty to Selassie, and the Nazi movement becomes much stronger as a result of this. Although, and of course he commits suicide, the labour battalions are going to be much more enforced after his death, and particularly after Hungary enters the war. In August 1940, Germany has already given, they’ve already given some of Transylvania. They give all of North Transylvania to Hungary. And in October 1940, Hungary joins the Axis powers. And the labour battalions are going to be used for the building and repairing of roads, cleaning forests, digging trenches, building tank traps, both at home and on the front. And over 42,000 Jewish men perished in these actions. And after Operation Barbarossa, when Hitler breaks his alliance with Stalin and invades Russia, Hungary’s much more comfortable with the alliance. And when the Axis declared war on America, Hungary joined them. So they completely cutting themselves from the west. So it’s at this stage that Hungary falls in with Nazi Germany completely.
History is an interesting thing. In 2004, the Pal Teleki Memorial Committee supported the erection of a major statue on Castle Hill. And there wasn’t much opposition except international Jewry and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Efraim Zuroff, who we’ve had on our Zoom channel. They all protested and the plans were cancelled. And a statue was actually placed in the Catholic church in a small town on Lake Balaton, which had hosted Polish refugees. You see, that’s the other problem. He was allowing. If you think the government before Pal Teleki had allowed Polish refugees in. So to the Poles, he was a hero because he’d allowed that to continue. And there’s a street named after him in Warsaw. The trouble is if you study Jewish history, you are really going to get an upside down and inside out history. And this is a letter that Horthy himself wrote to Pal Teleki. “The Jews enjoyed too much success in commerce, the professions and industry, success that needs curtailing. As regards to the Jewish problem, I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life. I’ve never had contact with Jews.” Not true, but nevermind. “I’ve considered it intolerable that here in Hungary, everything, every factory, bank, large fortune business, theatre, press, commerce should be in Jewish hands, and that the Jews should be the image reflected of Hungary, especially abroad.
Since however, one of the major tasks of the government is to raise the standard of living, we have to acquire wealth. It is impossible in a year or two to replace the Jew who has everything in their hands, and to replace them with incompetent, unworthy, mostly beak-mouthed elements while soon we shall become bankrupt. This requires a generation, at least.” it’s fascinating. He’s saying, “I hate Jews, but what we’re going to do about it? What we’re going to do about it?” The Hungarians aren’t up to it yet. So we need a generation. So anyway, between 1938 and 1941, what did Hungary get out of the German alliance? Well basically, they had four different extensions of territory. They doubled their size. And also back in 1938, with the backing of Nazi Germany, it’s repudiated its restriction on its armed forces. And Horthy, of course, had allowed his prime ministers to enact anti-Jewish legislation. And it gets worse. After the invasion of Russia, of course, the final solution begins, the euphemistic final solution. Now we’re going to have a lot of debate on Horthy’s role in all of this. I have completely missed time. I’m going to need another session on Hungary. But we can talk about that later. August 1941, intermarriage was prohibited. Anyone with two Jewish grandparents was regarded as racially Jewish. Jewish men having sex with Hungarian women were given a three-year prison sentence. Hungary was, by June 1941, after the invasion of Russia, there’s no bar now. The anti-communist government has no bar and they’re actively contributing to the Axis war effort.
Ironically, I’ve already mentioned that Teleki allowed Selassie, the head of the Arrow Cross, out of prison. Horthy hated the Arrow Cross and he hated Selassie. In fact, what we have to say, he does allow the Jews without Hungarian citizenship to be deported. He is still the head of state. We can blame his prime minister, but he’s still the head of state. And also between January and February of 1942, over a thousand Jews were murdered by the Hungarian militia, who were outwardly, ostensibly in search of partisans. And what’s going to happen next is of course the Axis is going to be defeated at Stalin ground. By January 1943, the Red Army has broken through, and out of 200,000 Hungarian troops that the Hungarians had placed at the control of the Germans, 150,000 of them were killed. And by mid-1943, Horthy is going to put out feelers to the west. Now, just to sum up on the tragic situation of the Jews of Hungary. They are living under total repression. The non-Hungarians have been sent off to labour battalions. And as you know, the majority of them are killed. Partisans are killed.
They are living completely repressed. There are 52 different laws against them. But remember where we are. After the invasion of Russia, the Einsatzgruppen, begin the genocide of the Jewish people. That is not going to happen in Hungary to the Hungarian Jews until 1944. So when we are dealing with this kind of situation, it is so difficult because we are looking at different gradations of hell, are we not? But I think, as I said, I will come back to this on Tuesday. I want to take us through what happened to Horthy. I’m not going to look at the customer affair. Once the website is up, I gave so many presentations on that. You’ll be able to listen. So what I propose to do is to continue with Hungary and then we will move on to the Czech lands. We’ll move on to Slovakia. So let me see what questions.
