The porter was puzzled, and frightened. ‘The Jewish Council members,’ snapped Eichmann, ‘where are they?’
Takács protested, ‘I was told to get them here for nine o’clock in the morning.’ Eichmann flew into a fury. Takács pleaded that his command of German was not too good; he must have misunderstood his instructions on the phone. Hearing the raised voices, Takács’s sister emerged from their living quarters to see what was going on. Eichmann drew his service revolver and threatened to shoot both Takács and his sister if the Jewish Council members were not assembled immediately.
The terrified Takács protested that this was not possible. The members had all dispersed to their various houses. It might be possible to find a few, but to round them all up under the prevailing conditions would take all night. Eichmann continued to rage. One of his two colleagues beat Takács repeatedly on the head and shoulders with his pistol butt, leaving him semi-conscious on the floor. Turning to the porter’s sister, Eichmann snapped, ‘Tell your brother when he comes round that if the entire council is not here at nine in the morning, lined up for inspection, I will keep my word and have both of you shot.’
The next morning, well before nine, the Jewish Council members assembled fearfully. The sight of Takács’s heavily bandaged head and his sister’s terrified demeanour gave them some idea of what they might expect. But Eichmann never turned up. As the council’s diary entry for 23 December records, ‘An hour or two, full of anxiety, passed and at last it was learned that the Eichmann detachment had left Budapest most urgently during the night.’
The reason for Eichmann’s sudden departure was a swift Soviet thrust late the previous night on the north-western outskirts of the city. Receiving word at the Hotel Majestic after midnight that there was now only one narrow and fast-closing gap through which to escape, Eichmann pulled out in a panic in the small hours of the morning.
So ended Eichmann’s personal crusade to ensure the destruction of every last Jew in Hungary. But the Jews of Budapest were by no means out of danger; there was still the Arrow Cross and the German Army.
Compared with Eichmann’s methods, those of the Arrow Cross were haphazard and uncoordinated, but they made up in ferocious enthusiasm what they lacked in efficiency. In the final two months of the siege of Budapest they were to murder between ten thousand and fifteen thousand Jews, whom they dragged out of their houses in both ghettos or simply picked up in the streets. Some were hanged from trees and lamp-posts; most were taken to the cellars of the various party houses, where they were horribly tortured before being dragged down to the Danube and shot so that their bodies would be carried away by the river.
The standard Arrow Cross method for such executions was to handcuff the Jews together in threes, strip them naked, line them up facing the river, then shoot the middle of the three in the back of the head. He would drag the other two with him when he fell forward into the river. The Arrow Cross men would then amuse themselves by taking pot-shots at the desperately bobbing heads of the two survivors. This method avoided littering the streets with rotting corpses and also provided some ‘sport’ for the Arrow Cross killers. The local party headquarters would vie with each other in savagery; one party house was especially notorious for its practice of burning out the eyes of its victims with red-hot nails before taking them for execution.
A particularly active ‘Death Brigade’ was commanded by a Minorite monk named Father Andras Kun. When he led his band of gunmen through the streets he wore the cowl and cassock of his order, with a rope and a gunbelt at his waist, and sported a death’s-head arm-band. He was personally credited with at least five hundred murders. In one night alone, he and his men slaughtered two hundred Jews, invoking the name of the Saviour as they did so. At Father Kun’s trial before a People’s Court after the liberation, a witness described how, in conducting a mass execution of staff and patients at a Jewish hospital in Buda, Kun had lined up his victims in front of a mass grave and given the firing-squad the order ‘In the holy name of Jesus Christ, fire!’
Some of the most notorious Arrow Cross killers were women. A Mrs Vilmos Salzer, described as a woman of ‘good’ family and superior education, used to wear a grey riding-habit and brown boots as she went about her murderous business clutching a riding crop and a Thompson sub-machine gun. One of her milder forms of entertainment was to burn the most sensitive parts of her female victims’ bodies with a candle flame before killing them. She and Father Kun were among many Arrow Cross Death Brigade leaders to be hanged after trial by People’s Courts.
