Trudy Gold
The Jews of Hungary, Part 2

Trudy Gold -The Jews of Hungary, Part 2

- So welcome everybody, and I forget that we’ve got so many people online listening to our private talk. So welcome everyone, and over to Trudy. Thanks Trudes, and Judi.

• Thanks very much, Wendy. Can I just mention a few things before we start? The first point I want to make is that there’s 12,000 of us online now, and Judi is only working part-time on Lockdown University. And if she doesn’t manage to reply to your email within a couple of days, please don’t panic. She’ll get to it. It’s just the numbers are getting extraordinary and it’s–

• And sometimes she won’t. So I’m apologising in advance because all depending on our workload here, you know?

• Yeah, exactly.

• Well, Trudy and Wendy, thank you. I just wanted to say that I woke up on Monday morning to over 500 emails, and I promise I will get back to everybody as soon as I can. But as Wendy says, I do have other work to do, and so please, please, please don’t chase me. I will get back to you, I promise.

• Okay, and we are doing our best, you know? Lockdown really just started off as– Yeah, a family affair, and it’s grown into a huge family affair, but I apologise for those that we miss or don’t get back to. It just becomes overwhelming, especially as life is opening up full on now.

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• Okay, so everyone, please bear with us, and obviously I’m dealing with a very tough subject, a very tough issue because in many ways I think the story of Hungarian Jewry is particularly heart rending because it was attacked so late. And I suppose the questions I want you to think about, and I’m sure many of you have already thought about, and I must say I’m getting some incredibly poignant emails from people who were so involved, and I’ve discussed it with Wendy and Judi, and once the website is up, we will be able to share many of these extraordinary memories. So I suppose the first question I want to pose, and I’ve been, as I’ve been working in this field for nearly 40 years now, I am fed up with going to museums where above the door, you see, “Those of you who do not learn the lessons of history "are doomed to repeat them.”

I suppose the first question I want to learn is what can we learn from history? And then what are the lessons we want to learn? And also, when you are dealing with Hungary, you are going to be dealing with incredibly complex issues that involve so many different kinds of people. Primo Levi called it the grey zone. And how do individuals react in incredibly extreme circumstances? I was born in 1948. I’m lucky. I have never really seriously been tested. But I know what my friend Anita , which says, and of course she was in Auschwitz, and it was the cello that saved her life. And she always says to me, don’t judge unless you’ve actually been to hell. And I suppose, why are we studying this? I think we study for the knowledge itself. We also study to honour the stories that can no longer be told by the individuals. We honour to, we tell the stories to honour the brave, the martyrs, and also we need to honour the rescuers. So today I’m going to be weaving chronology with biography. And as we go through the tale, and I think it’s going to need at least one more session because it’s such an important session, there are so many questions that I know you’ll be thinking about.

I’ve already had emails from people. We are in danger, I think, of demonising the Nazis. What do I mean by that? Giving them, taking them away from their humanity. They were not demons, they were people, and we have to judge them as people. We have to judge the collaborators as people, not as beings from another planet. We then have to think of the Allies. Could the Allies have done more? And tragically, one of the most poignant parts of this horrible tale is could the Jews themselves have done more? And this is certainly one of the issues that divided Israel. Because one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time is not just for the sake of the past and the memory, it’s also because it’s so marked the Jewish people, and it marked Israel. So I’m also, but I’m going, because I believe in light and shade, I’m actually going to begin this by repeating a little of what I said on Monday, Tuesday. And you know why?

I’m actually turning back to an early 13th century Jewish code of education, which actually teaches me to repeat, and I’m going, this was a code of education in, it was actually applied to England. And you’ll find it very amusing. The teacher should not take more than 10 students in one subject. Though our sages have fixed 25 as the proper number for one teacher, that only applied to the land of Israel, where the climate favoured the development of the mind, and for the time of political independence, for in freedom, the mind is lofty, strong, clear, and light, and takes up wisdom and knowledge easier than in a state of subjection. That’s a 13th century code of education. It’s fascinating. It’s saying that really a teacher can only cope with 10 people. And then it goes on to say, We always read everything we love twice over to make the word understood of the women and the vulgar, which I think is very pejorative. But nevertheless, what is very interesting is that it is actually a Jewish tradition to repeat yourself a little bit so that we start, let me, so I’m going to, I’m going to begin really by going back to Hungary, and just to re remind you of the 1910 census. Now, if you remember, the Jews have been granted full emancipation, when Austria-Hungary, it was the joint crowns, and in 1895, Judaism was recognised as a religion. Now, this again is a very, very naughty problem.

I keep on saying to you, define Jew for me. One of the issues that’s going to face Hungarian Jewry after the First World War is the majority of them were patriotic Hungarians of the Jewish religion, whereas the rise of nationalism and fascism and all the problems that Hungary faced made many people not see the Jews as Hungarian, but as the other. And if this isn’t a lesson from history, I don’t know what is. So in the 1910 census, there were, there were 911,000 Jews out in Hungary, out of the population of nearly 19 million, which made them about 5% of the population. There’d been an increase of Jews since the 1890 census. So Jews have been coming in from outlying areas, and immigration, this huge immigration to America. Between 1881 and 1912, about 180,000 mainly to America, a few to Palestine. But the Jews of Hungary were not particularly Zionist. And just to repeat the 1910 census for you, because it gives you a picture of Jewish life in Hungary, and I pointed out that Hungarian Jewry very much followed the class divisions of Hungary.

Hungary was a very class orientated society. 61% of the Jewish population were merchants. Printing and publishing was very big. 58% of the printers were Jewish, 42% of the innkeepers. This is very much on a line with all other diaspora communities in Europe. And now we come to the real way of life, 24% of the bakers, 28% of the butchers, and these are not necessarily kosher butchers. There is nothing wrong, even with a religious Jew being a, selling TRAYTH meat. 21% of the tailors, that’s not a surprise. 9% of the shoe bakers, 50% of the lawyers and the doctors. Now, if you divide the community up, 3% of the community were what we would call the magnates. They were incredibly wealthy. 34% were wage earning employees, 59% self-employed, and the salaried earning middle class. And religiously, the Jews in Budapest in the south, they’re the ones that more faced the west, they were near LAHG, which I explained to you, was more on a part with American conservatism, whereas the further east you went in Hungary, the more you went into the traditional Yiddish speaking world.

Even though the edict of toleration had insisted that Jews speak the language of the country, the reality was that in the great Hasidic communities, in the traditional Orthodox communities, Yiddish was their language. Now, of course, one of the main most important areas that we have to look at is the end of the first World War. As I explained on Tuesday, Hungary was dismembered. It lost two-thirds of its territory, and from now on, only 52% of the original community lived in small Hungary, which meant a large percentage of Jewry that had previously been in Hungary was in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. And in the census of 1920, which is after the, of course, after the war, 31% of Jewry lived in small villages with less than 20,000 people, and there’d been a slight change in the role of the Jews. Basically, the role in journalism was really on the increase, and 84% of the journalists in Hungary were Jewish. 25% of musicians, 23% of the actors, and all you have to think about is the incredible amount of talent that eventually was going to go west, either in the early immigrations that I’ve already talked about or later on, and it really staffed both Hollywood, and if you think the great musicians of Europe going to America.

