Mr Olsen, believe me, your donation in behalf of the Hungarian Jews has done an enormous amount of good. I think that they will have every reason to thank you for having initiated and supported the Swedish Jewish action the way you have in such a splendid manner.
If Wallenberg’s mission had ended there and then, as he obviously believed it was about to do, he could have returned home well satisfied that he had performed an extremely worthwhile humanitarian task. But dramatic events were about to unfold that would make everything so far accomplished seem of minor importance.
Horthy had sent a special emissary to Moscow to relay his decision to sue for a separate peace. Incredibly, he thought he could do this without the Germans finding out. Warned of the mission to Moscow by their palace spies in Buda Castle, the Nazis began quietly to prepare to forestall Hungary’s defection from the Axis camp by an operation code-named Panzerfaust. Without taking the most elementary precautions first, such as bringing in large troop formations to secure the capital, Horthy sent a proclamation to the radio station on 15 October telling his people that, for them, the war was over.
Lászlo Szamosi, a resourceful young Jewish activist then living in Budapest and moving about the city with forged identity papers, recalls the memorable Sunday morning of the Horthy broadcast: ‘This was the moment that we Jews had been awaiting so eagerly during the terrible months when we expected to be deported at any time,’ he wrote in a memoir many years later. ‘At first it seemed incredible that this meant our deliverance, our freedom. Hardly could we comprehend that we could now go out into the street and cast off our yellow stars, that we could go and look for our relatives. The ecstasy of the people living in our star-marked house was beyond description.’
But Szamosi had that morning made a personal reconnaissance of the city and was not so sure himself that deliverance was at hand. ‘I had seen well-equipped motorized German units heading out of the city, but not a single Hungarian soldier, not even at the bridgeheads, which until now had been guarded by Hungarian and German soldiers.’
After the radio proclamation, following which the Jews in the house where he was living took down the big yellow star which marked it, Szamosi went out for another look round. ‘Observing not without anxiety that there was not the slightest sign of the Hungarian Army taking over the city, and not seeing any corroboration of the broadcast proclamation, my heart filled with fear. This proclamation was repeated several times on the air, but at the same time the radio started warning about an impending air raid, still using the German passwords and playing German music in the intervals.
‘Suddenly a new voice could be heard on the air, which started announcing ceaselessly the names of well-known Arrow Cross men.* It now became clear that the Arrow Cross mob, armed by the Germans, was seizing power. The Germans were streaming back into the city. They reoccupied the radio station with a few rifle shots and, with that, the Arrow Cross Government came into being and all our hopes were cruelly dashed.’
Chapter 7
This time the Nazis were taking no chances of their plans again being thwarted by Horthy. They prepared the putsch by kidnapping the regent’s son and taking him off to Germany. The kidnap operation, carried out by Waffen SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny,* was achieved by luring young Horthy out of the regent’s palace for what was supposed to be a meeting with representatives of Tito, the leader of the Yugoslav partisans. As young Horthy drove from the palace with a bodyguard of three Hungarian Army sergeants, his car was ambushed, the bodyguard shot, and he was dragged away, wounded, to a waiting vehicle. When the regent heard that the Nazis were holding his son hostage, he caved in, abandoned his country to the Arrow Cross, and allowed himself to be taken away to Germany, a virtual prisoner.
The Germans now installed Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi as both prime minister and head of state, under the title Leader of the Nation. The next day Eichmann returned to Budapest in triumph. ‘You see, I am back,’ he told a small group of Jewish leaders who were immediately summoned to his headquarters. ‘Our arm is still long enough to reach you.’
During his enforced vacation, Eichmann had conceived a brutally simple way of resuming the Jewish deportations, this time without having to fight the German Army for every locomotive and cattle car. ‘The Jews of Budapest will now be deported – this time on foot,’ he announced to his staff. ‘We need our vehicles for other purposes. Now we are going to work, briskly and efficiently. All right?’
