by Alex Kershaw
“What will happen after the war,” asked Hottl, “when the world asks about these millions?”
“A hundred dead are a catastrophe,” said Eichmann. “A million are a statistic.”78
IT SEEMED AS IF Hungary’s last surviving Jews would be saved. Wallenberg expected the invading Soviet troops to quickly defeat the Nazis and soon occupy Budapest. Within a few weeks, by October at the latest, he believed his mission would be over and he would be able to return to Sweden, having proved himself and added luster to the Wallenberg family name. He would be able to get on with his life, expanding his business partnership with Lauer or perhaps even finding work at his cousins’ behemoth, Enskilda Bank.79 He was still only thirty-two years old and was eager to make his mark back in Sweden. “I am doing everything in my powers to return home quickly,” Wallenberg wrote his mother, Maj von Dardel. “But you understand that one cannot disband a large operation such as this on a moment’s notice. When the invasion comes, the disbanding will take place more swiftly and I will try to return home in eight days.”80
The Red Army was just fifty miles from Budapest when Wallenberg sent a dispatch to Stockholm on October 12. “The Russian advance has increased the hope of the Jews that their unfortunate plight will soon end,” he wrote. “Many have voluntarily stopped wearing the Star of David. Fears that the Germans might, at the last moment, carry out a pogrom remain, despite no positive signs of such an occurrence.”81
Wallenberg was right to be cautiously optimistic. The Jews’ “unfortunate plight” was about to get even worse.
9
Operation Panzerfaust
HE HAD A LARGE SCAR across his left cheek, a gruesome memento from a duel he had won as a student, one of no less than fifteen ritual saber fights during his youth. The scar only added to the glamour and mystique of the burly, chain-smoking Austrian, thirty-six-year-old SS Major Otto Skorzeny. By September 1944, Skorzeny was a legendary figure—the Third Reich’s most effective and feared commando, soon to be dubbed the “Most Wanted Man in Europe” by the Allied press.
Skorzeny had led several spectacularly successful missions during the war, most notably the freeing of Il Duce—Benito Mussolini—from a mountainside prison in Italy in September 1943. Now he had been selected for yet another high stakes hit-and-run operation, this time to kidnap Admiral Horthy’s son, Miklas, Jr. With Horthy’s son as their hostage, the SS and Gestapo could pressure Horthy into stepping down as leader of Hungary and installing a fascist regime, under the Arrow Cross, to run the country in his place.
Skorzeny recalled how he arrived late—it was past midnight—at Hitler’s command headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, a complex of concrete bunkers near Gierloz in northern Poland. He listened as Hitler and his inner circle discussed the state of the war, particularly the grave developments in the southeast sector.
At the end of this situation report, Hitler gestured for Skorzeny to remain behind, along with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, General Alfred Jodl, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler.
The men sat down in armchairs around a small table.
Hitler concisely explained what had been happening in Hungary and elsewhere in the southern sector of the Eastern Front. He stressed that the Soviets had to be held at the border of Hungary. More than a million German troops would be taken prisoner if Hungary collapsed.1
“Now,” Hitler added, “we have received confidential reports that the regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, is trying to establish contact with the enemy to negotiate a separate peace. The success of his discussions would spell the loss of our army. Horthy wishes to [make a peace treaty] not only with the Western Powers but also with Russia, to which he has offered unconditional surrender.”
Hitler turned toward Skorzeny.
“You, Major Skorzeny, are going to prepare the military occupation of Castle Hill, in Budapest. You will start this operation as soon as we learn that the regent is about to betray the duties incumbent upon him according to his treaty of alliance with Germany. You will begin your preparations today. To permit you to surmount any difficulty you face, I shall give you a written order that gives you the most extensive powers.”2
Jodl read from a piece of paper, which listed units available for the operation. They included a battalion of Waffen-SS paratroopers.
“For the duration of the operation,” said Jodl, “a plane from the squadron detailed to the Fuhrer’s general headquarters will be given you for your personal movements.”
Hitler then discussed with Ribbentrop recent reports from Veensenmeyer, the German consul in Budapest.