Now, there was also quite a lot of people involved in what I would call the, in art. There were many Jewish painters. This is unusual, but interesting. When, you know, it is fascinating, and I’ve had this debate many times with Patrick Bade because even though the Jews make this incredible implosion into music, art was, art followed behind. But 17% of the painters in Hungary were Jewish and a lot of the sculptors. So an interesting development. And I think that would probably interest Wendy, because that of course is her passion. Now, of the important landowners, the people who really owned large slices of Hungary, remember it’s a very class divided society, in outer Budapest, it is an incredibly agrarian country. The further east you go, the more peasant-like the population, 20% of the important landowners were Jewish, and of the 2,800 factories that existed in small Hungary, 40% were owned by Jews. And in fact, if you, I’ve mentioned the stock exchange to you yesterday, 88%, 91% of the currency brokers, 90%, now this is an extraordinary statistic, which maybe explains one of the great problems, 90% of Hungarian industry was owned by a few closely interrelated Jewish families.

Now, if you are discontent, the war is over, Hungary is being dismembered, there is chaos, and it appears that the Jew is in control, if you don’t believe that the Jew is in fact a Hungarian citizen, and it’s fascinating how often this kind of thing happens, because of course, the Jews, look, the Jews were loyal Hungarians, 10,000 of them lost their lives in the war. There were many Jews in the regiments. And interesting, there were a lot of Jews in sport in Hungary. They saw, and if you look at the fencing teams in the Olympic games, the bulk of the Hungarian fencing team was in fact Jewish. So they saw themselves as Hungarian, particularly in Budapest, in the cities. Whether that was true of the countryside is much more complicated and I would suggest there was a division. Now, when the ceasefire was established November, December, 1918, it meant Hungary was landlocked. So, and 3.3 Hungarian citizens are now living in minority, as minority status in other states.

You could make the case that the chaos at the end of the First World War sowed the seeds for the second World War. And really the, and I mentioned this to you, I’ve mentioned this to you many times, it could well be, you know, that one of the great problems of the 20th century is that the divisions of the Middle East, the old Ottoman Empire, the division of the Hapsburg Empire, what happened to the German lands, the collapse of the system led to many of the problems that we have to deal with today. If only politicians would take the long view. Anyway, now can we come on to the other problem that was going to really cause the rise of antisemitism? And let’s see, Bela Kun. Now I mentioned him to you. I mentioned him to you on Tuesday. Can we see his face, if you don’t mind? Yeah. Now he, as I mentioned, he came from a Jewish family, though of course his mother converted. However, those who hated him didn’t see him as an international communist, which of course was his dream. They saw him as a Jew. And of course, what is interesting about Kun, and we finished with him being, he had to fight in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured by the Russians, and he’s in an internment camp for Austro-Hungarian soldiers. When of course the revolution happens in Russia, he’s already been become involved in left wing politics, but he becomes a committed communist.

And he very much fought, and he fought for the Bolsheviks in the Russian civil War, and his dream, of course, was a revolution in Hungary. I also mentioned to you that he very much favoured the Trotsky line, that once the revolution had occurred in Russia, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose "but your chains”, the whole notion of communism, the idealism of communism before it actually comes into effect was that let us create an international society where the divisions between people disappear. If everyone has everything according to his needs, then perhaps society will become just. You know, Marx even said the need for law will wither away. And many writers have said, perhaps it’s only Jews, alienated, marginalised Jews who can have this vision because they are not caught up in nationalisms. These are people who have left the Jewish world far behind. They are outsiders. They look at the world, they see the injustice of it. And by creating a permanent revolution and going for this classless worldwide society, that was the dream, then maybe we can create a better world.

And I think this was the dream. And don’t forget that in Palestine, the socialist scientists, they were particularist. They believe in Jewish nationalism. They said the world will never ever accept you as anything but a Jew. But nevertheless, it’s the same dream. Think about the kibbutz. This is pure socialism in action. Look, the majority of Jews were never socialists. The majority of Jews were never communists. But the point is, it’s the brainchild, I suppose, of about maybe a thousand interesting intellectuals who changed the world. Now, what happens is within the whole, he has a team of communist revolutionaries. Like they are actually what, in Russia, he’s radicalised. He’s a brilliant, he’s a brilliant spokesperson. He’s a brilliant communicator. He has a relationship with Lenin and what he decides to do with 500 ex-Hungarians who have been captured but are now free, the Revolution, they’re going to go to Hungary and they are going to take power. And his dream is to really recreate a new society. And this is what he wanted. He wanted total separation of the church and state.

He wanted freedom of speech and assembly. He wanted free education. He wanted language and cultural rights of minorities. So with these people in the chaos, he and his army, they’re called Lenin’s boys, and of the people working with Kun, all but one were Jews, they do take over the state. He works at first with socialists. He takes over the state. The liberal prime minister is forced to resign, and he becomes PM and commissar for foreign affairs. He informs Lenin that he has created the dictatorship of the proletariat and asked for a treaty of alliance. But the point was the Soviets were already embroiled in a terrible civil war. So what Kun does is to establish a red guard. They were known as the Lenin’s Boys, and they were under the leadership of a Jew called Max Joseph, or I should say, a man who was Jewish by birth. Because identification depends on who’s doing the identifying. Now, they don’t just take it, take the revolution into Hungary. As part of this great dream, Lenin’s Boys invade Slovakia and declared a Slovakian Soviet Republic based on the belief that granting this territory was, to Czechoslovakia was totally unjust because of our ethnic Hungarian majority.

So he’s pushing the dream into Slovakia. And later on, of course, the way that the Slovakians treated the Jewish population was as vile as the way the Hungarian fascists are going to treat the Jews. And it’s very important, I think, to remember that one of the reasons that many individuals turned against the Jews was because of this association with communism. It was left to the French to broker a deal and Kun, and what happens is, Kun can’t make it in Slovakia, no help comes from Lenin who’s embroiled in a civil war and Kun and the other leaders are forced to flee. And what then happens is he makes a big, he makes a big speech, and then off he flees to Russia. During the period of the Lenin Boys, hundreds of people were executed. This is Kun’s last speech on the 1st of August before he flees. “The Hungarian proletariat betrayed just not their leaders, "but it themselves.” The Romanian forces enter Budapest. There’s total anarchy. But what you should understand is that many ordinary folk were murdered in what was called the Red Terror. Now, what happens to Kun is he goes to, just to finish off his story, he goes back to Russia. He has fallen out with Lenin.