‘During the first night of the putsch,’ Wallenberg reported to his Foreign Ministry, ‘numerous arrests and many pogroms took place and between a hundred and two hundred people are believed to have been killed. Moreover, a number of Jewish houses were emptied of their occupants by members of the Arrow Cross… Some hundreds have disappeared.’ Wallenberg said the putsch had had ‘a catastrophic effect’ on his department. ‘The whole of the personnel as well as the motor car…disappeared, and furthermore a number of keys to various locked rooms, cupboards, etc., could not be found. During the whole of the first day, the undersigned had to ride around the bandit-infested streets on a lady’s bicycle trying to gather together the threads. The second day was spent in moving by car such people as were in danger to safe hiding-places…’ Wallenberg located and liberated all but ten of his staff.
When Wallenberg’s dispatch reached Stockholm, Minister Johnson cabled the State Department the gist of it, adding: ‘It appears that Wallenberg is throwing his full energy into his task and doing remarkably well considering enormous difficulties. Olsen thinks official recognition by WRB of Wallenberg’s efforts, which would be forwarded through the Foreign Office, well justified. Swedish government continuing to make strong representations to Hungarian government regarding treatment of Jews.’
The acting secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, cabled back conveying the US government’s ‘sincere appreciation of the humanitarian activities of the Swedish government and of the courage and ingenuity displayed by Mr Wallenberg.’
On 18 October the Arrow Cross interior minister, Gábor Vajna, went on the radio to announce his government’s policy towards the solution of the Jewish problem in general – ‘this solution, even if it shall be ruthless, shall be such as the Jews deserve by their previous and present conduct’ – and in particular towards those who had been enjoying the limited protection of foreign countries and the churches.
‘I recognize no Jews belonging to the Roman Catholic or Lutheran churches,’ said Vajna. ‘I recognize no letter of safe conduct of any kind, or foreign passport which a Jew of Hungarian nationality may have received from whatever source or person…Let not a single person of Jewish race believe, then, that with the help of aliens he can circumvent the lawful measures of the Hungarian State.’
Wallenberg did not wait to convene a meeting with the other neutral missions. This was a case for immediate action, rather than a protest note. He decided to work through the new foreign minister, Baron Gábor Kemény. Kemény’s idea of the way a minister of foreign affair should dress when in public or when receiving ambassadors was to wear riding boots and a pistol at his belt. It did not seem likely that he would be swayed by humanitarian arguments. However, there were three factors that Wallenberg felt could be exploited: the desire of the new régime, apparently as strong as its predecessor’s, for international recognition; the personal rivalry between Kemény and Vajna; and Kemény’s wife.
Wallenberg had already met the baroness at one of the many parties and diplomatic receptions that he found time to attend with the object of making as many influential and potentially helpful contacts as possible. In the beautiful and spirited Elisabeth Kemény he was to find an exceptionally valuable ally. Born of aristocratic Austrian stock and raised in the disputed Italian Tyrol, she had come to Budapest in 1942 as the bride of the dashing Baron Kemény. She was now pregnant with their first child.
At an arranged meeting in the apartment of a mutual friend in Pest, Wallenberg came quickly but politely to the point. The neutral mission
s were most concerned about the new government’s non-recognition of their protective passports. Her husband wanted the recognition of their governments, but this would never happen if the Szálasi régime reneged on its predecessor’s agreement over the passes. The baroness would surely appreciate that. She should also consider the likely fate of the Arrow Cross leaders, now that the Red Army was hammering at the gates of Budapest. When the city fell, they would all be hanged as war criminals…with the possible exception, of course, of those for whom a good word might be said. The baroness would surely wish the baron to do everything possible to avoid such a fate.*
On a purely departmental point, Wallenberg argued, the question of foreign passports was a matter for the Foreign Ministry, not the Interior Ministry, and therefore beyond the competence of her husband’s rival, Vajna. In short, Wallenberg felt sure that the baroness would want to do everything possible to help her husband, herself, and their unborn child by prevailing on the baron to get the Interior Minister’s decree countermanded. Elisabeth Kemény, her conscience already troubled by what she had seen and heard of the treatment of the Jews, promised to take the matter up with her husband.
