Hard Times in Budapest I: Nazi Occupation

I had planned on combining my comments on the Nazi and Soviet occupations, but found there was too much to say.  So here is Part I.

I am not a historian nor a political analyst, but I  could not travel through Eastern Europe without recognizing the impact of back to back terror and repression, first from the Nazis and then the communists.   As a traveler, I go to understand and enjoy a new culture, not to judge it.   And, like in a family, I understand there are sometimes arguments and fights.  However, there is no justification for a group of our worldwide siblings to be treated as subhumans and systematically oppressed or exterminated.  Sadly, this was not the first nor the last time it has happened in our world.

Hungary had been occupied 150 years by the Ottoman Turks (1541-1699); then made part of the Hapsburg Empire (see Hapsburg and Budapest posts).  Struggling after WWI, Hungary swung between pro and anti-fascist prime ministers and even had a brief communist/ socialist government.  When the Nazis went to war,
 Hungary allied with them.  

Though Hungarians had oppressive anti-Semitic laws, they did not actively seek to destroy the populations of Jews (almost a million) until the Nazis invaded them in 1944, fearful that the Hungarians would work out their own deal with the advancing Russians.  Adolf Eichmann, SS, was sent to Budapest to handle the Jewish "problem."  In two months, he deported 440,000 Jews from the countryside, mostly to Auschwitz and the death camp Birkenau (future posts).  As a youth, I remember the capture and riveting trial of Eichmann, but did not fully comprehend the extent of his crimes against humanity.  At trial, he looked like a little, unimportant man; yet he had been the instrument of incomprehensible terror and suffering. The largest remaining group of Jews (70,000)  were crowded into the ghetto area of Budapest behind the great synagogue, with plans that they, too, would be exterminated.

But an unlikely hero arrived: Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat from neutral Sweden, who in conjunction with a few other brave diplomats, worked tirelessly to set up safe houses for the Jews and distribute Certificates of Protection, saving tens of thousands.  Horrific killings continued, such as shooting Jews tied together into the Danube (hence the memorial of bronze shoes on the Danube bank near Parliament; photo taken on a rainy day through a bus window), but some of the young and healthy ones were sent to labor camps.

One such was 16-year old Tamas (Tom) Lantos, who, with his classmates at the Jewish high school, was sent to a labor camp north of Budapest to repair the bombed railway tracks.  Successful in his 2nd escape attempt, he found his way to one of Wallenberg's safe houses where he ran risky errands for food and medicine.  He managed to survive  the bloody month-long battle of Budapest,  the arrival of the Soviets, and the meager post-war life, until he won an essay contest sponsored by the Jewish League that gave him the opportunity to study in the US.  He went on to serve as the US Representative to Congress for San Mateo District, California, from 1980 until his death in 2008.  For many years, he was the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.  Two of my good friends worked for him during many of those years. (memorial photo from street in Washington, DC)

There was no gratitude to Wallenberg from the Soviets for his noble efforts to save Hungarian Jews.  Such a man was considered dangerous in the new regime, and, though a diplomat, he was last seen being taken into custody by the Soviets in 1945.  Then, like so many others, he simply disappeared in the Stalinist Soviet regime.  There were reported sightings through the years, but none substantiated.  There have been a number of books and a mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain about him.  In 1981, Lantos sponsored a bill to make Raoul Wallenberg an honorary US citizen.   At the Jewish Museum in Budapest, they have a memorial for him and other non-Jews who stood up in those frightening times.  There is also a wall and a touching metallic weeping willow tree whose leaves are inscribed with the names of victims.  

The museum was built on the site of mass graves and near where Theodore Herzl , the founder of modern Zionism, was born.  The Great Synagogue in front of this museum was built in the 19th century in a dramatic Byzantine-Moorish style and has a large organ (unusual for a synagogue) that was played by Liszt and others.  It can hold up to 3,000 people (second largest in the world).   This area was the heart of the old Jewish community, and today has become a pleasant and peaceful part of the city.  The  Holocaust Museum in Budapest tells even more of this tragic era in the story of Hungary.

More information: 
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005458
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lantos