Lenin uses him for a while to go to Germany and to other places to try and stir up revolution. He’s a brilliant orator, but he says a lot, but not much happens. And he is finally, and of course, after Lenin’s death, Stalin takes over and he is finally purged by Stalin in 1936-7. He’s accused, ironically of Trotskyism and executed. So, but then what happens is there is, you have the Romanian army in Budapest, there’s total chaos. And it’s at this stage, the great Hungarian hero comes to the rescue of his people. And of course that is Miklos Horthy. Now, let’s see, Miklos Horthy. Can we see his picture please? He’s an incredibly controversial character. You see that his dates are 1868 to 1957. His background, he came from the lower Hungarian nobility. He entered the Austria-Hungarian Imperial Navy. The academy he was in when only he was only 14 years old. He was a brilliant linguist. You know, if you think about it, if you lived in the Hapsburg Empire and you wanted a real career, you had to have languages.

He spoke Hungarian, German, Italian, Croatian, French, English. He travelled the world. He became a diplomat for the Hapsburgs. So he goes into the diplomatic service. He works for a long time in the Ottoman Empire. He’s a very sophisticated man. He’s a very, in many ways, a very correct individual. He marries, he has four children. In 1911, he becomes an aide-de-camp to Franz Joseph, which is an incredibly important position. He has huge admiration for the emperor. And by March, he then, of course, when war breaks out, he joins the, he joins the Navy and he becomes, by the end of, towards the end of the war, he is actually the commander of the imperial fleet. So here you see him in his naval uniform. You know, ironically, by the end of the war, though, Hungary is a landlocked nation. So Horthy retired to his estate and he’s at his estate when Trianon, of course, Trianon, when Hungary is dismembered. On the 30th of May, 1918, there’s a counter-revolutionary government under KUH-ROHL-EE.

These are people who are beginning to, these are the people who are responsible for ousting Kun out of Budapest. And KUH-ROHL-EE asks Horthy, who is a great war hero, to be minister of war and to take command of the army. Once the Communist government has collapsed, and with the Romanians out of Budapest, you begin to see a reaction to the Red Terror. And it’s known as the White Terror. It was organised by army officers who were the victims, communists, social Democrats, and Jews. Although most Jews have not been supportive of Bolshevism, and because so many of the leadership, as I’ve already told you were born Jewish, it transmitted into antisemitism. So you had pogroms, and a citywide pogrom was actually planned, which Horthy discovered and prevented total carnage. One of the leaders of the white guards, Crowley, wrote in a diary: “Horthy reproached me for the many Jewish corpses "found in various parts of the country, especially in Transdanubia.” “He said, This gave the foreign press "extra ammunition against us. "He told me we should stop harassing small Jews.

"Instead, we should kill government Jews such as Kun. "In vain, I tried to convince him that the liberals "will be against us anyway, "and it didn’t matter if we killed one Jew "or if we killed them all.” So that, now how true was that? That was a diary of one of the white officers. To what extent Horthy was part of the White Terror is disputed. The Jews of ‘Pest actually went on record, absolving him from the White Terror. But the problem was those army officers who had gone on the loose, remember they’d lost their country, they’d lost their dignity, and to communists and Jews, that was the way they thought about it. And he said, I need these officers. They are my best men. And the terror really didn’t abate until the summer of 1920. Horthy in his autobiography, he said, “I have no reason to gloss over deeds of injustice "and atrocities committed "when an iron broom alone could sweep the country clean.” He was violently anti-communist. He said, “The communists in Hungary are willing disciples "of the Russian Bolsheviks, "and they have let hell loose in our country.” He always held that deep hostility towards communism. It was a lasting legacy also for the ruling classes in Hungary, and I’ve already told you how class ridden Hungary was.

And this is one of the reasons that in the end, they’re going to drive Hungary into a very fateful alliance with the Nazis. Following Allied pressure, Budapest, Budapest and Hungary were freed from Romanian troops, and on the 1st of March, 1920, the National Assembly of Hungary reestablished the Kingdom of Hungary. They couldn’t offer the throne to the Hapsburg IV who was the heir to Franz Joseph because the Allies wouldn’t allow it. Instead, with National Army officers controlling parliament, they offered the throne, or the regency, I should say, to Horthy. They would give him the prerogatives of a heir apparent. But he said he wouldn’t take it until he had total, he wanted huge power and they gave it to him. His power was quite extraordinary. He had the power to dismiss parliament. He had the power to dismiss prime ministers and command the Iron Forces. And having been granted that power, he took the oath and one of his first acts was to actually make the Communist Party illegal in Hungary. And he’s going to remain head of state during those fateful years, right up until 1944.

From 1920, he instituted numerous classes to reflect the Jewish population of Hungary. He said, because you’ve got to remember there is so many, I’m talking about in the universities, there are so many Jews in high positions in Hungary, he felt that something had to be done about it. Now, the economic situation, by my, just think of the conditions at the end of the war. You’ve had a revolution. You’ve now got a counterrevolution. You’ve got a man with an iron fist, an aristocrat ruling Hungary, a war hero. But Hungary, like the majority of the countries in Central and Western Europe faced appalling catastrophe. On top of horrific financial problems, there had been a pandemic. The Spanish flu had ravished Europe. It should never be called the Spanish flu because it definitely did not originate in Spain. But that’s a side issue. But that was over. And the League of Nations tried to stabilise. And what they decided to do, they lent Hungary 250 million gold coins to stabilise the economy and balance the budget. And despite the loss of territory, it has to be said that Hungarian agriculture was very efficient and exported more wheat than any other European country. And what you had between '24 and '28 was a period of relative stability.

And it’s at this period that the Jewish community could really see, could breathe a sigh of relief. And the Jews living to the east of Hungary, how much concern did they have for the Hungarian government? I mean, I’ve travelled a lot in Eastern Hungary. I travelled there under communism actually. And you’ve got a real feel for people. Of course, the Jews have gone now, they were murdered. But the point is, you go to the towns and the villages they lived in, and you look at the world and it couldn’t have changed that much. You know, there was still in the remote villages, there were no mechanised vehicles. It was horse and cart. So the Hungarian people would’ve lived remote from the city, really under the will of their local Lord, even though there’s not the prerogatives. That’s the kind of world. And how would the Jews live? They will be the Hasids, the traditional Orthodox. They would’ve been concerned with the Jewish way of life. So they lived a very internal life. And the Jews in the cosmopolitan metropolis of Budapest, where intermarriage was running pretty high, where there was conversion, over 30,000 Jews had converted to Christianity, not necessarily for religious reasons, but for marriage. And ironically, there were about 3000 conversions the other way.

So you had four years, four, five years of relative, of relative calm. And then of course, in 1929, the Wall Street crash, all hell breaks loose. And, look, in 1928, the unemployment crash in Budapest was only 5%. By 1933, 18% of the population of Budapest was in poverty. And as the standard of living dropped, Hungary shifted further and further to the right. And what’s going to happen over the next few years is that there’s going to be a series of different prime ministers. Because remember, this man has the power to elect and dismiss. And I suppose the most, the most important was Gyula Gombos. Now he was born in 1886. He’s going to die in 1936. He’s very reactionary. What had happened was the man before him who was more liberal, he had been involved in financial scandals. So he revolved. So he actually had to resign. And Horthy appointed Gombos. And Gombos was totally reactionary. He was a violent antisemite, but Horthy made him publicly renounce antisemitism and work well with Budapest’s large Jewish professional industrial class, and include some of the previous prime ministers supporters in key ministries, including Jews.