The atmosphere in the capital was “very tense,” he said.
Hitler signed Skorzeny’s orders.
“I rely on you and your men.”
Skorzeny left Hitler’s situation room around 2 a.m. After a few hours’ sleep, he boarded a Heinkel plane bound for Vienna, where he would gather his troops and make final preparations for his Budapest operation, code-named Panzerfaust.
Skorzeny was soon gazing down on the rolling hills and wide valleys of southern Germany as the Heinkel flew toward his native Austria. “The stakes of the game I was about to play were enormous,” he later recalled. “If the Hungarian divisions in the Carpathians were to cease fire or, worse, go over to the enemy, a whole German army of a million men would find itself in a precarious or even desperate situation. And if, later, we were to lose Budapest, the turntable of our communications, we would face an unimaginable catastrophe. If only I could act in time.”3
ON OCTOBER 15, Miklas Horthy, Jr., was scheduled to meet with Yugoslav agents in a large building beside the Danube to discuss Hungary’s withdrawal from the Axis. The meeting duly began at 10 that morning. Skorzeny arrived on the scene a few minutes later. As he drove up to the building, he saw stationed in front of it a Honved truck and a civilian car, probably Miklas Horthy, Jr.’s. Without hesitation, he parked in front of the Hungarian vehicles to prevent them from making a quick getaway.
Skorzeny’s account of what happened next reads like the stuff of SS pulp fiction: the tale of a swashbuckling SS knight’s caper in the Carpathians. Hitler’s favorite commando recounted how he got out of his car and was pretending to look at its engine when two German policemen arrived. There was a burst of machine-gun fire from the Honved truck. One of the policemen fell, severely wounded in the belly, close to Skorzeny, who had just enough time to take cover behind his car; a second later a fresh burst of fire from the Honved truck made a sieve of its open door.
Skorzeny blew a whistle: the signal for his men to swing into action. He tried to hold off several Hungarians with his revolver. The car took many more rounds. Bullets ricocheted against the pavement. Two long minutes passed and then, to Skorzeny’s relief, he heard his men approaching. They opened fire and the Hungarians fell back and disappeared. Skorzeny rushed into the entrance of the building. Gestapo officers appeared, dragging four prisoners. Skorzeny and his men helped pile Miklas Horthy, Jr., and three others into a military truck. To avoid notice, the Gestapo had rolled up their hostages in large carpets. “From what I saw, this astute stratagem was proving none too successful,” recalled Skorzeny. “The conspirators were struggling violently; our policemen were forced to bind them in their carpets and to hoist them none too gently into the truck, which sped off at once.”4
When Skorzeny reached a local airport later that morning, he was pleased to find Horthy’s son already aboard a plane. Skorzeny watched it leave with Hitler’s latest hostage, bound for the Third Reich. Operation Panzerfaust had succeeded beautifully.
IT WAS A GLORIOUS DAY. The leaves were turning red and copper and gold on St. Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube. Alice and Erwin planned to have lunch with Erwin’s parents that morning of October 15 in Buda, where they were now living in relative safety, thanks to their status as “foreign citizens of a neutral country.”
Alice and Erwin were with a six-year-old orphan as they made their way across Budapes
t. They often took Pipez, Alice’s nickname for the boy, away from his orphanage on weekends, and they did so that Sunday. When they got to Erwin’s parents’ place in Buda, they listened to the radio, enjoying each other’s company, confident that the war was drawing to a close and their suffering would soon be over. “My in-laws had a family dinner at the very nice summer house they were renting in Buda,” recalled Alice. “They invited the whole family: my husband and me, my sister-in-law. It was a big get-together.”5
It was around 1 p.m.
“Today it is obvious to any sober-minded person that the German Reich has lost the war,” announced Admiral Horthy over the radio. “Conscious of my historic responsibility, I have the obligation to avoid further unnecessary bloodshed . . . I informed a representative of the German Reich that we were about to conclude a military armistice with our previous enemies and to cease all hostilities against them . . . I appeal to every honest Hungarian to follow me on the path beset by sacrifices that will lead to Hungary’s salvation.”6
Across Budapest, people flooded into the streets. Jews ripped off their yellow stars.7
In Buda, beside their radio, Erwin and Alice celebrated with their relatives and Pipez.
