Hungary’s current status as European outlier is hardly new, as becomes clear from Adam LeBor’s brilliant new book, which centres on the siege and destruction of Budapest during the last year of the second World War. Hungary had been allied with the Axis powers but did not participate fully in the war. It became the Casablanca of central Europe, where fascists and communists, Jews and anti-Semites, spies and agents of all kinds sat at adjacent tables in Budapest’s still beautiful grand cafes.
This was all to change on March 19th, 1944, when the Wehrmacht entered Budapest. Hitler had become alarmed that Hungary’s autocratic leader Admiral Horthy would try to do a deal with the Allies. Hungary had introduced some of the earliest and most extreme anti-Semitic laws in Europe, but had stopped just short of genocide. There were roughly 800,000 Jews in Hungary, with many refugees from neighbouring countries. The Germans sent in a Sonderkommando under the command of Adolf Eichmann. Starting on May 15th, he managed to send 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz in six weeks, before the Hungarians stopped the deportations.
However, by the end of the year the Red Army had encircled Budapest, and the siege began on December 26th. As Hungarian and German army units fought the Soviets, the fascist Arrow Cross Party had seized control of the government and now roamed the streets, murdering any Jews they could find. Thousands were shot on the banks of the Danube, their bodies thrown into the water.
As LeBor documents, many brave Hungarians and others, such as the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, tried to save them, with some success. There was fierce fighting in the streets, around the famous bridges and in the sewers. People were reduced to hacking up the frozen corpses of horses for food. By the end of the siege 50 days later, tens of thousands of civilians had died, either murdered or from starvation, most of the city was in ruins, and Stalin’s agents were already at work.
Reviews in brief: How the ‘other’ lives and writes, high-school satire and self-destructive undergrads
The Amergin Step: An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh by Paddy Bushe
The Last Days of Budapest by Adam LeBor: Examining the destruction in second World War’s final year
Silent Catastrophes by WG Sebald review: Hope may be the thing just seems miserable
Drawing on newly discovered documents, diaries and memoirs, and interviews with survivors, LeBor creates a compelling story of one of the least remembered episodes of recent European history.
Michael O’Loughlin’s most recent book is Liberty Hall (New Island).