Now who supported Gombos, because there are elections, remember. Gombos’ support comes mainly from medium and small farmers, refugees from Hungary’s lost territories, because a lot of people who were, have been into Czechoslovakia or into other parts, which have been granted, being cut away from Hungary and now flooding back into Hungary. Unemployed civil servants, really army officers, university students, unemployed graduates, people with grudges. And what were Gombos’ policies. He wanted the revision of Trianon. He actually was in favour of withdrawing from the League of Nations. He wanted one party government. He wanted social reform. Does this not remind you very much of the German Workers Party, later, the Nazi party manifesto, where what he wanted was to paternalistically rule the state. He’s thwarted all the time by parliament and Horthy. Horthy still rules with an iron grip, but he is entranced with Hitler. Hitler comes to power in Germany, and Gombos is the first foreign head of state, or rather prime minister to visit Hitler. And Hitler found in him a very admiring obliging colleague.

And in 1934 with Horthy’s approval, he signed a bilateral trade agreement. You see, if you think about it, Germany and Hungary are going to be, are going to be able to cooperate in trade. And in 1935, because of this, that eases the unemployment problem. And the elections gave him far more support in Parliament. And he began to replace many of the, the former prime minister’s appointments and Jews with his own supporters. In September, 1936, he actually inferred to Hitler, they often had meetings, that he would, that he wanted to establish a Nazi like state with one party. But he died in 1936. Now, by 1937, 52% of Hungary’s important export business was with Germany. Now him, so the next prime minister of note was a man called Pal Teleki. His dates are 1879 to 1941. He was born into a political family. He became the minister of the interior. He had been in the first liberal government. He rejoins the government in 1938 as Minister of Education. He supported Germany’s takeover of Czechoslovakia because he hoped that Germany would help them undo the Treaty of Trianon. He becomes prime minister on the 15th of February, 1939. Now, when Hitler invaded Poland, this is a problem because he refused to cooperate in the invasion. Horthy told the German ambassador, he would sooner blow up the railway lines to participate in an attack on Poland. He declared non-belligerency.

He stood up to the Nazis. Now, as a result of that, this is where there’s so much ambiguity about Horthy, more than a hundred thousand Polish soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of them Jewish, escaped into Hungary. And he permitted the Red Cross and the church to operate in the open. So he’s defying Hitler. But Horthy and Pal Teleki do allow German troops to cross Hungarian lands into Southern Romania in August, 1940, which, as a thank you, Hitler returns large parts of Transylvania to Hungary. Pal Teleki, he tried to steer, of course. He couldn’t take the pressure and he committed suicide in March, 1941. So what we see is that Hungary’s using its relationship with Germany to really chip away at the Treaty of Trianon. Now, Horthy also allows his government to give into certain Nazi demands against the Jews. The first law of 1938 limited the number of Jews into professions, administration, and commerce to 20%. By 1939, it’s down to 5%. It resulted in a quarter of a million Jews losing their livelihoods. It’s going of course to become far worse. But compared with what’s going on in Europe, this is the problem, we are dealing with hell.

But there are gradations, as Dante’s Inferno, there are various gradations of hell. He also, he allowed a labour system for Jewish men of military age to be introduced. They weren’t allowed to bear arms or wear military uniforms. But they are organised into labour battalions, building and repairing roads, clearing forests, digging trenches, building tank traps, both at home and on the front. So he also made some domestic concessions. The worst fascist party in Hungary was the Arrow Cross. More about them like later. He had, Horthy had made them illegal, and was often imprisoning the leader, who was an extraordinary demagogue. I’ll be talking a lot about him later on. But he gives into Nazi pressure and he does release him. Now, one of the problems for Horthy was, of course, the alliance, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because he hated communism. However, once Germany invades the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, it is much easier for him. And in December, 1941, Hungary, they’ve already joined the Axis Alliance and Hungary joined Germany and declared war on America. And that, you see, for a while, he did think he could walk the world, and that led to Britain declaring war on Hungary at the end of 1941.

Now, by June, 1941, Hungary is contributing to the war effort and he has allowed terribly punitive actions against the Jews. And in August ‘41, he allowed Jews without Hungarian citizenship to be deported. Of the 20,000 that were deported, over 18,000 of them were slaughtered. When he realised what was happening, he had the power to stop the deportations. January, February, 1942, over a thousand Jews were murdered by Hungarian militia who were in search of partisans. So the part, the problem was that he is allowing all these anti-Jewish laws, but he’s not allowing Hungarian Jewry, per se, to be deported. Life is becoming more and more difficult. They are becoming poorer and poorer. There are more and more nasty, punitive laws against them, but they’re still alive. Don’t forget that’s what’s happening around this particular period. We’re moving into the time of Stalingrad. By the end of 1943, practically the whole of Polish jewellery had been murdered. You’ve got to also see this in context with the war. Stalingrad, and what happens also is that gradually, Horthy, after Stalingrad in particular, Horthy begins to realise that the Axis Alliance might falter.

And at the beginning of 1944, he’s already putting out overtures to the Allies. It’s quite difficult for him because his passion is a hatred of communism. March the 18th, 1944, Hitler realises what’s afoot? So he summons Horthy to PLESH-HYEM Castle, and he basically gives him an ultimatum. If you don’t, if you start making these feelers out to the Allies, asking for a treaty, then I’m going to invade. Horthy acquiesces to the German occupation, but he did, Hitler wanted him to sign a piece of paper saying it was by a mutual agreement. In fact, the text was published, thus, by the Germans, but he said he’d never ever signed it. He also agreed that more Hungarian Jews would be deported for labour service. Horthy takes the train back. On the train were various individuals. Edmund Veesenmayer was one of the most important. He was Ribbentrop’s advisor in the East and the New Reich ministry, and, potentially in Hungary, and along with him was his close friend, Ernst Carlton Brunner. Eight German divisions crossed the border, and if any Hungarian resistance, he knew that it was all over. And Horthy was actually urged to retire by his comrades.

I’m going to give you a little biography of, of Veesenmayer because it’s fascinating what happened to him. His dates are 1904 to 1977. You see, one of the reasons I’m giving you the biographies is important. You understand these were ordinary people. They had lives, they had education. I mean, he was the son of a school teacher. He studied political science at the University of Munich. He taught for four years. You know, another one of these disaffected characters, horrified by Germany’s defeat. He joined the Nazis in 1932, and the SS in 1934. He is going to be very, he’s going to be up to his neck in the murder of Hungarian Jewry. This is a note of the 13th of June, 1944, his report to the Foreign Office. “Transport of Jews from the Carpathian Mountains "and Transylvanian space with a total of 289,357 Jews "in 92 complete trains of 45 cars.” Telegrams of Ribbentrop, 15th of June '44: “340,000 Jews have been delivered to the Reich.” You know, this is a total disassociation, is it not? Now, what happened to him? He was put on trial at Nuremberg. He had a 20 year sentence. It was reduced to 10. And in 1951, he was released at the intervention of the US High Commissioner in Germany, John J. McCloy. John J. McCloy will come into the story again because he is the man who refused to bomb the railways.