Trudy, Trudy. Hi, I’m just going to jump in and say Elie Wiesel was very close friend of ours.
Yes, I know.
Over and over and over again, he said, “We did not know in Hungary. We did not know.” Is that not astonishing?
Well, he lived out in the remote part of the Romania. He lived up on the borderlands, didn’t he? It’s very difficult to answer that question, Wendy. You see there was a lot of reports coming through. Did he know or-
[Wendy] No, he said, “We did not know.”
You see, the Hungarian leadership by the time Horthy is forced to give up, when the Nazis demand that they basically, they march into Hungary with Eichmann and Eichmann demands the Jews be given up and now they’re in control. There was so much evidence of what’s going on. One of the problems at the Eichmann trial, some of the leaders of the Jewish community that survived were attacked in the trial because they had not warned the Jews. It’s such a difficult problem. I’m sure that Elie Wiesel is speaking the absolute truth. Were there people in his town who knew? Could they believe it? You see, Wendy, we know what’s going on in Ukraine. We can see it with our own eyes. If somebody told you that was a plan, back in 1942, if someone told you there was a plan to wipe the Jews off the face of the world, would you have believed them without television?
[Wendy] No, no, no.
See, that’s the problem. That’s the problem we have to deal with. That’s the problem. I’ve been teaching since the '80s. So a lot of people who were adults during the war in England, I’ve asked them so often, really lovely, clever, sensible people, “Did you know?” Many of them said no, but then if you look at the press reports, there was a minute silence in the House of Commons. On December the 17th, 1942, nine allied governments signed the declaration. It was also announced in Washington. And there were all reports in the press. Did you believe it? I think the question is, in Hungary, in a remote village where Elie Wiesel was, it’s quite likely that he didn’t get the information. Were there radios? Not under Hungarian rule. Jews weren’t allowed to have radios. So would they have heard? But you’ve got to remember, when you murder that kind of numbers, there were eyewitnesses, people were surviving, There were 16 different escapees from Auschwitz. By the time Auschwitz is prepared to receive Hungarian Jewry, it’s not until May 1944. You see, there are some Jews who said Horthy kept them safe for a while, because although they were badly treated, they were not deported on mass under Horthy.
[Wendy] That’s an optimus version.
Yeah, but in the end, they built the railway lines straight up to the crematorium, I mean, Auschwitz towards the end of the war. What is so obscene, it’s the gates of hell. They were killing between 12 and 15,000 people in a 24-hour cycle. I don’t know 12,000 people. Do you? I’ve never been able to get my head around that.
[Wendy] Trudy, Trudy. 12,000 people know you. Yeah, but if you think about people you know intimately, sweetheart, I just find it almost-
[Wendy] Of course.
I’m looking in Ukraine and one of things that I find very depressing is that we just don’t seem to learn as a species. I must give you a note of optimism. Back in 1932, Einstein and Freud went into correspondence. Einstein asked Freud, what causes war? And actually the Einstein-Freud letters are on the net. And if anyone wants to think a little bit more about this, just look them up. Wendy, I’m going to have to take another session on Hungary, I’m afraid. Is that all right?
[Wendy] Of course.
Shall we have some questions?
Q&A and Comments:
Look, this is Margaret. The UK government is shameful. Little Belgium is taking in 99,000. Tim Abrahams, you mentioned that women and children are dying. I’m sure men are dying too. Yes, of course.
I was actually referring, Tim, to the bombing of the maternity hospital. Atallah are doing wonderful humanitarian work in… You see, they’re all good people.
Now this is from Marika. Petofi is not just a Hungarian poet. He was considered the biggest one. Died in the fight for freedom in the revolution against the Austrian Empire. You see, that’s interesting. And here you have Bela Kun writing the best essay in the class on him, the Communist Jew. Yes, opportunity.
Yes, Tony. The Chinese character for the word crisis has two meanings. Danger and opportunity. It’s a wonderful teaching aid that, Tony. When you talk about the path of the Jew in modernity, it’s been dangerous and it’s also been opportunity. There’s an incredible line by Shnezaman of L'ardi who created Abad, and I’m going to spend a whole session on it when we get to Russia. When the French invaded Poland, it was the largest Jewish community in the world at the time. And he said, “I would rather my people suffer under the czars than live in peace under Napoleon because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.” Now, what was the danger he foresaw? And he went off with the Russian Army. I wonder if Russia thinks that their empire is gone.
You had a slip of the tongue referring to Ukraine as the Ukraine. Yes, that should be avoided. Yes, Dennis, that was a slip of the tongue.
Q: You know what a Ukraine means?
A: It means borderland. Again, that whole area, it’s so complicated. I had an interview with Jeffrey Veidlinger as a joint event with Jewish Book Week last week. I don’t how many of you managed to hear it, but he’s written a brilliant book, “In the Midst of Civilised Europe,” which gives a very good analysis of the history of the Ukraine.