Soon afterwards, Baron Kemény raised the issue with the Leader of the Nation. Szálasi was at first unsympathetic. The Jews must be got rid of, once and for all. He had assured the Germans that this time there would be no backsliding. Kemény countered quickly. He, too, wanted a quick solution to the problem, but it seemed to him that if they gave a little ground now, the new government might quickly achieve not one but two prime objectives: they could win the goodwill of the Swedes, the Swiss, and the other neutrals by revalidating their documents, then they could demand in all good conscience that these nations should remove persons under their protection from Hungary by a stipulated date, leaving them free to get on with disposing of the rest of the Jews.
By letting at most some sixteen thousand Jews escape to neutral countries and Palestine – always providing that transport could be found for them and transit arrangements made – they would be in a position to get rid, once and for all, of ten times that number. Put that way, the idea appealed to Szálasi; it might commend itself to the Germans, too.
When the baroness informed Wallenberg that she had been successful in her mission, it was only to find that he had a further demand. It would not be sufficient for Kemény merely to notify the diplomatic corps of this reversal in policy. He must make the announcement publicly, as the interior minister had made his – on the radio – so that the local authorities, the Arrow Cross branches, and the general public should be in no doubt about the validity of the protective passes. Furthermore, the announcement should stress that protected houses were not to be entered without authorization or their occupants molested. Yet again, Wallenberg’s arguments were powerful enough to convince the baroness that she must urge them on her husband.
At first, Kemény was unwilling. He did not want a showdown with the already disgruntled Vajna. But the baroness insisted; Vajna had made him look foolish – he must return the compliment or lose face. ‘Your friend Wallenberg is causing me a lot of trouble,’ he grumbled. ‘Always he wants something more. Knowing him is like suffering the Chinese water torture.’ Again the baroness insisted, even threatening – so she recalled many years later – to leave him. The still-infatuated Kemény could not refuse her, and the next day he went to the radio station with orders from his wife not to leave the studio without making his broadcast.
According to rumours still current in Budapest long after the war, the real reason why Baroness Kemény was willing to co-operate with Wallenberg was that she was herself of part-Jewish descent. She denies it. ‘I have no Jewish blood,’ she told a visitor to her apartment in an affluent Munich suburb in 1980. ‘I was born into an old Catholic family. No, I began feeling concern for the Jews one day when I looked out of my window and saw a group of old people, staggering down the street under armed guard. They were barely able to walk and small children were wandering untended among them. I called down to the guards, “Who are these people and where are you taking them?” and they answered, “Jews, and we’re taking them to work.” I knew this must be a lie. They were too old and weak to work. I guessed they were on their way to the slaughter and I felt I must do something. And then Wallenberg came along and it’s no wonder that we got on so well from the start. We were allies in a fight for humanity.’
Another rumour current in post-war Budapest was that she and Wallenberg were lovers. ‘Ridiculous!’ says the baroness. ‘I was very pregnant at the time I knew him and although he was very charming he was not nearly as good-looking as my husband.’
On 1 November Kemény summoned Wallenberg and the Swiss consul, Lutz, to the Foreign Ministry. Having restored the validity of the 4500 Swedish and 7000 Swiss passports officially issued (he knew there were more, but they were of no consequence to him), the Hungarian government now required the governments of those two countries to repatriate their ‘nationals’ as quickly as possible and by the end of the month at the latest. If they were not gone by then, the protected Jews would be treated the same as the rest. Kemény hoped that by the time of their departure both Sweden and Switzerland would have accorded recognition to the Szálasi government. Would the Swedes and the Swiss now kindly make all appropriate arrangements for the transportation of these people? He would be speaking to the Germans about transit arrangements.