He’s an American official. He refuses to bomb the railways. What happened to the man after his release? He worked to, he went to Tehran, he worked in commodities, and he died in his bed in DALM-STADT in 1977. So when Horthy arrives back, he is greeted by German guard of honour. The government resigns and Nazi puppets are put in place. They don’t go with the Arrow Cross because they think they are actually, they’re actually too pro-Hungarian. Horthy, when he, why doesn’t he retire? He says this, “I’m still an admiral who will defend "the honourable men and women in this country "who have trusted me blindly. "Who will defend the Jews or our refugees "if I lose my post? "I may not be able to defend everything, "but I believe I can still be a great help to our people. "I can do more than anyone else could.” So he doesn’t desert his post. Now what happens is the Germans now arrest all the principled politicians of the Horthy era. All the escaped prisoners of war, Allied prisoners of war were rounded up. And remember, Horthy had consistently refused, rejected Nazi demands for the Final Solution.

They replace the Prime Minister with a former ambassador to Germany, a man called Dome Sztojay, by March the 23rd. I hope I pronounced his name properly. He immediately established an institute to study the Jewish question in a scientific manner and to collect and scientifically process, I’m quoting, “The related data "and inform Hungarian opinion about the Jewish question.” So what he’s going to do is set up all these bureaus, the Hungarian population are going to be flooded by anti-Semitic propaganda, The Jews are our enemy, et cetera, et cetera, and of course, Adolf Eichmann was sent into Hungary and set up his staff at the Hotel Majestic in Budapest. The prime minister placed three infamous anti-Semites into power: Laszlo Endre, Laszlo Baky, and AN-DUH JAR-AHS. They worked for the Ministry of the Interior, and he also legalised the Arrow Cross. I’m going to give you a little background to these monsters, all of whom are going to be executed at the end of the war. Endre, he came from a wealthy family. He had a degree in political science.

After World War I, he went into politics, right wing societies. He was renowned as an anti-Semite. He was considered a Jewish expert. And he was appointed the state secretary under the Minister of Interior, very much the expert on Jewish affairs, and he worked for Adolf Eichmann. What is fascinating, evilly fascinating, is how the Hungarians are going to do the work for the Nazis. Baky, 1898 to 1946, also executed. He was a military academy graduate. He was very useful in the White Terror. He was a police officer. He left the police in 1938 to join the outlawed National Socialist Party. He was, he becomes the state secretary at the ministry. And it was he who chaired a meeting with senior members of Eichmann’s staff. What is going to happen, and these are the men who are going to be under AN-DUH Jaross, who was an ethnic Hungarian from the Czech, from Prague. They are the ones who are going to do the dirty work. Horthy said, “As such, I was not informed in advance, "and I’m not fully informed now. "However, I have heard recently that in many cases, "the inhumanness and brutality, we exceed the Germans. "I demand that the handling of Jewish affairs "be taken out of these hands.” So he’s still screaming for it.

Now… Now what about the prime minister himself, Dome Sztojay,. He was born in Serbia. He’d served in the Austria-Hungarian army. He was a colonel in World War I. After the war, he was in the army with Horthy, and he’d become a military attache to Berlin. That’s why the Nazis trusted him. He was in Minister of Defence between '33 and '35, and he’d had been the, he remained from '35 to '44, the Hungarian ambassador to Berlin. He was a very strong supporter of the Third Reich and the Nazis. He had many close contacts with top Nazi officials. After the invasion, Horthy had actually approved of him as a choice because he believed he was first and foremost a soldier, and that he believed a soldier would have a certain amount of honour. When he ramped up, he begins the deportations. And when the deportations are ramped up, Horthy demands his resignation. And ironically, it’s going to be given, but I’m going to talk about that in a minute. The deportations, the story of the deportations, it is beyond imagination how quickly it all happened. They instituted the wearing of the yellow star. Jews were forbidden to purchase food, which was in short supply.

They confiscated all Jewish radios and bank accounts were frozen. Telephones, closed down Jewish businesses, 18,000 businesses in Budapest alone. All books by Jewish authors are burned. The amount of attention that is giving to this, and remember where we are, it’s 1944. It’s the spring of 1944. It’s after Stalingrad. Think what’s happening in Italy. We’re not long, think of, we’re not far away from D-Day. The Nazis are losing the war. And why do you think that Horthy wanted to pull out? Anyway, this is when the deportations begin. They begin on the 15th of May. On the 16th of April. Jews are hoarded into ghettos. Now, why was it that the first move was to clean out, I’m using a Nazi term, to clean out the countryside before the capitol. And it’s quite simple, because they were deported according to geographical, the geographical priority. What do I mean by that? The Soviet army was advancing. It’s going to be in Budapest by December. Think about it. We’re going to kill the Jews whilst we still can.

That is where the disease, the monstrosity really hits. The deportations, which begin on the 15th of May, and that incredibly moving talk we had by Elie Wiesel’s son. And of course, Elie Wiesel was part of this. His family, this was, these are the people in the small towns, the villages, they are ghetto-ized. There were 55 different ghettos set up. And it was done with the most clinical efficiency. It was the Hungarian police under the orders of these characters who perpetrated the monstrosity. Within two months, 480,000 people. I mean, I can’t, you know, I’m giving you figures here. You know what it means. There are people online whose families were affected. They’re crammed into freight cars by the Hungarian police. And they go straight to Auschwitz to their deaths. The railway lines are built almost up to the chambers. They are murdering 12 to 15, 12,000 to 15,000 people a day. Now, what can we say about this kind of thing? Isolation, plunder, ghettoization, deportation. And it goes on from May the 15th to July the 7th. It halts on July the seventh, and I’m going to talk about why next time. But it actually, for two days, it goes on for two more days. The Hungarians continue the roundups, even though they have been told to stop, two days afterwards.

So when it stops though, the bulk of Hungarian Jewry outside the capitol have been destroyed. Horthy writes on the learning of the deportations: “I was aware that the government in this situation "would’ve had to take many steps "that I do not consider correct "and for which I cannot take responsibility. "Among these matters is the handling "of the Jewish question in a manner that does not correspond "to the Hungarian mentality, conditions, "and for that matter, interests. "It’s clear to everyone that what was done "was by the Germans or by the insistence of the Germans "and was not in my part to prevent. "So in these matters, I was forced into passivity.” But a lot of things are happening now. Remember when it is, it is the spring of 1944. We’ve already had a huge amount of knowledge of the Holocaust. And what I’m going to do in the next session, I’m going to look at what the Allies did and didn’t do, what some extraordinary individuals did, and what Hungarian Jewry did. So I think I’ll stop there because I do want to give time to this. And then we will, I’ll look at the questions. I know it’s tough to take, but remember what I said. See if we can come up with some sort of, some sort of kind of resolution of this. As we honour those who died, what can be done to stop these, remember what I said to you, these are people who are perpetrating.

