‘It’s equally important to recognize…that at the local level…Arrow Cross members participated in internments, entered ghettos to loot and torture Jews. The author also outlines new directions for both research and remembrance by pointing out that the Jewish victims who had converted to Christianity (the “converts”) are rarely remembered, even though they, too, were often deported and killed.’
Many examples of resistance to the Nazis were cited by the national committees after the Soviet occupation, in the people’s prosecutors cases and the people’s tribunal cases as well. These materials still need to be explored by Hungarian historians.
The public discourse of the time, spearheaded by the left-wing press, was bloodthirstily demanding the holding accountable of those responsible for the horrors of WWII, forming an opinion first and only asking questions afterwards.
It is important to point out that the anti-Semitic authorities were just as cruel to Jewish policemen as they were to any other Jew.
It must have been clear to everyone that a decision had to be made about whether they wanted to be on the side of the government, collaborating with the German invaders, or whether they would resign or perhaps join the resistance.
The ghettoisation of Jews and the establishment of Jewish police units took place in rural Hungary after the German occupation of 19 March 1944. The police was set up with the aim of maintaining the internal order of the ghettos and internment camps, as well as controlling entry and exit. In contemporary records, the police was variably referred to as ghetto police, auxiliary police, house police, internal police, but the most common name was Jewish police.
In this article, we attempt to present the contradictory situation the Hungarian royal police found itself in after the German occupation of 1944.
The question was posed as follows: was Hungary truly occupied, or did enough of Hungarian sovereignty remain to label the country “independent”?
Greta Thunberg has voiced the opinion that the Western media ‘brainwashes’ people about Israel, and recently wore a Palestinian scarf to a climate protest in Amsterdam. As a result, Fridays for Future Germany has repeatedly distanced itself from their Swedish comrade, saying that they do not compromise on antisemitism and that protecting Jewish lives is important to them. ‘She does not represent Fridays for Future Deutschland’, they tweeted.
In recent years, the number of German citizens moving to Hungary permanently, not only for holiday, study or work, has been increasing. The motives behind this phenomenon are often personal, but they also stem from certain realities of German society.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