One of the Death Brigades’ countless victims was the Zionist leader Ottó Komoly, who had worked closely with Wallenberg and Lászlo Szamosi. His International Red Cross and Spanish embassy credentials failed to stop him being dragged away to his death on New Year’s Eve. Indeed, under the anarchic and totally lawless conditions which then prevailed it was extremely dangerous even for a genuine Gentile or a bona fide foreign diplomat to be out on the streets. The Death Brigades would frequently disregard legitimate identification papers, and if they felt any doubt about the genuineness of a male suspect’s papers, he would be made to display his genitals; for those who were circumcised it meant certain death.
The Death Brigades did not operate entirely without interference. A small band of Aryan-looking young Jews belonging to the underground Hashomer Hatzair organization and equipped with Arrow Cross outfits and forged party cards did manage on a few occasions to liberate groups of Jewish captives. Above all, there was the ubiquitous Wallenberg.
By the end of 1944, with Minister Danielsson’s approval, Wallenberg had moved across the river to Pest, the eastern half of the twin city, where the two ghettos were located. Whatever semblance of authority had existed there before had almost completely disintegrated by now. The government had fled, leaving Pest in the uncertain control of the Arrow Cross Party, the police, and the Wehrmacht. Wallenberg began immediately to hunt for sympathetic or bribable contacts among the Arrow Cross and the police, and again his luck and resourcefulness held. At police headquarters he met Pál Szalay, a high-ranking Arrow Cross man who, as a senior police officer, acted as liaison officer between the party and the police. Szalay was quickly to become an invaluable if unlikely ally.*
His motives were almost certainly more than mere self-preservation, for although Wallenberg undoubtedly made the initial contact by use of his well-tried stick-and-carrot technique, it seems that a close relationship of mutual confidence and respect rapidly developed. Szalay admired Wallenberg’s courage. There is also reason to believe that, although an ideological anti-Semite, he was genuinely horrified by the atrocities committed by his fellow party-members.
At Szalay’s suggestion, Wallenberg took up residence at the abandoned apartment of the authoress Magda Gábor, the flat where he had had his meetings with the Baroness Kemény. Szalay posted two of his most trusted plainclothes policemen there; for the first time, Wallenberg had a round-the-clock bodyguard. At Wallenberg’s suggestion, Szalay detailed 100 policemen to the General Ghetto to deter Arrow Cross incursions. When a ‘protected’ house in Revai Street was attacked on New Year’s Day, Wallenberg rushed to the scene with an armed escort provided by Szalay and arrived in time to save the eighty Jewish occupants from certain death.
He was not always in time, though. The same week, another protected house in Legrady Karoly Street was raided and, by the time Wallenberg got to the scene, forty ‘Swedish’ Jews had been dragged out and murdered. On 8 January, 180 men, women, and children were dragged from another protected house in Jokai Street and slaughtered on the riverbank.
After this atrocity Wallenberg appealed to Szalay to find the men to post permanent and substantial guards on all the houses of the International Ghetto. With the help of money bribes – for Wallenberg still had seemingly inexhaustible amounts of cash on hand – and the promise of Swedish protection after the inevitable fall of Budapest, Szalay managed to round up enough men to do the job adequately. After 8 January there were
no more successful attacks on protected houses. Wallenberg felt so indebted to Szalay that – as Szalay was to recall later – he told him, ‘After the war I want to take you to Sweden with me to meet the King.’
In the midst of all this, Wallenberg had been fighting another battle. On 2 January Dr Erno Vajna, a brother of the interior minister and ‘The Representative of the Arrow Cross Party for Defending Budapest,’ had issued an ominous decree. Within three days all the Jews of the International Ghetto were to be transferred on foot to the General Ghetto. Although Wallenberg did not know the reason for this move, he could make a guess. He quickly drafted a protest note to the general officer commanding the German garrison. Wallenberg pointed out that within three days – the date of the proposed transfer – the 75,000 Jews of the General Ghetto would be starving. The individual daily ration was 690 calories a day – by comparison with 1500 calories for the inmates of Hungarian prisons – and ‘it is impossible for the Jews to obtain more food by their own efforts as they are not permitted to leave the ghetto.’* For the 35,000 Jews of the International Ghetto, Wallenberg wrote, the position was similar. He added: ‘It would be absolutely impossible for them to taken even the minutest quantity of food with them on such a foot march. For humane reasons, this plan must be described as utterly crazy and inhuman.’