That’s why I’ve shown you their faces. And I’ve also given you a notion of the high level of education. These are not monsters from other planets. One of the reasons I think we have to study this is because every aspect of human behaviour is there. And please don’t forget, in the horror that I’ve just given you, that we’re going to be talking about wonderful people soon. People like Hannah SEHN-ESH, people like Wallenberg, people like Karl Lutz, people like Cardinal, like the man who became Pope John XXIII, there were some magnificent people who helped. Never forget that. And there were church people who helped as well. So it really is about human nature at its most extreme. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Yes, this is the movie, Sunshine with Ray Fines, encapsulates some Jewish experiences. Yes, it’s a very good film.

Q: This is from Andrew. Are you probably talk about Jewish resistance?

A: Yes, certainly, I’ll be talking about Jewish resistance and I’m certainly going to talk about Otto Komoly. And I know that, I hope, anyway, his nephew Tommy is on, and if you, Tommy, oh, Tommy has answered him. Thank you Tommy. Andrew has asked for some information about Laszlo SAM-OO-SKY and Tommy is going to is give, sent his email. Tommy, you are an incredible star.

The book “I Kissed Your Hand Many Times”, is an excellent book written by the great-granddaughter of Mandred VICE. Now don’t forget, he was the big industrialist, because what I’m going to be talking about later, next session, is how people have realised that Nazis could be bribed.

Yes, this is from Lawrence, yes, I did get, I have the film and I will look at it.

Yes, I wait for a grandson to come around.

I can’t do technology.

Shoe sculpture on the Danube. Yes, I’m going to talk about the Arrow Cross and the Danube. And there is of course a wonderful, a wonderful memorial.

IST VAN SAL-BOH, yes, of course, he was the film director who directed “Sunshine”.

Oh, this is from Rosa. Wendy, I hope you’re listening. “I hope Lockdown University continues "even after we reach herd immunity. "It’s been one bright light during this time.” Thanks to all of you.

Yes, this is from Donny. “You mentioned that many Jewish Hungarian fencers "and, "they dominated the Olympics in these areas "before World War I.” Yes.

Robert Turner, he wants to know about the story of George Soros and collaboration. Really, this is not an area I want to go into.

I want to take Anita’s point, that she said, When you’re in hell, don’t pass judgement, pass judgement on the perpetrators.

Q: Why did Horthy not persecute the Jews before April '44?

A: He did. He did persecute them, but he didn’t allow the bulk of them to be expelled. That’s the point, or to be expelled to the Reich to be murdered.

Juliet, Who made the film, told me that the pride of being a Hungarian and Jewish, a Hungarian Jew, immense.

My grandmother was incredibly proud of her roots and her background. In many ways, it was the entire backstory of my childhood. Ken Gaines, right.

Hitler, in fact, was an idealist, just one with horrible ideals about racial purity. Unlike, say, Trump, who’s just an opportunist who does not believe in any ideals. Yeah, I think that’s a very important point, Ken. Yeah, a lot of these characters that I’m talking about are idealists. But the trouble is, you know, what was it Carl PAH-PEHR said: “The 20th century is all going "to be about the meaning of words.” An idealist to me, when I was growing up, I thought it was a sort of positive term. But yes, these people are idealists. But they live in that upside down world. Remember that quote of Hitler’s, “I can never forgive the Jews "for inventing moral conscience.” I wish I could find that quote. Robert Wistrich told me about it, and I’ve gone through all his books and I can’t find it. But if, but he was a very accurate historian, so if he said it, it must have happened.

Oh, this is from Juliet. This is the kind of comment I love. My great uncle fenced with the Hungarian fencing team. And Lydia has asked, Are you related to Charles Sonabend who lived in St. Johns Wood in the eighties? That’s to Juliet. Barbara wants that quote about education. Once the website is up and running, I’m going to put a lot of in, I’ll put a lot of these things on.

Thelma is asking me to talk a little more slowly. I will try. I get a little excited.

This is from Cecil. I now understand why my paternal ancestry dates back to 1850 when they attended the Yeshiva of the Hotham SOH-FUH in Presberg, Bratislava today. It was a good time for Jews under Franz Joseph. Graduates of the Hotham SOH-FUH spread throughout Europe before ending up in BAT-AI, Hungary in the MAY-OHR SHUH-REM Jerusalem. Today, I have many of my family living here.

Yes, you see, this is the point. Jews were loyal citizens to Franz Joseph, the Hungarian, and remember he was emperor of both Austria and Hungary. And he was not an anti-Semite. Look, we talked about this, we talked about this on Tuesday.

Q: What was it about the Jews in modernity?

A: They exploded into it and they contributed so much. They believed they would be accepted. Tragic story.

From Miriam, By Brother’s Blood and The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz by David KANT-SLER are two books about Hungarian Jews, deportation, and people who tried to save him.

The books mentioned George Mantel. Mantel was in Switzerland when Rudy va Barr and Alfred Wexler escaped Auschwitz. I’m going to be talking a lot about Rudy va Barr and Wexler and I will be talking about some of the diplomats. One of the problems I’ve had that Wendy and I have been discussing this, we are dealing with one of the darkest periods of history. We are not, we’ve made the decision not to look at every area of the SHOH-AH. I’m looking at my bookshelf. I must have 500 books on, some of which are too painful to read. If you want specific, I mean obviously we have more, much more to say, but we’ve made the decision that we are not going to go into every area. So, but what I will be doing once the website is up and running, I’ll have time to work on a really good bibliography. And I think also the books that you are all recommending are very, very valid. The more, it’s not just reading the history textbooks. It’s also important to look at literature, to look at poetry. Read Hannah SEHN-ESH, I’ll be reading a little for poetry next week. This is where you get a feel and a flare of the world.

Q: You broke down the 1910 Hungarian census.

A: Do you have similar breakdowns for England or Great Britain in order for me? I’ve got a breakdown of the census in 1894, oh goodness, locked away somewhere again, that’s going to have to go on the website. It’s a very interesting point. The success story of the Jews of Hungary was more vivid than the Jews of England. It’s fascinating. As I said to you before, England, look, you had an incredible success story with the Sephardi. When the Eastern Europeans came over, England, what was it Napoleon said, “The English or a nation of shopkeepers.” England, it was a much gentler introduction. I spent quite a lot of time looking at England. That doesn’t mean there was an anti-Semitism. That doesn’t mean that and the Mandate weren’t horrific, but for Anglo Jewry, they had this big love affair with England and they wanted to be English. You know, I would suggest to you that today the majority of Anglo Jews, to them, the greatest prize is to become a member of the House of Lords, to be honoured by the royal family. You know, it’s fascinating.

