VOLUME XIII, No. 4 - History

AN INTERNMENT CAMP COMMANDER’S STRUGGLE

December 20, 2022

Nóra Szekér

The Story of István Vasdényey
Part II

‘The train departed a second time.’¹

On 26 June—after the rural deportations had essentially ended—Miklós Horthy announced to the Crown Council that he was halting all further deportations, and would initiate the dismissal of the two state secretaries in charge of overseeing the implementation of anti-Jewish measures, László Endre and László Baky. ² For Eichmann, this decision meant that his mission, the deportation of all Hungarian Jews, would in all likelihood be impossible to complete. ‘During my long career, this is the first time I have experienced something of this sort! This will not do, it was not the agreement, and it cannot be accepted!’, ³ exclaimed Lieutenant Colonel László Ferenczy when he was informed of the suspension of deportation. As a result of this decision, the long-planned, large-scale operation scheduled for mid-July was cancelled. This would have been the so-called eintägige Grossaktion: the round-up of the capital’s 200,000-plus Jews in a single day, in which all police and gendarmerie units, as well as cadets from training camps, and even Budapest’s postmen and chimney sweeps, were to have taken part. ⁴

Eichmann refused to accept this decision and, using elements of the original idea, developed a new plan: with Baky’s cooperation, he planned to deport Budapest’s Jews by means of a coup d’état. If Horthy resisted, his removal would also form part of the plan. Gendarmerie battalions from Galánta and Nagyvárad (now Galanta and Oradea, in Slovakia and Romania respectively) were ordered to the capital, ostensibly for the blessing of their flags, but in fact to assist in rounding up the Jews. However, the anti-German circle close to Horthy found out about the plan. Staff Colonel Ferenc Koszorús’s 1st Armoured Corps, stationed in Esztergom, came to Budapest on the orders of Lieutenant General Károly Lázár. ⁵ Led by Koszorús, these armoured units occupied the strategically important points of the capital at dawn on 6 July, then demanded that the gendarmerie battalions be withdrawn from Budapest. In testimony given to a people’s court, General Staff Colonel Beleznay, who participated in the action, later recalled: ‘Eighty tanks of various models were paraded through Óbuda, and in the Albrecht, Andrássy, and Ferenc József Barracks were companies comprising 2,000 excellently equipped and completely reliable men, supplied with radio devices and light and heavy machine guns.’ ⁶ Baky, after brief hesitation, complied with the ultimatum. ⁷

A little later, on the afternoon of 7 July, Horthy summoned Prime Minister Sztójay, and emphatically repeated the order he had issued to the Crown Council: the deportation of the Jews was to be stopped. ⁸Eichmann knew that he could not carry out the deportation of nearly 200,000 Budapest Jews with just his own Sonderkommando of some 200 men. He therefore sought to compensate for this by an action he thought he could accomplish: transporting approximately 1,500 detainees from the Kistarcsa internment camp to Auschwitz. ⁹

On 12 July, Vasdényey learned from the station master in Kistarcsa that the Germans had ordered a train of fifty wagons to be at the station for 14 July. That was when he understood what Eichmann’s intentions were. He immediately warned the Jewish Council through the representative of the Bureau for the Protection of the Rights of the Jews of Hungary, Sándor Bródy, ¹⁰ who later remembered the event as follows: ‘[Vasdényey]’s greatest merit is that […] he secretly […] informed me about this in advance, despite the prohibition, which meant that we had time, during those two days, by mobilizing everyone, to attempt to turn back the deportation train […] which has already set off.’ ¹¹

The Crown Council received the news when the loading of the wagons had already begun. ¹² Ernő Péter, a member of the Jewish Council, had a close relationship with Miklós Horthy Jr, the son of the Regent, and through him, he had informed the Regent several times about the abuses being perpetrated against the Jews. ¹³ He once again turned to the Regent’s son: ‘As the preparations continued, and had already reached the stage where wagon doors were being shut, in despair I called Miklós Horthy Jr on his secret number and reported that 1,500 people were in imminent danger, because the Germans wanted to deport them, disregarding the will of the Regent and the government. He undertook to communicate this to the Regent at once.’ ¹⁴ Miklós Horthy, as soon as he learned about the attempt by the Germans to bypass his decree, immediately summoned Andor Jaross, the minister of the interior, and ordered him to stop the train and send it back, and ‘if necessary, to put an end to further deportations by force’. ¹⁵ The order caught up with the train in Hatvan, and it returned to Kistarcsa with all its passengers on the night of 14 July. ‘They crowded us into cattle cars […]. We travelled for a while, then we suddenly felt that the train was moving in the opposite direction, until we arrived back at Kistarcsa’, ¹⁶testified Eliseva Szenes during the Eichmann trial.

