Public Execution of Hungarian Nazi Prime Minister who Massacred 35,000 people: Szálasi JJ
August 1944, Budapest, Hungary. Hungarian Admiral Miklós Horthy removes the Nazi-friendly government that was installed in the preceding spring and begins considering strategies for surrendering to the Allied force he distrusts the most: the Red Army. Despite his reservations, Horthy decides the Soviets are a lesser evil than the Germans, and on 11 October, he and the Soviets finally agree on surrender terms. The Nazis, however, anticipated Horthy’s plans. On 15 October 1944, after Miklós Horthy announces the armistice in a nationwide radio address,
Hitler initiates Operation Panzerfaust, sending a commando led by Otto Skorzeny to Budapest with instructions to remove Horthy from power. At gunpoint Skorzeny’s men kidnap Horthy’s son, truss him up in a carpet and immediately drive him to the airport from where he is flown to Germany to be held as a hostage. Miklos Horthy is given a choice – either he withdraws the armistice and abdicates, or his son will be killed the next morning. Horthy complies and the Germans install a new Hungarian government under the fascist Arrow Cross Party which
resumes persecution of Jews and in under three months between November 1944 and January 1945, Arrow Cross death squads will murder approximately 38,000 Hungarian Jews. As many as 20,000 of them – both adults and children – will be shot along the banks of the Danube with their bodies being thrown into the river. The party’s leader is a fanatical right-wing nationalist and Nazi sympathizer who will pay for his crimes with his life. His name is Ferenc Szálasi. Ferenc Szálasi, one of 4 sons of a soldier, was born on 6 January 1897 in Kassa, today’s
Slovak Košice, then part of Austria-Hungary. Young Ferenc finished elementary studies in his birthplace and then followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the army. The First World War began on 28 July 1914. Szálasi finished his military education in 1915 and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I becoming an officer. For his service, he was honoured with the Third Class of the Order of the Iron Crown which was one of the highest orders of merit in the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary.
Hungary had been on the losing side of World War I, which ended on 11 November 1918. On 4 June 1920 Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon which reduced the country’s territory by 72%. In addition, Hungary lost its sea access, half of its 10 biggest cities and all of its precious metal mines. The post-1920 Hungary had a population of 7.6 million, 36% compared to the pre-war kingdom’s population of 20.9 million, and 3,425,000 ethnic Hungarians found themselves separated from their motherland.
In June 1919, Admiral Miklós Horthy, who had been an officer in the Austro-Hungarian navy, came to power as the head of a conservative-nationalist coalition. Horthy presided for the next 24 years over an authoritarian, almost feudal system of aristocratic rule, which nevertheless had a functioning parliament and permitted political opposition. During this time, Ferenc Szálasi became fascinated with politics and often lectured on Hungary’s political affairs. Szálasi was a fanatical right-wing nationalist and advocated for the expansion of Hungary’s territory back
to the borders of Greater Hungary as it was prior to the aforementioned Treaty of Trianon. In 1930 Szálasi joined an extreme right-wing, secret organization called Hungarian Life League. The organization’s purpose was to protect what its members deemed as the superior race, which, in Szálasi’s view, included the Hungarians and Germans. During the 1930s Szalasi wrote several pamphlets describing his ideology, which borrowed ideas from the Italian Fascist movement and the German Nazi Party. Szalasi played a leading role in several extreme right-wing parties,
such as the Nation’s Will Party, which combined nationalism, the promotion of agriculture, anti-capitalism, anti-communism and a special type of anti-Semitism, called a-Semitism, which called for a society which should be completely absent of Jews. He argued that a-Semitism was not opposed to the existence of Jews per se, instead, it regarded their existence as being incompatible with European society. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Szálasi’s followers became more radical in their
political activities, and Szálasi was arrested and imprisoned by the Hungarian Police. However, even while in prison Szálasi managed to remain a powerful political figure, and was proclaimed leader of a coalition of several right-wing groups named the National Socialist Arrow Cross Party – which was officially founded on 15 March 1939. The party attracted a large number of followers, and in Parliamentary elections that were held on 28 and 29 May 1939, it won 15% of the vote and 29 seats in the Hungarian Parliament, thus becoming one of the most powerful parties in Hungary.