Oh, this is Jamal Ali. I taught many two year olds to post-grad students, the most productive classes were were a ratio of 10 students to one teacher. Yes, as an educator, you know that. If only we had sensible people in the Ministry of Education. But then…

This is from Paul Grant. My father was born in 1899 in Budapest. When he wanted to go to university, he was not allowed to go to Budapest because of the numerous classes limiting Jewish entry. Had to go to Charles University in Prague. I assume that many Jews had to leave Hungary to study. This was before the Treaty of Trianon. Yes, yes, Paul. Many of the MARSH-EHNS that Professor Wolf would talk about, many of the really intelligent, clever Jews had to study elsewhere.

And this is from Tony Bateman. This happened to my father who went to study in Prague. Yes, Ihlan is mentioning “Sunshine”. I see friendships. Gabo,

Q: Thank you for doing this topic on Hungarian Jewry. Can you comment on why so many Hungarian Jews changed their names to Christian surnames, some in the early 1900s prior to World War I. Our family name originally, Grossman, was changed to GEHL-EHT, we believe, around circa 1909. They wanted to be Hungarian. They were loyal, and GEHL-EHT, of course, is a named for Bishop GEHL-EHT, who is one of the great heroes of Hungary. Also, were the more religious conversions away from Judaism more prevalent among Hungarian Jews than other Europeans.

A: That is a very important question, which I cannot answer ad hoc. Intermarriage was very strong in Germany, Religious conversions, quite often it was for marriage, occasionally it was for religious reasons. but in the main, I think it was to try and really assimilate into society.

Oh, Barbara, you mentioned on Tuesday that Bela Kun’s surname was originally KOON. Do you think that the surname, Karn, my birth surname has a connection. Karn is a very, very common name. I have no idea. Genealogists, I know that Arlene Veer is online, she maybe could post on some genealogists. I dunno where you live, Barbara. I know in America, there’s some brilliant genealogies of Hungarian Jewry. Frankly, what I want to be related to Bela Kun? I’d be careful. And as Brian said, you know, think of Cohen. There are derivatives of the, they’re derivatives, sorry, of Kun, priests.

Yes, this is from Ken Gaines, Had to acknowledge self-interest here. Universalism, tolerance, rejection of nationalist Particularism would make a world safe for us Jews. Ken, it’s a very important point you’ve made. You know, thank you professor for that. If you think about the whole sweep of Jewish history, when are we safe? When there is a liberal society, when there’s relative prosperity, when there is economic, social, and political tranquillity, Jews along with other minorities feel much safer. And let’s be careful. Look, the world post-'45 is very different to the world pre-'45. To a large extent, the Jews were the most important minority in Europe, the most important non-Christian minority. If you look at the influx of people, you know, from other parts of the continents, that really comes after the fall of colonialism. So remember that. Wikipedia calls Bela Kun a Jewish Hungarian communist. You see, that’s very interesting. He certainly was a Hungarian. He certainly was a communist. His enemies called him a Jew. He wanted to be an internationalist. You see, that’s the problem, Judi. We could spend hours debating what it means to be a Jew and we would have no answers.

Given names like Christopher, Christian, is there any rationale for this? Not that I know of.

This is Judi Klopp. I’m not very surprised by there being far more Jewish artists and Jewish musicians. Jews have always struggled over the natural human instinct to portray life and the taboo of the commandment over making statues or portraying the human form to worship. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Is it then, Ken was talking about it yesterday. Is this an inherited characteristic? The majority of artists were totally secular. What is it? But the commandment was not to worship people in pictures painted. That’s up for dispute. Think of synagogues. They are far plainer than churches, aren’t they?

Q: Worth recalling that Henry Ford with his International Jew promoted the ideas that Jews were promoters of communism?

A: Hitler was an avid reader of this. Sure, you know, this is the problem. Jews are capitalists, Jews are communist, Jews are everything you don’t want to be. You know, that’s the problem. Jews had high profile, this tiny people who took modernity by the throat. But it’s like, you know, all those years of dream of study, even if you weren’t a learned , let’s get real here, you know, my grandparents had to struggle to earn a living, but they still had a dream of education. I think that is the point about Jews. And then, you know, you work hard, you make some money, which gives your children the luxury of going into the liberal arts. So that is very much the Jewish, that’s very much the Jewish pattern.

his is from Naomi. My 91 year old Hungarian friend recalls how her parents hid money in a curtain rod when Kun invaded Budapest. Yeah, that must have been a terrible time, the Red Terror.

Oh, Aviva, this is from Judi Klopp. I laughed when I saw your comment of the book. I kissed your hand many times. Only a Hungarian would understand that. When I was little, I pestered my mother and aunt to teach me some Hungarian, and one of the phrases that I was taught, is something I cannot pronounce, I kissed your hand. When a Hungarian child came home and saw her parents, she approached, took the parent’s hand and kissed it. I kissed your hand. Oh, that took me back. Oh, that’s a lovely story, Judi.

Is this from Carol? My late husband’s best friends came from Hungary. Mr. Kant was the Hungarian ambassador before the war. When Auschwitz was liberated, he was one of the officers who went to the camp and rescued a Jewish young woman, as skinny as a rake and starving. They later married and came to live in Hendon. Mrs. Kant would never open the curtains or the door and always spoke in whispers. She would never talk about Auschwitz. Where did the Spanish flu originate? Aye-aye-aye, I knew, but I can’t remember.

USA, thank you. Oh, I love you. I love this group. There’s always someone online who knows the answers.

This is from Robin. May I recommend the book, “Yellow Red Star”, by a survivor of the Hungarian Art Holocaust, Agnes Kaposi. Yes, that’s that was mentioned the other week. Thank you.

This is from Ken. Worth noting that many secular Hungarian Jews, like my parents, when they heard anti-Semitism, thought it’s not about us. It’s about those backward religious Jews. Strange difference is that, in fact, Germany had very few Jews.’ Well, be careful, there were half a million at the end of, look, how many did Hungary have? Come on, they were 5% of the population. True, in Germany they were 1%. The point is with, oh, we could spend hours on this one.

Yes, this is from Michael Brook. I’ve done a bit of research. It is stunning how quickly they were murdered. In less than a year. The Nazi’s Final Solution was more important than fighting the Allies. You see, this is something you can make. This is one of the problems. I mean, if you read Hitler’s last letter from the Bunker, they were fantasists. I mean, Ken called them idealists. I think they were also fantasists. Let me give you an example. In January, 1945, Goebbels switched 50,000 German soldiers to take part in a film about a great heroic episode in the Napoleonic War.

This is from Tommy. Nearly half a million between 4th of April and 7th of July, and there were only 200 gestapo men with Eichmann. It was all accomplished by Hungarians. Yes, thank you for that, Tommy.