Upon hearing the news, Eichmann had a fit of rage. Jenő Lévai later summarized the state of mind of the SS Obersturmbannführer: ‘Did the Regent dare to thwart with the threat of arms the measures he himself and the SS had ordered? […] The authority of the Gestapo and the SS was at stake. […] In reality, he was crushed by this latest failure.’ ¹⁷The return of the Kistarcsa ‘shipment’ was a personal loss of prestige that Eichmann could not disregard.

He learned that Horthy had heard about the departure of the wagons from members of the Jewish Council: ‘they kicked up a fuss with everyone they could’. ¹⁸ As a first step, on the morning of 19 July, he summoned the members of the Crown Council to his headquarters, the Majestic Hotel on Svábhegy, a hill on the outskirts of Budapest. While its members were kept waiting there all day, cut off from the possibility of any news reaching them or being able to ‘kick up a fuss’ with anyone, Eichmann’s Gestapo squad attacked the Kistarcsa camp. ‘The drama unfolded in a matter of seconds’, Vasdényey later recalled. ‘Three sections of the Sonderkommando attacked with two machine guns—while all the soldiers were armed with submachine guns—the entrance gate in the direction of Budapest was broken down, and the courtyard and hallway of the command building were stormed. There was no possibility of resistance. […] They drove into the camp in lorries, and started indiscriminately throwing people into the backs of the lorries. The brutality of it was indescribable. […] I implored Novák ¹⁹ to behave more humanely, but he replied that this is how war is.’ ²⁰ The almost 1,200 people were taken by lorry to Rákoscsaba, where they were forced into cattle wagons. They were even stripped of their yellow stars, so that it would not be too obvious that Jews were being taken in spite of the prohibition. After a few hours, they were already beyond Hungary’s borders. As one of the survivors put it in her memoirs: ‘In legal terms, the Germans “stole” us from Hungary.’ ²¹

The most that Vasdényey could achieve was that the residents of Barrack B were not put on the lorries: he drew the Germans’ attention to the fact that they were important hostages who, if maltreated, could cause international complications. ‘Vasdényey managed by personal entreaties to save 300 people from the Germans […]. He also ensured that the deportees were adequately supplied for the journey, and gave everyone several kilograms of canned food and food packages from the camp’s supplies’, recalled Sándor Bródy. ²² He could do no more than that: his policemen had been demobilized, the telephone lines were cut, and he could not notify anyone.

Eichmann’s units were withdrawn from the country on 30 August, ²³ meaning that his ultimate objective—the deportation of all Budapest’s Jews—was not accomplished, but he did succeed in this ‘petty act of revenge’, which cost the lives of approximately 1,500 people. In his 1961 trial, Eichmann defended himself by saying that he had only ever acted in accordance with orders. He could not say the same about what happened at Kistarcsa, but claimed to recall virtually nothing about these events. Gideon Hauser wrote of what was said at the trial that ‘[h]e claimed that all he knew was that they had once reversed a train. In any case, he said, he could not even imagine how the whole business could have happened.’ ²⁴

With Eichmann’s departure in August, the danger of another raid-like deportation passed. In the meantime, the Lakatos government was formed, with a secret mandate to prepare Hungary’s exit from the war. Until the Arrow Cross coup on 15 October, the persecuted Jews were able to enjoy a brief respite of relative calm. Pursuant to the government’s decision, the hostage lawyers were released on 26–27 September. Of the Jewish prisoners, only those sentenced to internment for violating one of the thousands of anti-Jewish decrees remained in the camp: those few Jews who had escaped the deportation on 19 July, or who had been sent to Kistarcsa after it.