“We were saved,” remembered Erwin. “We had survived. The war was over.”8
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Admiral Horthy was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to SS headquarters, where he was placed in a bare room and guarded by an SS private in case he tried to commit suicide. Horthy later recalled in his memoirs how he was about to take an aspirin when the guard snatched it and the glass of water from his hand.
A German officer entered Horthy’s room.
“The premier would like to speak with you,” he said.
Horthy walked to the room next door. There stood the psychopathic Ferenc Szalasi, head of the Hungarian Nazi party—the Arrow Cross. Szalasi gave Horthy the Nazi salute and asked him to make him prime minister. Disgusted, Horthy told Szalasi to ask the Germans to appoint him. “As I am a prisoner here,” said Horthy, “I cannot perform my official duties, and in any case you are the last person I should choose to appoint to that function.”
Szalasi left but returned later that day to make the same request. He got the same answer. Not long after, Horthy was startled by a gunshot. One of his most trusted aides, Lieutenant Colonel Tost, had shot himself in a nearby room. “By his death, I lost one of my most faithful officers,” recalled Horthy, “no doubt he preferred to escape by suicide from prolonged imprisonment and Gestapo interrogations that he knew might force him to betray others.”
At 6 p.m., Horthy was allowed to return to the Royal Palace on Castle Hill so he could gather some of his personal belongings. He was shocked by the chaos and mess left by Skorzeny’s men, who’d made themselves comfortable on the damask-upholstered furniture. Cupboards and drawers had been broken open. Horthy’s rooms had been pillaged, and anything of value stolen.9
General Geza Lakatos, Hungary’s premier, suddenly appeared. He was with forty-year-old Reich plenipotentiary Edmund Veesenmayer, Hitler’s personal representative in Hungary. Lakatos handed Horthy a sheet of paper. In German, it announced his abdication and the appointment of Szalasi as premier. Horthy examined the typewritten page. At the bottom of the German text he read the words: Signed, Horthy.
“What’s this?” said Horthy. “Am I supposed to sign this?”
Lakatos said that he was.
Horthy said Szalasi had twice asked him that day to appoint him. He had twice refused. He turned away and continued to pack his belongings. Lakatos hesitated, and then told Horthy that his son’s life was at stake. Horthy was stunned. Veesenmayer soon confirmed that the life of Horthy’s son did indeed depend on the signature.
“I see that you seek to give your coup d’état an air of legality,” said Horthy. “Will you give me your word of honor that my son will be liberated and will join us if I sign?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Veesenmayer replied. “I give you my word of honor.”
Horthy said that he neither resigned nor appointed Szálasi premier. He was merely exchanging his signature for his son’s life.
For too long Horthy had tied his fortunes to the swastika. He had allowed Eichmann and his Hungarian accomplices to kill more than half a million of his people in just a few months that summer. Yet only now, apparently, did he see through the Nazis’ veneer of respectability—now that they were threatening to take the life of his own son.
BACK AT THE VILLA IN BUDA, where Alice, Erwin, and his family were gathered later that day, the radio announced that Horthy had abdicated and that the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross, was taking power. The war was not over. Hungary would fight on.
Everyone was stunned. Only a few minutes ago, they had been free, the yoke of Nazi terror and murder finally lifted. But now the most virulently anti-Semitic fascists in Europe were in charge of their fate.10
The pogroms began that very evening. Hundreds were pulled from their homes or off the streets and slaughtered in plain sight in the first hours of the Arrow Cross regime. Forced laborers were marched to bridges across the Danube, shot, and their bodies dumped into the river.11 The first Jewish suicide was recorded at 7:32 p.m. that day. Before the year was out, there would be more suicides on any one day than in all of Hungary in 1943. Mothers would soon knock daughters unconscious with rolling pins and then lie down with them beside open gas pipes.