Meanwhile, as Germany began to redraw national boundaries in Europe, Hungary, with German and Italian help, was able to regain territory. Before the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, this territory included southern Slovakia from Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Subcarpathian Rus from dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1939. After the war started, the regained territory included northern Transylvania from Romania in 1940 and the Bačka region from dismembered Yugoslavia, which was attacked in April 1941. In November 1940, Hungary joined the Axis alliance
which was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. In June 1941 Hungarian troops participated alongside German troops in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany and many Hungarian politicians called for more radical steps to be taken in “solving the Jewish Question.” According to a 1941 census, Hungary, including the recently annexed territories, had a Jewish population of 825,000, less than 6 percent of the total population.
The Hungarian racial laws were modelled on Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. These defined “Jews” in so-called racial terms, forbade intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, and excluded Jews from full participation in various professions. The laws also barred employment of Jews in the civil service and restricted their opportunities in economic life. It was in the summer of 1941 when Hungarian authorities deported some 20,000 Jews, most of whom resided in Subcarpathian Rus and none of whom had been able to obtain
Hungarian citizenship. These Jews were deported to Kamenets-Podolski in the German-occupied Ukraine, where they were shot by detachments of Einsatzgruppe, which were Nazi mobile death squads. In January 1942, Hungarian military units murdered 3,000 Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad, the major city in the part of Yugoslavia annexed by Hungary.However, in 1942 when the German government began to pressure the Hungarians to deliver Jews who were Hungarian citizens into German custody, Horthy’s prime minister, Miklós Kállay, despite
significant pressure from the domestic radical right, refused to deport the Hungarian Jews. After the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Hungarian Admiral Miklos Horthy and Prime Minister Miklós Kállay recognized that Germany would likely lose the war. With Horthy’s tacit approval, Kallay tried to negotiate a separate armistice for Hungary with the western Allies. To prevent these efforts, on March 19, 1944 German forces began the military occupation of Hungary. By this time, about 63,000 Jews living in Hungary died or were killed. During
the German occupation, Horthy was permitted to remain as Regent but Kallay was dismissed. The Germans installed the prime minister General Döme Sztójay who had previously served as Hungarian minister to Berlin and was fanatically pro-German. He quickly legalised the Arrow Cross, which was banned by the Horthy leadership on the outbreak of World War II, and committed Hungary to continuing the war effort. In addition, Sztójay cooperated with the Germans in their efforts to deport the Hungarian Jews.
In April 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered Hungarian Jews living outside Budapest – roughly 500,000 – to concentrate in certain cities, usually regional government seats. During 8 weeks from the 15th of May to July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials whose members were closely linked to the antisemitic Arrow Cross, under the guidance of German SS officials, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where, upon arrival and after selection, SS functionaries killed the majority of them in gas chambers. By
the end of July 1944, the only Jewish community left in Hungary was that of Budapest, the capital. In light of the worsening military situation and facing threats from Allied leaders of war crimes trials, Miklos Horthy ordered a halt to the deportations on 7 July 1944. In August, he dismissed the Sztojay government and resumed efforts to reach an armistice, this time with the Soviet Union whose army was on Hungary’s borders. By mid-October 1944 Horthy had begun final negotiations with Red Army commanders. However,
when the Germans learned of the Regent’s plan to come to a separate peace with the Soviets and exit the Axis alliance, they kidnapped Horthy’s son, Miklós, Jr. and threatened to kill him unless Horthy abdicated in favor of Ferenc Szálasi. Horthy complied and the Germans installed a new Hungarian government under Ferenc Szálasi who had returned to politics after he had been freed due to a general amnesty resulting from the Second Vienna Award in 1940. When World War II began, the Arrow Cross Party was officially banned by Prime Minister Pál Teleki,
thus forcing Szálasi to operate in secret. During this period, Szálasi gained the support and backing of the Germans, who had previously been opposed to Szálasi because his Hungarist nationalism placed Hungarian territorial claims above those of Germany. A Nazi-backed puppet government of Hungary was named the Government of National Unity and was established on 16 October 1944. On 4 November, Szálasi was sworn as Leader of the Nation and he formed a government of sixteen ministers, half of which were members of the
Arrow Cross Party. Government newspapers kept referring to the country as the Kingdom of Hungary. Szálasi and his government had little other intention or ability but to execute the party’s ideology and to maintain control in Nazi-occupied portions of Hungary as the Soviet Union invaded. Under his rule Arrow Cross gangs perpetrated a reign of arbitrary terror against the Jews of Budapest. Hundreds of Jews, both men and women, were violently murdered. Many others died from the brutal conditions of forced labor to which the Arrow Cross subjected them.