However, with the Arrow Cross coup led by Szálasi, fear once more returned. At the very beginning of November, an evacuation order for the entire camp was received, and orders were given for the prisoners to be moved to the auxiliary prison in Komárom on 7 November. Pursuant to this order, Vasdényey loaded the inhabitants of the camp into wagons and the train set off toward Komárom, with Vasdényey himself joining the prisoners’ escort. Near Vác, however, he had the train stopped by an open field and released the prisoners. ²⁵ As a result, the Arrow Cross issued a warrant for his arrest, but they were unable to apprehend him.

Difficult months followed, but István Vasdényey survived the war. He returned to Budapest at the beginning of spring and, like so many others, began to assess the human and material losses endured during the siege of the capital. Nonetheless, he remained conscientious enough to inquire into the fate of the Kistarcsa camp residents. ‘In the spring of 1945, the weather was already warm and pleasant when István Vasdényey came to visit my father’, remembered György Ákos Bálint. ‘He greeted us by saying that he wanted to pay his respects to the former prisoners. We talked for perhaps two hours. […] I think that this visit was an extraordinary event. I have not heard of, and do not know of, any similar case in which the commandant of a concentration camp took the trouble and possessed the courage to visit his former prisoners.’ ²⁶ Indeed, besides István Vasdényey, not many camp commanders are listed in history as being among the saviours of the Jews. However, not only did Vasdényey’s efforts go unrecognized, but it was after the war that he endured the most severe torments of his life.

On 26 May 1945, he was arrested by the Soviets and, like his old friend Károly Dietz, the police chief of the previous regime, he was taken to the Soviet Union. ²⁷ Several people attempted to intercede for his release, including Police Colonel István Ormay, who enjoyed the trust of the innermost circles of the Communist Party, but to no avail. Vasdényey returned to Hungary on 1 December, 1950, but was again detained and interned, on the basis of his pre-1945 position. ²⁸This time, too, his acquaintances among former camp residents and influential communists were unable to secure him any meaningful help. His mother also made several appeals, supported by dozens of witness statements from the persecuted. ‘A seriously ill, seventy-three-year-old mother turns to you in her final despair. […] My son returned to Hungary after six years as a prisoner of war, but did not arrive home. We do not know where he is. It is assumed that he was subject to a verification procedure. I will provide the ÁVO with the documents necessary for the investigation. […] Trusting in the democratic justice system, I hope that the lieutenant general will not reject the appeal of a mother who is worried about her son’, ²⁹ wrote the widowed Mrs Vasdényey in a fruitless letter to Gábor Péter.

Vasdényey returned from the Soviet Union in a state of poor health, and was not even allowed to leave the Vác National Prison Hospital during his internment. He was released on 18 September 1953. In connection with the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, he was summoned to the police several times and questioned about what happened in Kistarcsa. His responses were used as testimony in the trial. In 1963, at the age of 68, after an illness acquired during captivity left him unable to work, but unable to claim a pension as a result of the sentence imposed on him, his financial circumstances forced him to apply for rehabilitation. After a long investigation, the Rehabilitation Committee found that he had done everything he could to save left-wing individuals and the persecuted: he ‘sabotaged Eichmann’s measures’ and ‘played a significant role in allowing several left-wing people to escape from the camp’. ³⁰Despite all this, his request was rejected. ‘The Commission has established that the internment of István Vasdényey was not related to the illegal proceedings against persons from the labour movement, and therefore his request is rejected. Dated: 26 June 1963.’ ³¹

Many of the rescued prisoners emigrated from Hungary, and they always retained deep fondness and esteem for their former camp commander. In 1964, he was invited to the United States as a guest, and never returned. Until his death, he was supported by the rescued internees from Kistarcsa. He died on 1 April, 1984, in Buffalo. ³²Vasdényey’s efforts to save Jews were first written about by Jenő Lévai in his Fekete könyv or ‘Black Book’ of 1946. There then followed a long silence, until György Ákos Bálint’s memoirs were published in 2016. Lévai’s book is prefaced by a quote from Leon Kubowitzki: ‘Every Jew who survived in occupied Europe is a kind of itinerant miracle, the result of incredible endeavours and struggles.’ ³³

Hannah Arendt’s thinking and career were strongly determined by the 1961 Eichmann trial. She expressed her thoughts on the importance of naming the facts and the crimes committed in connection with this trial:

Regarding the Holocaust, people very easily make sweeping judgements, such as, for instance, that the fault lies with Christianity. They would rather throw two thousand years of history out the window than call certain individuals by their names. Because we shy away from saying specific names: him and him. Rather, we draw the conclusion that they acted the way they did because they were born at the wrong time, or were in a difficult situation, or were unlucky. Everyone would have done the same, we wouldn’t have behaved differently, so in some way we are all responsible. I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree, because it can be proven that there were people who, no matter how difficult a situation they were put in, did not commit such crimes. ³⁴

The story of Adolf Eichmann and István Vasdényey contains many lessons, but it also helps us not to fall into the error of generalization condemned by Hannah Arendt, which dismisses both individual responsibility and individual resistance. After all, recalling the words of János Pilinszky, we must remember ‘all the outrages that must have been committed, and all the holy deeds that were done’.

1
The title of István Lengyel’s conversation with the poet Erzsi Szenes, an inmate of the Kistarcsa
camp. See: István Lengyel, ‘A vonat másodszor is kirobogott… Beszélgetés Szenes Erzsi költőnővel,
a Hunsche-Krumey per tanújával’ (The Train Departed a Second Time … Conversation with the
Poet Erzsi Szenes, a Witness at the Hunsche–Krumey Trial), Új Élet, 15 (1964).
2
Interior Minister Jaross was forced to relieve Endre of responsibility for managing Jewish affairs,
but Baky retained control of the gendarmerie and the police. For more, see Gideon Hausner, Ítélet
Jeruzsálemben – Az Eichmann-per története (Judgement in Jerusalem: The History of the Eichmann
Trial) (Budapest: Európa Kiadó, 1984), 209.
3
Jenő Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről (The Black Book of the Sufferings of the
Hungarian Jews) (Budapest: Officina, 1946), 181.
4
Hausner, Ítélet Jeruzsálemben, 208–209.
5
For more, see the study on Károly Lázár in the same volume.
6
Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről, 178.
7
On 7 July, the lightly armed gendarmerie battalions withdrew from the capital, which remained under the control of the armoured division. For more, see the study on Ferenc Koszorús in the same volume.
8
Cf. Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről, 180.
9
Tamás Gusztáv Filep, ‘“…szabályosan »kiloptak« bennünket Magyarországról” – Szenes Erzsi
deportálásának körülményeiről’ (In Legal Terms, They ‘Stole’ Us from Hungary: On the Circumstances
of Erzsi Szenes’s Deportation), Irodalmi Szemle, 8 (2012), 23–30. According to the original plans, the
Germans would have gathered 1,000 people from Kistarcsa and 500 from Rökk Szilárd Street. When
only 1,450 people were collected, 50 more prisoners were selected from Horthyliget.
10
Miklós Gál was the liaison between the Bureau for the Protection of the Rights of the Jews of
Hungary and the camp, but he was arrested at the beginning of June (although he was acquitted
during the proceedings, he was still taken to the immigration detention centre and then to
Sárvár, from where he was deported to Auschwitz). He was replaced by Dr Sándor Bródy, head of
department at the Bureau for the Protection of the Rights of the Jews of Hungary. A very successful
relationship developed between him and Vasdényey.
11
Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL): 3.1.9. V-21680. 12. Statement by
Sándor Bródy.
12
Samu Stern, Versenyfutás az idővel! – A Zsidó Tanács működése a német megszállás és a nyilas uralom
idején (A Race with Time! The Operation of the Jewish Council during the German Occupation
and under Arrow Cross Rule), in Mária Schmidt, Kollaboráció vagy kooperáció (Collaboration or
Cooperation) (Budapest: Minerva, 1990), 56–111.
13
‘My connection with Miklós Horthy Jr, through which I was able to help protect the Jews,
remained constant until the middle of October, and during my meetings, which were held in great
secrecy, I often made proposals to the Regent, through which I believe I effectively served the
interests of the persecuted Jews.’ ÁBTL 4.1. A-643/2. 36. Dr Ernő Péter’s note to the Lawyer
Certification Committee, 28 May 1945 (hereinafter: Dr Ernő Péter’s note).