Erwin and Alice were only too aware of the true nature of the Arrow Cross. “They were scum,” recalled Erwin. “The garbage of the nation.” Its many factions could agree on little other than that the Jews should be done away with. “Posters were quickly plastered everywhere in the city. One said that the government did not recognize any protected Jews. They must all go to the ghetto. Anybody who was not there, who was hiding, and those hiding them, would be butchered. That was the precise word used by our new government—butchered.”12 Arrow Cross official Pal Hodosy was typical of the new masters of Budapest. “The problem is not that Jews are being murdered,” he would declare publicly. “The only trouble is the method. The bodies must be made to disappear, not put in the streets.”13
No one was safe. At any minute, the Arrow Cross might appear, on the hunt for Jews and their valuables. So Erwin and Alice left that night, October 15, and hid in the nearby garage of a Hungarian politician, Tivadar Homonai, who had known Erwin and his family since Erwin was four years old.14 It was just as well. “We learned that on the very same night, just a few hours after we left my parents’ house,” recalled Erwin, “the Arrow Cross killers were indeed looking for us there. We had just left in the nick of time. But the next morning, we had to be on the move once again, like sheep in a lion’s cage.”15
The morning of October 16, 1944, Alice and Erwin took Pipez and crossed the city to try to find some Christian friends, the Arpadfys, who had bravely agreed to hide them. It was a harrowing journey through a city where Jews were now to be killed at random, often on the drunken whims of brutal, illiterate teenagers—young fascists pumped full of a lethal cocktail of testosterone and hate. Jewish corpses lay pooled in blood on the streets.
Alice, Erwin, and Pipez were not wearing yellow stars, but they felt extremely vulnerable all the same. And Pipez looked very Jewish, especially with his cap. Surely, thought Erwin, everyone was looking at them, thinking the same thing—they were a Jewish family.16
“Pipez, take off your cap.”
Without the cap, Pipez looked even more like a Jewish orphan, with his short cropped hair.
“Pipez, put your cap back on.”
Alice told Pipez not to say a word. They crossed the Danube, heading toward Pest.
“Lici—why don’t the fascists do anything against us?” Pipez asked. “Is it because we don’t have a yellow star?”
There was a deathly silence in the streetcar. No one moved. No one said a word.
“Pipez—shut up!” said Alice.17
They left the streetcar as soon as they got to the other side
of the Danube. Thankfully, they were not followed. That night, they hid at the home of the Arpadfys. They had survived their first day on the run.
The following morning, Erwin tried to obtain false papers from an unnamed criminal he knew, fearing that Wallenberg’s Schutzpasses would no longer be valid under the Arrow Cross regime. Alice and Pipez were with Erwin. The criminal glanced at Pipez, who looked more than ever like a Jewish orphan. “If this boy is found with you,” the criminal told Erwin, “all of you will be killed. He’s under Red Cross protection. Why don’t you send him back to their orphanage? He will be safe there and won’t expose you to this danger.”18
It was a difficult decision, but Erwin and Alice agreed that this would be safer for all concerned. The criminal’s wife took Pipez back to his orphanage. She returned in tears. Six-year-old Pipez had begged her not to leave him at the orphanage. “I have one dollar,” he had pleaded with her. “I’ll give it to you. I want to live.”19
The criminal told Erwin that he knew a place where Erwin’s parents, his sister Marta, and her fiancée could hide: a rented apartment in Pest. He warned Erwin that they were to stay as quiet as they could in case neighbors reported them to the Arrow Cross.
Erwin and Alice hopped on a rattling yellow streetcar that took them into the working class outskirts of the city, where Erwin hoped to pick up forged papers. They finally got off the streetcar near the address Erwin had been given. Erwin told Alice to stay and wait for him.
“I’ll go alone and get the papers,” said Erwin.
As Erwin walked along the street, he sensed that something was not right. Then he saw several men. They spotted him, and he turned and started to walk back toward Alice, trying to look calm. The men began to run after him, and Erwin sprinted toward Alice. He saw a streetcar headed their way.