Wallenberg and Lutz, both of whom could see the dangers involved, replied that they would consult their governments. Once their officially protected Jews were gone, they realized, they would have no further function and no basis on which to act on behalf of the thousands more whose passports exceeded the agreed quotas. Wallenberg, at least, also was determined to see what he could do for the scores of thousands of unprotected Jews. Then, even if transport could be arranged to take ‘his’ Jews across Germany to Sweden, what guarantee could there be that they would not meet with some unfortunate ‘accident’ en route? No, the only thing to do was to accept in principle and play a stalling game. They had until the end of the month, and with the Russians advancing steadily that might be long enough. On 2 November, in fact, an advanced Soviet unit actually penetrated the south-eastern outskirts of the city.
While all this had been going on, protected and unprotected Jews alike were being terrorized by bands of Arrow Cross thugs, some of them only teenagers, who roamed the city beating, robbing, and killing; there was little or no interference from the police. But this activity, though terrible enough, was sporadic and uncoordinated. On 20 October 1944 Eichmann went to work in a more systematic way, with a mass round-up of Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and sixty, ostensibly to provide workers for the Hungarian Army labour service. The sick, the halt, the lame, and the crippled, as well as the fit and the healthy, were routed from their star-marked houses. They were given one hour to get ready and equip themselves with food for a three-day march. In a few cases those with foreign passports managed to get themselves exempted, especially those with the impressive ‘Wallenberg passports.’ Some Jews managed to buy their way out of the dragnet with bribes. Altogether some fifty thousand recruits were marched off to a racecourse and a sports-ground, where they were formed up into companies before being marched to various locations on the outskirts of Budapest to perform back-breaking work – digging trenches and throwing up earthwork defences in the path of the Russian advance. Hundreds died of exhaustion, exposure, and ill-treatment.
With much of the male population gone, it now became the turn of the women and older children. Despite determined attempts by Wallenberg and other members of the diplomatic corps to prevent it, Eichmann’s promised programme of deportations on foot began on 8 November. So began the first of the ‘death marches’ along a 120-mile route from Budapest to the Austrian border at Hegyeshalom, under conditions so dreadful that even hardened Nazis were to protest. It was during these marches, which went on almost until the end of November, that Wallenberg’s reputation among the desp
airing Jews became legendary.
Miriam Herzog, now a well-preserved grandmother living comfortably in a Tel Aviv suburb, has a vivid recollection of the march, and of how Wallenberg saved her and a hundred others from one transport. Her account, though more articulate than most, is typical.
‘The conditions were frightful. We walked thirty to forty kilometres a day in freezing rain, driven on all the time by the Hungarian gendarmes. We were all women and girls. I was seventeen at the time. The gendarmes were brutal, beating those who could not keep up, leaving others to die in the ditches. It was terrible for the older women. Sometimes at night we didn’t have any shelter, let alone anything to eat or drink. One night we stopped in a square in the middle of a village. We just lay down on the ground to rest. There was a frost in the night and in the morning many of the older women were dead. It was so cold, it was as though we were frozen into the ground. The thirst was even worse than the hunger. I recall that somewhere along the road a villager came out with water for us. The gendarmes tried to stop him, but he just fixed them with a stare. “I’d like to see you try to make me,” he said – and went on giving us water. The gendarmes were so amazed, they did nothing about it.
‘There were some good people in Hungary but the gendarmes were absolute animals. I hate them even worse than the Germans. At one point along the road we met a convoy of German soldiers going the other way, towards the front. Ordinary Wehrmacht men, not SS. When they saw how the Hungarian gendarmes were treating us, they appeared to be horrified. “You’ll be all right when you get to Germany,” they told us. “We don’t treat women like this, there.” I suppose they didn’t know about the extermination camps.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 9
