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A gripping first-hand account of the devastating "last chapter" of the Holocaust, written by a privileged eyewitness, the secretary of the Hungarian Judenrat, and a member of Budapest's Jewish elite, How It Happened is a unique testament to the senseless brutality that, in a matter of months, decimated what was Europe’s largest and last-surviving Jewish community. Writing immediately after the war and examining only those critical months of 1944 when Hitler's Germany occupied its ally Hungary, Ernő Munkácsi describes the Judenrat's desperation and fear as it attempted to prevent the looming catastrophe, agonized over decisions not made, and struggled to grasp the immensity of a tragedy t...
The Holocaust in Hungary provides a comprehensive documentary account of one of the most brutal and effective killing campaigns in history. After Nazi Germany took control of Hungary late in World War II, Jews were rounded up with unprecedented speed and sent directly to Auschwitz. They would form the largest group of victims who perished in that camp. The complex interplay between German and Hungarian actors brought about the annihilation of a once-thriving Jewish community and the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. The authors present extensive reports, testimonies, and other primary sources of these events accompanied by in-depth commentary that spans the years from the late 1930s to the fractured political landscape of postwar Hungary.
Agnes Kaposi was born in Hungary the year before Hitler came to power and started school at the outbreak of World War II. The Holocaust killed many of her family, together with half a million Hungarian Jews, but a series of miracles and coincidences allowed her to survive. She worked as a child labourer in the agricultural and armament camps of Austria and was liberated by a rampaging Soviet army. She struggled through post-war hardship to re-enter Hungarian society, only to be caught up for a decade in the vice of Stalinism. In 1956 a bloody revolution offered the opportunity to escape to Britain, a country of freedom and tolerance, where she started a family and built a career as a ground-breaking electrical engineering teacher and consultant. Dr Kaposi writes with compassion and optimism, without self-pity. The tone is light, and there is plenty of irony, even humour. The narrative is underscored by the historian László Csősz and illustrated by several maps and more than a hundred archival images and family photographs.
Genocidal Conscription identifies a previously underexamined method by which two states, the Ottoman Empire in World War One and Axis-era Hungary during World War Two, used conscription – mandatory military service – to commit genocide under the guise of war. The book addresses implications and analyzes contemporary issues in authoritarian regimes.
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A complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state is represented in this book in three horrific episodes in the history of East-Central Europe. The three events followed each other within a span of about ten years: the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in Nazi death and labor camps; the Arrow Cross terrorist rule in Budapest; and finally the Stalinist terror in Hungary and East-Central Europe. Through the prism of survival, László Borhi explores the relationship between the individual and power, attempting to understand the mechanism of oppression and terror produced by arbitrary, unbridled power through the experience of normal people. Despite the obvious p...
Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, over 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and, most were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The sole exception was the Jews in Budapest. In October 1944, Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, with the eager assistance of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party, initiated plans to finish off the Jews of Budapest even as the Soviet Red Army was rapidly advancing, and ultimately laid siege on Budapest in December 1944. This is the story of how one Jewish boy and 400 others were protected in a ""yellow star house."" The house was converted into a hospital run by Jewish doctors designed to treat everyone -- even their wounded enemies, free of charge. The Jewish residents were ultimately saved in this way by a man who posed as an Arrow Cross officer and risked his own life countless times while over 70,000 Jews were being murdered at the Danube or dying in ghettos. The Yellow Star House is a story of courage, family, hope, rescue and luck. It is unforgettable.
Orphans of the Holocaust tells the remarkable true story of Ottó Komoly, a Hungarian-Jewish engineer and Zionist leader who helped save thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust. As head of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, Komoly worked tirelessly to assist Polish and Slovakian Jews to escape and hide in Hungary. After German troops entered Hungary in March 1944, Komoly helped organize ‘Department A’ of the International Red Cross in Budapest. As its director, he oversaw the setting up of shelters and orphanages for some 5,500 Jewish children who lost their parents during the Nazi siege of Budapest and supported the ghetto and Jewish hospitals with food and medication. The bo...