Jews in Ukraine: Starved, Abused, Deported and Finally Massacred

As opposed to the European Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis, the majority of Hungarian Jews were not in life danger until the spring of 1944. Nevertheless, between 1941 and 1944 Hungarian Jewry suffered losses that can be measured in the tens of thousands.

The Hungarian government, which stepped onto the path of institutionalised antisemitism by creating consecutive anti-Jewish Laws from 1938, was utterly frustrated by the fact that due to the successful re-annexations hundreds of thousands of Jews came under Hungarian rule. In addition, between 1939 and 1941 approximately 10,000-20,000 Jews escaped to Hungary from the Czech territories, Poland, Austria, Germany and Slovakia. Some were in hiding using false papers; others were either under surveillance or were locked up in internment camps by the competent internal authority, the National Central Authority for Controlling Foreigners (Külföldieket Ellenőrző Országos Központi Hatóság - KEOKH). Though the number of Jewish refugees was not significant, their presence undoubtedly strengthened the existing antisemitic tendencies of the administrative apparatus.

The new Hungarian authorities of Carpatho-Ruthenia, which was occupied in 1939, were bothered by more than one element of the presence of the Jews: they outnumbered the Hungarians; a large part of the community consisted of the conservative, religious, orthodox Jews despised by the new rulers; and there were many foreign refugees among them. The thought of deporting the poor, rural Jewry occurred to the government commissioner of Carpatho-Ruthenia, Miklós Kozma, already in the fall of 1940.[1] In the winter of 1940-1941 in the framework of arbitrary "cleaning" actions, Jewish families were driven across the Soviet and Romanian borders at some places by the Hungarian civilian and military authorities.[2] The next spring Hungarian authorities expelled plenty of Serb inhabitants from the re-annexed Délvidék (Southern Provinces), since they considered them hostile. Meanwhile Kozma carried on planning to deport the rural Jews.