This is from Ken Gaines. Timothy Snyder in Black Earth, it’s a very important book, demonstrates that why governments remain intact, even ones not sympathetic to Jews. Jews survived. It’s in lands with dismembered governments. In Poland the Jews had it worse.

Yeah. I would really appreciate your listing the names you mentioned. Yes, I will take note of that. Michael, you are onto something. Hitler actually thought race more important than nations.

Oh, please repeat the name of the American commander who helped Lisa Mayer. McCloy. And I’ll be talking about him again.

This, this is from Sandy Lesner, I think it was EHN-GREE who warned my father-in-law to go to Budapest from their farm in VAHL-KOH. He sent the message, Tell the Jew on the hill that I can protect him and he should go to Budapest.

How many have we still got online? We’ve still got a lot of people online.

• Trudy? Trudy, if you could go to Tony’s question, it’s at 6:33 PM, and it was, you know, you lost your place on Tuesday. This is him just–

• What’s his question? Can you read it to me?

• My great-grandfather, Joseph Pollack, was born in Madar Village, County of KAM-UH-RAHN. He was an innkeeper and prior to passports coming into use, his 1876 travel papers consisted of a certificate of origin signed by a KIH-SARH Bella. It states he has no debt toward the royal family or the community and he wished to travel to try his luck somewhere else. His son, Herman, my grandfather, was born in the following year in Vienna. However, his birth certificate shows he belonged to the Madar community. Trudy, could you please offer me some context as to what was likely to have been going on at that time? Why would Joseph have been most likely to have left Hungary and why at that time? Thank you so much. Tony in London.

• Do you know what I would like? Judi, do you mind if he emails that to you and you email it to me? Because that’s a big one to answer and I’d like to look at it properly. Is that okay?

• So Tony, if you’re still online. If you’re still on. I’m saying if, Tony, if you’re still online, if you could email that over to me please.

• What number was he–

• Yeah.

• Shall we go on a little more? Okay, I lost my place. I’m silly.

• Don’t worry. Yep. Oh, this is, oh, I love you Tommy. This is from Shoshana. Please would you spell the names of the Hungarians mentioned, and he has. All names, family name first. Thank you Tommy. You are invaluable to our group. Can everyone see these questions, Judi? I hope you can all see them. Otherwise we’re going to have to email them out. Trudy, they can all see the questions on the Q&A.

• Okay, fine. So Tommy, look at Tommy’s answer. Tommy, remember, is Otto Komoly’s nephew and he’s asking if anyone was saved by his uncle because he was a great hero, and he was murdered by the Arrow Cross. And Tommy really wants to do something for him. So if any online knows anything, please get in touch. And this is from Ron AH-RAH-TOH. And I’ll be talking about Kasztner. Kasztner made a deal with Eichmann called Jews on Ice, which kept 3000 women and children out of Auschwitz. Yes, they were supposed to be traded, but it didn’t happen. My husband was part of it. His family ended up in Bergen-Belsen, were liberated by Americans from a death trail. Extraordinary. You know, this is what this, this is what makes, I dunno if Wendy’s still there, but this is what makes our group so very, very special.

Was it about money? I promise you I’m going to do what I can with Kasztner, and please bear with me, I’m not doing the Kasztner trial. I’m going to be talking about what actually happened. As far as we know with the Relief and Rescue Committee. You’ve got to remember that there’s a lot of evidence we don’t have. There was a lot of conflicting evidence, but I beg you, please blame the people who are really responsible. The Nazis, the Germans who were involved in it, the Hungarians who were involved in it, the willing executioners… You know, I’m going to read you something next week by Yehuda Bauer, I think, you know, the great Yehuda Bauer, I think he sums it up a about money. It was about money insofar as the Nazis could be bribed. And I’ll be talking about the great Rabbi VICE Mandel, how he found out that Nazis could be bribed. So, but it certainly, Kasztner’s train was not about money. And I really want to dispel that once and for all. There’s recommendations.

Sharon recommends the brilliant memoir by Dr. Edith Eva Agar entitled “The Choice”, and Katie says she’s reading it now.

Q: Ken, Trudy, don’t you think if you really want to understand this Eliminate-This mentality, you have to go back to the 19th century?

A: Yes, of course we do. And I believe you’re going to come in at some stage and lecture on nature and the Jews. But it’s got to be understandable. That’s the problem. Yeah, of course, we have to go back to all of this. You will be able to re-listen to all these talks once the website is up and running.

Now Elaine, perhaps an international curriculum of tolerance. Now we have a problem. Don’t get me on my hobby horse. I think one of the problems why, why there is, what are we confronted with at the moment? We are confronted with the most appalling rise of anti-Semitism. As the late great Jonathan Sachs said, First they hated our religion, then our race, now our nation.

Q: Why is antisemitism on the rise?

A: Because there’s economic, social, and political dislocation, the rise of populism and all sorts of other issues. You know why. Now tolerance is a lovely word. One of the problems I have with Holocaust education, it has been ripped out of the Jewish context. So many of my friends, survivors who go into schools, they say people have huge sympathy for the wonderful survivors, but they don’t even put them back into the Jewish context. Tolerance is a wonderful word, but I think we’ve got to rethink the syllabus. Elaine, I’m not saying that glibly. It’s something I’ve thought about for years now. I was on the ITF, which is now IRI. I spent so many years of my life in this work and I’m, I think basically if one of the main purposes of Holocaust education was to make more people more tolerant, we have failed. I’m going to say that. One of these days Wendy and I have threatened the, or Wendy’s threatened me that we’re going to have a debate on this.

Yes, Tony, I’ve got your question and if you could email Judi, I will try and answer it.

At what point did Wallenberg help the Jews? Oh, Daisy, I’m going to spend a lot of time on that. I am going to be expanding on why the railway lines weren’t bombed, yes. But you see what I’m trying to do, I’ve realised that it’s going to take four sessions to give justice to Hungary. And so I didn’t want to shortcut anything.

• I think we should take one more question and we can continue with part three next week.

• Yes, of course. Judi, the last question, Is antisemitism in Hungary still alive and well. Unfortunately, yes. You’ve got to remember the, under the Soviets, Hungary was not really de-Nazified. Of course it wasn’t. And look, it’s a huge question and these are, these are the kind of issues we will be dealing with in evening debates. Anyway, all of you, thank you so much for sticking with this. I know it’s a very tough subject, but I think it is important. And think about what I said about, you know, the syllabus and how, how do we create. These are the questions. How do we, how do people take the what happened to the Jews as if you like the warning from history, because I hate that phrase, it’s so glib. But it is a warning from history. And what I also find problematic, and I’m going to say this, I find many other victim groups see us as perpetrators. They no longer see us as victims, which is another problem. And on that note of problems, I wish you all well and I will see you next week. Yes.

• Thank you, everybody who join us. We did have 2000 online today. For those of us still here. we have no talks tomorrow, but we’ll see everybody on Saturday. So thank you to everybody and bye-bye. Thank you, Trudes.

• Thank you Judi, thank you.