In November 1944, the Arrow Cross regime ordered the remaining Jews of Budapest into a ghetto which, covering an area of 0.1 square miles, held nearly 70,000 people. During November and December 1944, several thousand Budapest Jews were marched on foot under Hungarian guard to the Austrian border. Many who were too weak to continue marching in the bitter cold were shot along the way. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took as many as 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto, shot them along the banks of the Danube, and threw their bodies into
the river. During these mass murders, they shot people in the head, with the bodies falling into the river. To save bullets, their favorite method was to tie the waists of three people together with wire and shoot only the middle person, who would fall forward into the river drowning the other two as the weight of the corpse dragged them to the bottom of the Danube. Holocaust survivor Zsuzsanna Ozsváth later recalled: “ I saw two Arrow Cross men standing on the embankment of the river, aiming at and shooting a group of men, women and children into the Danube – one after the
other, on their coats the Yellow Star. I looked at the Danube. It was neither blue nor gray but red.” During the days of horror in the winter of 1944-1945, the Danube was known as “the Jewish Cemetery.” Jews were often rounded up on the streets by the Arrow Cross men, and their standard procedure was to take children away from their parents, then killing or beating any parent or child who protested. Ferenc Joksa, the Christian employee of the Jewish nursing home at Alma-street told in
detail what happened when The Arrow Cross appeared in the Dániel Bíró hospital at 11 o’clock in the forenoon of Sunday, on the 14th of January. He said:” The Arrow Cross gave the order that anyone who can walk should get out of bed and get dressed. These people were sent in smaller groups down to the hospital’s courtyard and they were shot with submachine guns in the back of their head and their back. Some were sent into the coal chamber and were shot down there. When the ambulant patients and the Jewish employees have all been lying in the courtyard,
the Arrow Cross comrades continued to work in the wards. They were walking from room to room and were done away with everybody. Old people, seriously ill people, and small children were equally shot dead. The dead bodies of two little boys were found later on their mother, embracing her. All together 130 people died here in two hours.” Joksa continued and recalled what followed on 19 January in the Jewish nursing home where he worked. Joksa told the very old residents of the institute – hardly any of them were younger than
71 years old – that, who can go, go wherever he or she can. Shells were falling the entire day and the poor old people did not dare to leave. In spite of that four of them decided to go, and they escaped. However, the seventy other people waited shivering. The green-shirted comrades from the Arrow Cross appeared between 7 and 8 o’clock in the evening. They declared that the patients should be transported off. They separated the men and women. They led the women down into the Városmajor park, and they made them stand in triple rows on the Szamos
street side. They took down those who could not walk in sedan chair and put them down in lines onto the ground. Then the submachine guns rang out. Not even a minute had passed and 70 old people deemed “dangerous to society” fell in the snow. Some of them were only wounded and they were pleading to do away with them completely. Their hangmen threw 3 hand grenades between them but only one of them exploded and their clothing caught fire from it. The fire and the frost then completed the work of executioners.