Now this is Zooms. My refugee vice family bought a family grave plot in the Hungarian Union century in New York. One great aunt lived to 113. There is one grave left for me to my parents, which I don’t intend to use for a very long time. I’m only 85. I love you, love you.
Q: What percentage of those who promoted what we could be labelled communism well off financially?
A: Well, there were quite a few Jewish communists. The man who really financed much of the ideas. You know the German high command sent Lenin and the Bolsheviks back into Russia in 1917 to destroy Kerensky’s Revolution. And that was the brainchild of a wealthy Jew. And there were some American Jews who were helping the communist 'cause they hated Russia. The Tsarist Russia was the bete noire of the Jewish people.
Don’t understand how so suddenly the Soviets took over. Margaret, are you talking at the end of the Russian Revolution? Would you wait for that? Because it’s going to take William and I a whole session each to talk about that.
Bethlen, thank you Marika. I got these pronunciations and then I couldn’t find the piece of paper. Bethlen, Bethlen.
This is from Agnes. My grandfather in Budapest was told by some non-Jew bodies, “You better watch out. They’re making soap and lampshades from Jews.” He did not believe it. You see, remember, Hungarian Jewry are not attacked. They’re not deported till May 1944. And another point, if Wendy’s still listening, think of the work of Wallenberg, think of the work of Carl Lutz, think of all the delegations who were there, who did so much to try and save Jews. Karl Lutz actually went down to the river after the Arrow Cross took power when they were shooting Jews into the Danube and he himself went in and waited and got a wounded woman out and put her in his Swiss car. A hugely brave man. There were good people. My friend, Robert Wistrich, also said, always said, “If only liberalism could become more militant.”
Q: Given the world crash was not nearly as globalised truly, why did the Wall Street crash of 1929 mean Budapest was in poverty?
A: Because what happened, look, you have a global-linked economy. In 1924, the League of Nations had given Hungary an awful lot of money, but there was no one to, they were exporting. There was no one to pay for exports. There were no jobs. That’s one of the problems.
Marika, Karoly. Karoly. Thank you, Marika. I have it written down. Gombos. Gombos. Gombos. Thank you, Gombos.
In June 2017, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum condemned any attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of Hungary’s wartime leader, Horthy, who was a vocal anti-Semite and complicity in the murder of the country’s Jewish population. On June the 17th, 2017, Viktor Orban asserted at a public ceremony that the Hungarian nation was able to survive the '20s and '30s due to some exceptional statesmen like Miklos or Horthy. They wanted to say that that identified Horthy as an exceptional statesman is a gross distortion of historical facts and the latest of the whole series of propagandous attempts. Mr. Orban is rewriting Hungary’s history. Yes, yes, Susan. Yes, this is one of the problems. As William said to you, there are certain facts, and everything else is commentary and propaganda. And when you are dealing with issues as complicated as this, it has to be said. Horthy’s son was very pro-Jewish. And his wife wrote that when Horthy was allowed out by the allies at the end of the war, he finished up in Portugal, in rather straightened circumstances. And according to his daughter-in-law, there were some wealthy Budapest Jews who actually helped him survive financially. So did the papacy, by the way. So it’s all so complicated. Look, of course he’s an anti-Semite. He’s also violently communist. But when you are looking at gradation of evil, and of course we are going to be looking at the Arrow Cross, who are totally, in my book, totally evil, he didn’t deport the majority of Jews. Now that’s not an excuse. I’m trying to hold the line.
This is from Monica. I interviewed a Holocaust survivor whose mother was the prima ballerina at the opera house. And she too she was banned because she was Jewish. Monica, he also saw Wallenberg helping Jews at the brick factory. Yes.
Q: Did Mussolini exert any influence on Hungary after the Angelus?
A: No, by this time they’ve made their decision, really. It was just what stopped them was Hitler doing a deal with Stalin.
Which year did Teleki say that, oh, let me just check. I will have that absolute date for you next time rather than rumble through.