The next day Wallenberg followed up his written protest with a personal visit to Wehrmacht headquarters at the Astoria Hotel. There, he demanded, and got, an interview with the town major, whom he pointedly reminded that Sweden was still protecting German interests in many countries. He added that his country could only carry out its obligations as a protective power ‘if given the necessary support by the responsible German and Hungarian authorities.’ Therefore he demanded an end to the proposed removal of Swedish-protected persons and ‘full extraterritorial status and full protection’ guaranteed to those sheltering under the Swedish flag.
On 4 January 1945, despite these audacious efforts, the protected Jews were told to stand by to move out at an hour’s notice. The next day five thousand of them were transferred to the desperately overcrowded and underfed General Ghetto. The situation appeared hopeless, but Wallenberg was not about to admit defeat. He went directly to Erno Vajna to offer a deal: food in return for a cancellation of the transfer. Wallenberg knew that by now the Arrow Cross were also going hungry, and he had larger food stocks hidden away than he had admitted even to some of his closest associates. With this to barter – plus the offer of Swedish protective passes to Vajna and his associates for use when the Russians arrived – Wallenberg was able to strike a bargain.
A letter from Wallenberg to Vajna, dated 6 January, tells its own story: ‘I would like to take the opportunity of informing you that I have acquainted His Excellency the Swedish minister with your very friendly remarks concerning Sweden. His Excellency has asked me to voice his deepest gratitude and would like to assure you that the Swedish legation will do everything in its power during these difficult days, as well as in the future, to help the needy and war-afflicted people of Hungary.’ Wallenberg had learned well, among all his other lessons, the diplomatic uses of unctuous language.
The letter went on to confirm that ‘those stocks of food not required for consumption during the next few days’ would be handed over by house wardens to the police. In return the transfers to the General Ghetto would cease and Arrow Cross headquarters would be officially instructed that in the future, Jewish officials in the International Ghetto would be free to move about. Furthermore, ‘party authorities are in the future to accord greater respect to those buildings belonging to the legation.’
To prevent the transfer, Wallenberg had taken a gamble on the Russians reaching the International Ghetto before the now seriously depleted food stocks gave out altogether. It was a race against time.
It was about this time that Wallenberg and Per Anger met for the last time. In his memoirs, Anger recalls that Wallenberg came on a short visit to legation headquarters on the western side of the Danube:
I urgently asked him to discontinue his activities and stay with us on the Buda side of the Danube. The Arrow Cross were obviously after him and he took great risks by continuing his rescue activities. However, Wallenberg refused to listen.
While bombs were exploding all around us, we set out on a visit to SS headquarters, where, among other things, I was to request some kind of shelter for the embassy members. We had to stop the car repeatedly because the road was blocked with dead people, horses, burnt-out trucks, and débris from bombed houses. But danger did not stop Wallenberg. I asked him whether he was afraid. ‘It is frightening at times,’ he said, ‘but I have no choice. I have taken upon myself this mission and I would never be able to return to Stockholm without knowing that I’ve done everything that stands in a man’s power to rescue as many Jews as possible.’ During the conversation with the SS general [Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewsky], Wallenberg tried to obtain guarantees that the Jews in the Swedish houses would not be liquidated at the last minute. As usual, Wallenberg presented his errand skilfully and intelligently. The SS general listened sceptically but could hardly hide the fact that he was impressed by Wallenberg’s behaviour. I particularly recall that part of the discussion when the German suddenly put the somewhat unexpected question to Wallenberg: ‘Sie kennen Gyula Dessewffy sehr gut? Er hat sich übrigens in Ihrem Haus versteckt!’ (You know G. D. very well? As a matter of fact, he is hiding in your house!)* Dessewffy was a Hungarian aristocrat and journalist who had gone underground at the time of the German invasion. He was at that time active in the Hungarian resistance movement and the Germans were frantically looking for him.