Ferenc Szálasi did not object to these killings but became concerned about the impression that neutral diplomats were forming of his government and ordered that the killings be undertaken with more discretion. The country’s national police commissioner Pál Hódosy said: “The problem is not that the Jews are being murdered. The trouble is the method. The bodies must be made to disappear, not put out on the streets.” During that time the Jews were aided by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and other
foreign diplomats who organized false papers and safe houses for them. These actions saved tens of thousands of Jews. The Germans argued these protective passports were not valid according to international law, but Szálasi’s government accepted them nevertheless. Szálasi’s government also promoted martial law and courts-martial and executed those who were considered dangerous for the state and the continuation of the war. In total, between 65 000 and 70 000 Budapest Jews perished in the death
marches, in the inhuman conditions of the ghetto, and in the executions during the short rule of the Arrow Cross Party. Some 255,000 Jews, less than one-third of those who had lived within enlarged Hungary in March 1944, survived the Holocaust. Under Szálasi’s government, the Hungarian tangible assets such as cattle, machinery, wagons and industrial raw materials were sent to Germany and he conscripted young and old into the remaining Hungarian Army sending them into hopeless battles with the Red Army.
Szálasi’s rule only lasted 163 days, partly because by the time he took power, the Red Army was already deep inside Hungary. For all intents and purposes, his authority was limited to a narrowing band in the centre of the country, including Budapest. On 19 November 1944, Szálasi was in the Hungarian capital when Soviet and Romanian forces began encircling it. By the time the city was encircled and the 102-day Siege of Budapest began, he was gone. On 9 December Szálasi fled to the Hungarian city of Szombathely and by March 1945,
he was in Austrian Vienna just prior to the Vienna Offensive. On 29 April 1945, on the wedding day of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, he married Gizella Lutz with whom he had been engaged since 1927. On 6 May, he was captured by American troops in the Austrian town of Mattsee. The Arrow Cross Party’s cabinet, which had fled Hungary, was dissolved on 7 May 1945, a day before Germany’s surrender and arrested Szálasi returned to Hungary on 3 October. Justice finally caught up with Szálasi when from 5 February 1946 he was tried in open sessions by
the People’s Tribunal in Budapest. On 1 March 1946 the tribunal found Szálasi guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and high treason, and sentenced him to death. Szálasi was hanged on 12 March 1946 in Markó Prison in Budapest, along with the party ideologist and propagandist József Gera and two of his former ministers, Gábor Vajna – the minister of interior, and Károly Beregfy minister of defence. Four men were marched to the gallows to be hanged one by one and their public execution became
a theater of horror. There was a large crowd of onlookers present. Some of the bystanders were in military uniforms and some had cameras. Before being executed at 3:24 PM, Szálasi had received the last sacraments by a Catholic priest and kissed crucifix. The 4 men were hanged without waiting for their pardon applications to be considered. The hanging was conducted in the Austrian pole method. A large timber was sunk vertically into the ground and a rope was attached to a hook at the top. The 49-year-old Szálasi was
marched up steps, placed with his back to the post, his legs and arms tied. An executioner – First Lieutenant János Bogár – climbed a ladder behind the post, put the noose around Szálasi’s neck and tightened the rope. The steps were removed. However, with the post only leaving a couple feet between Szálasi and the ground it is likely that he died slowly due to strangulation rather than being instantaneously rendered unconscious and dying shortly after as would happen when utilizing the standard drop. This would also explain
why his arms and legs were bound as to prevent struggling during the process. Afterward, cloths were placed to cover the heads of Szálasi and the others. Their shirts were opened and the doctor checked for a heartbeat. Several photos of the execution show bystanders craning to get a good look of a man whose death squads murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Szálasi’s mother Erzsébet was the Greek Catholic who provided religious education to her sons. Ferenc Szálasi once said ” I was nurtured with belief and faith in God,
as if it was passed to me through my mother’s milk”. Yet one can only wonder how Ferenc Szálasi’s claimed faith in God could coexist with the murder of 70,000 Jews under his rule. There were no tears shed for Ferenc Szálasi. thanks for watching the World History Channel be sure to like And subscribe and click the Bell notification icon so you don’t miss our next episodes we thank you and we’ll see you next time on the channel