There is a Bethlen square synagogue built in 1931 in Budapest. Yes, he did try. It never happened. Or he didn’t, I don’t know. I have numerous older friends who lived through this. Many family members who covered pro to the labour guards. 1944, to my knowledge, 600,000 Jews were taken at the concentration camp. I met a few who came up. Look, by the time the Jews of Hungary were attacked, there was nearly 900,000 of them because think how enlarged Hungary had become. Over half of them were murdered, over half of them. And it took such a short period of time, in three months. There was so much knowledge. Again, Wendy, if you’re listening, there was so much knowledge that even the Pope protested. Roosevelt protested. George II protested. You see, it was an open secret by then. Now that doesn’t mean that individual Jews in little villages and towns didn’t know what was happening to them. And it can be said that some of their leadership didn’t want to inform them. And then on the other hand, you had the incredible rescue committee in Hungary, which was headed up by Otto Komoly, who is a real hero. I don’t know if Tommy’s on today, because I think he’s his nephew, I think Tommy’s in Australia. But look, I think it’s only in terribly testing times that we really can have any knowledge of how any of us behave. It’s when times are even and easy. And most people go along in a pretty well, as decent way. But what happens when these horrors are happening? And I can’t overstate how important the role of Jews in communism is. That’s what made the right wing Hungarians hate them, just as much as the Christ killers of the… Look, you’ve got a cocktail. You’ve got the Christ killer image of Catholic Hungary, the church, although there were one or two, the prime minister of Hungary is going to speak out. You can never be absolute. The hatred of communism, the fact that Jews had been, in inverted commas, too successful. The irony was they saw themselves as Hungarians.
Q: Were they seen as Hungarians?
A: No. By the right, no, not at all. Hungarian Jews did not know. Jerry, some did, some didn’t. Don’t forget there were some that were negotiating.
This is from Professor Luke. Some people in Hungary did know. For example, my Hungarian family had letters from my German family who told them there were a lot of cross-border relations. Yes, of course, Europe is porous. Look, as I said, that minute silence in the House of Commons articles in the press. Having said that, there were people in England, people who were in moment of thought positions of relative influence who said they didn’t know. On the other hand, you had certain Jews in Parliament and non-Jews, Quakers, incredible people, begging the British government to do more. And by the time Hungary, the Hungarian Jews are attacked, the allies were asked to bomb the camps. Nothing happened.
So, Susan, obviously, Elie Wiesel, who we can totally trust, said he didn’t know. But why he didn’t know, how he didn’t know, that’s the complicated. Wiesel, that is Wiesel.
Q: Did the Nazi-occupied countries operate their missioning and laws differently?
A: Not in the main, except the Israelis are now saying that any Ukrainian with one Jewish grandparent can come in. It’s fascinating. It’s evilly fascinating. Have a look at the text of the Wannsee document, which is, ironically, you can find it online, and that’s where it’s all debated.
Q: Why didn’t the Jews in America and Britain listen to the refugees coming in and try and stop the Holocaust?
A: Martin, that is a real cri de coeur. They didn’t have the power to do so. The first real call for Zionism, for a Jewish state is in May 1942 at the Biltmore Hotel when there’s incontrovertible evidence. Look, this whole notion of influence and power, we should really have a debate on it.
Yes, Joan. Joan is totally correct. When the first news of the camps got to DC, the response was, it’s not believable. And that was in '42. However, Josiah DeBois at the State Department, he prepares a report, if you remember. In the end, too much evidence is coming through. Then, of course, don’t forget, December the 17th, 1942, America signed the declaration. He came from Seghet, yes. How do you pronounce it? I’d love to know how to pronounce it. Seghet.
Yes, Elie. Read “Night.” Yes, one of the most extraordinary books. My mother said that Jewish escapees coming to Budapest were disbelieved. If someone said that to you, would you believe? There was an incredible amount of evidence. Do you want to believe it? Can you believe it? Look, we all live in family units. When do you believe that someone hates you enough to murder your child? There were people who escaped and went back to Hungary and no one would believe them, yeah, yeah. It’s a very, very dark story.
This is again from Professor Luke. For example, my German family left in 1933. They had plenty of evidence having lived in d'Espagne and the Bejupaj. They went to the UK and wrote to their Hungarian branch war. They told them whilst they hid, but that doesn’t mean others knew. Look, between '33 and '39, we knew all the anti-Jewish laws. When Dachau was established, it was on the front page of “The Times.” It’s fascinating to actually study the newspapers of the time. Don’t forget, there were British reporters in Germany right up until war broke up and the American reporters were there until Pearl Harbour.
Anyway, I think I better, oh yes, Tessa Gordon. Rudy Vrba, yes. Yes, Rudy Vrba and Anton Wetzler were two Slovakian Jews who escaped from Auschwitz, an extraordinary story. They bring back evidence. I’m going to be dealing with all of this. After Pesach, I’m going to look at freedom and liberation. I’m going to look at this whole area and it’s going to take three or four sessions to give it a proper, the kind of proper attention it really deserves.
Ellie, my parents were in Hungary, but they didn’t know, or they believed they weren’t going to be harmed. They also thought it was a exaggeration. My father’s family in a small town outside Budapest were totally clueless, enormous or murdered. It’s such a terrible, terrible, terrible story.
What was it? Isaiah Berlin said, “Of course, all Jews are paranoid, but without history, we have a right to be.” You see, Israeli is born out of all of this. Zionism was a minority movement before the show.
I think I better stop there because we can go on with the questions next time.