14
ÁBTL 4.1. A-643/2. 43. Dr Ernő Péter’s note.
15
Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről, 184.
16
Hausner, Ítélet Jeruzsálemben, 212.
17
Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről, 184.
18
Lévai, Fekete könyv a magyar zsidóság szenvedéseiről, 184.
19
Franz Novak, an SS captain and member of the Jewish Affairs Department led by Eichmann.
He was responsible for organizing the rail transport necessary for the deportations, and led the SS
detachment that broke into the Kistarcsa internment camp.
20
Citing reminiscences of Vasdényey: Dr Ilona Benoschofsky, Emberrablás Kistarcsán. In Mementó –
Magyarország 1944 (Kidnapping in Kistarcsa: In Memento—Hungary 1944) (Budapest: Kossuth
Kiadó, 1975), 62–75.
21
Citing reminiscences of Mrs Hauer in Benoschofsky, Emberrablás Kistarcsán, 73. See also: Filep,
‘“…szabályosan »kiloptak« bennünket Magyarországról”’, 27.
22
ÁBTL 3.1.9. V-21680. 12. Statement by Sándor Bródy.
23
However, this did not end Eichmann’s role in Hungary. After the Arrow Cross coup led by Szálasi,
the deportation of forced labour groups to Germany began, based on Eichmann’s plans. Eichmann
assisted in the organization of this operation, in cooperation with the competent internal affairs and
national defence agencies. The routes along which the Jews were marched towards Germany on foot
were officially called the Eichmann, Fábián, and Ferenczy lines. ÁBTL. 4. 1. A-1125. 3–6. Summary
report on the activities of Adolf Eichmann and his associates in Hungary, 13 July 1960.
24
Hausner, Ítélet Jeruzsálemben, 214. For more on the Eichmann trial, see Hausner, Ítélet Jeruzsálemben,
192–229; Eichmann, 1999; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann Jeruzsálemben (Eichmann in Jerusalem)
(Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2000); Róbert Braun, Holocaust, elbeszélés, történelem (Holocaust, Narrative,
History) (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 1995), 160–204. Vasdényey himself testified several times about
Eichmann and the Kistarcsa deportation: ÁBTL 4.1. A-643/5. 69-70. Witness examination of István
Vasdényey; András Heltai, A budapesti menetrendszerkesztő—A halálvonatok összeállítója a bécsi bíróság előtt
(The Budapest Timetabler: The Arranger of the Death Trains before a Viennese Court), Magyarország,
44 (1964), 6–7; Jenő Lévai, ‘Ismét bíróság előtt a „halál váltóőre” – Megidézik-e a magyar tanúkat
Franz Novak főtárgyalására?’ (The ‘Death Watch’ Is in Court Again. Will Hungarian Witnesses Be
Summoned to Franz Novak’s Trial?), Magyar Nemzet (September 1966).
25
ÁBTL 3.1. 9. V-21680. 54. Résumé: Géza Tálas, ‘A koronatanú Pesten él’ (The Chief Witness Is
Living in Budapest), Magyarország, 46 (1964), 22.
26
Ákos György Bálint, Sziget a mérgezett tengerben – Szubjektív emlékezés egy vészterhes esztendőre (Island in
a Poisoned Sea: Subjective Recollections of a Year Fraught with Danger) (Budapest: Ügyvédi Kamara,
2013), 83.
27
ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-9698/6. 168. Minutes of the meeting of the Rehabilitation Committee, comprising
Dr Sándor Geller, Dr Ferenc Lossó, and Dr István Pozsonyi, 26 June 1963 (hereinafter: Minutes of
the Rehabilitation Committee).
28
ÁBTL V-82997/1. 48. Prisoners of war brought from the Soviet Union.
29
ÁBTL 3.1. 9. V-21680. 26. Letter from Widow Gáborné Vasdényey to Lieutenant General Gábor
Péter, 15 May 1951
30
ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-9698/6. 168. Minutes of the Rehabilitation Committee.
31
ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-9698/6. 168. Minutes of the Rehabilitation Committee. (My emphasis.)
32
I wish to thank Piroska Zsákai for this information.
33
Leon Kubowitzki was the head of the Rescue Department of the World Jewish Congress during
the war. In August 1944, in a petition supported by documentation, he requested that the United
States government bomb Auschwitz and the railroads leading there. His proposal was rejected on
strategic grounds.
34
German-language conversation between Joachim Fest and Hannah Arendt in 1964, www.
youtube.com/watch?v=jF_UvHhbZIA.

AN INTERNMENT CAMP COMMANDER’S STRUGGLE

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AN INTERNMENT CAMP COMMANDER’S STRUGGLE

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