How It Happened by Ernő Munkácsi

Author:Ernő Munkácsi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

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History knows decisive turns, which describe a graph line rising and falling, suddenly forcing the train of events in a new direction. This phenomenon is replicated in the structure of drama, the poetic form of history, in which momentous dramatic turns highlight the propelling force of progress as it blazes a new path. In the tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, such a turn came about with the disclosure of the Auschwitz Protocols, which dispelled the gullible and culpable optimism that had dulled the minds of the vast majority of Jews on the one hand and, on the other hand, stirred up the conscience of certain Christian leaders and revealed where their policies had led. All of a sudden it became obvious that the fate of Hungarian Jewry – one of extermination – was inseparable from the demise of the Hungarian nation. By then, and especially after the Western landings,20 everybody with a little common sense had no doubt that the war had been lost. The events bore out the prophecy the Jews of Hungary had expressed in their remonstrations against the anti-Jewish laws to the National Assembly: “Our ruin is tantamount to the downfall of the entire country!” For the first time, the Auschwitz Protocols revealed to the clerical and lay elite of the country that hundreds of thousands of Jews, all of them Hungarian citizens, were being driven straight into annihilation. People had to wake up with a start and realize that everything would soon have to be answered for. Those who then took action to halt the deportations did not do so to save the Jews, but to save themselves, their own positions of power, and the country entrusted to their leadership. Alas, it was all too late for the Jews in the provinces.

Copies of the Auschwitz Protocols began to be made at Síp Street in the greatest secrecy. At first, the document was handled “confidentially” in an effort “to prevent panic,” but it quickly reached wider audiences. It was translated into several languages for the embassies, including into Italian for the papal nuncio.21 Several people volunteered to deliver the Protocols to influential clergymen and lay figures, including Prince Primate Cardinal Serédi,22 Bishop Ravasz23 and, via two channels, Regent Horthy, who received copies through Miklós Horthy Jr and the would-be minister of justice of the Lakatos cabinet.24 The news elicited utter horror among the Jews and shocked all righteous Christians. Both groups realized that there was no other option, that the time for procrastination was over, and the historic moment had come to intervene. Neither side, however, had the strength to act. It was with the utmost trepidation that one understood how little, if anything, could be done in this terminal phase of the disease. Never before had we glimpsed the true depth of the abyss, to the brink of which we had been pushed by twenty-five years of antisemitism, the plague spread by the anti-Jewish laws, a shackled press, and everything that every Hungarian government from Gömbös to Sztójay stood for.

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