In the second week of January 1945 Wallenberg’s private intelligence service brought him word that Eichmann’s plan for the total massacre of the General Ghetto was soon to be carried out. One of Szalay’s men told him that the massacre would be done by a combined task force of five hundred Waffen SS men and an unspecified number of Arrow Cross men led by one Father Vilmos Lucska, while a force of two hundred policemen were to ring the ghetto fence to make sure that no fleeing Jews escaped the carnage.
Wallenberg hurried to see Vajna, taking Szalay with him for protection. With the usual threats and promises, Wallenberg demanded that ‘this monstrous plan’ be cancelled. But it seemed that Vajna no longer cared, even about saving his own skin. He readily admitted that he knew all about the planned operation, and that, in fact, he would be playing ‘an administrative part in it.’ He would do nothing to stop it.
There was now only one man, General August Schmidthuber, who could stop the massacre. The general was the overall commander of the SS troops and one of his detachments would spearhead the killer Kommando. For Wallenberg it was too risky to see Schmidthuber in person: the SS had begun hunting for the Swedish diplomat, and the message he wished to convey to Schmidthuber would brand him as a dangerous witness whom it would be only prudent to kill. Szalay, who volunteered to go as Wallenberg’s representative, took to Schmidthuber a message to the effect that, if the massacre took place, Wallenberg would see to it that Schmidthuber was held personally responsible and hanged as a war criminal later.
With the Russian advance guard now no more than a couple of hundred yards from the ghetto and inching forward constantly, the massacre had to be carried out quickly, if at all. There would be no time to find Wallenberg and silence him first. In a fury of indecision, Schmidthuber paced up and down his command headquarters. Finally his nerve broke. He picked up his telephone and ordered that on no account was the ghetto action to take place. Wallenberg had won his last victory.
When the Russians entered the General Ghetto two days later they found 69,000 Jews alive there. In the International Ghetto they were to find 25,000 survivors, and later on, when they captured the Buda side of the twin city, another 25,000 or so Jews emerged from their hiding places in Gentile homes, in monasteries, convents, and church cellars. In all some 120,000 had survived the Final Solution – the only su
bstantial Jewish community left in Europe.
In the view of Per Anger, Wallenberg’s closest colleague, Wallenberg must take the credit for the deliverance of the Jews in the General Ghetto as well as those in the International Ghetto. ‘He was the only foreign diplomat to stay behind in Pest, with the sole purpose of protecting these people. And he succeeded beyond all expectations. If you add them all up, 100,000 or more people owed their lives to him.’
Chapter 11
During those last desperate weeks in Budapest Wallenberg had been thinking about more than saving lives. He had also found time to ponder on the post-war future of Hungary and its decimated Jewish community. As far back as the beginning of November 1944 he had set up a small department of his C Section, under a brilliant young Jewish economist named Rezsö Müller, with a brief to work out a detailed social and economic relief plan to be put into effect after the Nazi defeat.
Wallenberg had even rented additional office space so that Müller’s unit could work undisturbed and in privacy. He had told Müller there would be substantial sums of money available to put the plan into effect, through the War Refugee Board and the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Müller and his small staff went to work enthusiastically and produced a lengthy document, to which Wallenberg put some finishing touches. In an introductory text, he demonstrated again his special brand of practical idealism, plus more than a little political naïveté.
It was, he stressed, ‘a plan which will help its participants to help themselves in a co-operative way.’ Wallenberg was lavish in his praise of Müller and his planning staff. ‘I have come to know my collaborators during the most testing times. I picked them for their qualities of compassion, honesty, and initiative.’ Wallenberg explained that in carrying out the plan ‘we propose to use the swiftest avenues open to private initiative. We are, of course, willing to accept governmental assistance and to act in harness with the authorities, providing it will not lead to delay in affording assistance to those who need it.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 13