Masquerade by Tivadar Soros

Author:Tivadar Soros
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2011-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

False Dawn

In August 1944 things at last began to assume the shape I had been waiting for so impatiently. German military failures began to have an effect on the politics of the satellite countries. The Allies launched massively effective bombing raids that destroyed numbers of major military bases in Germany, and their invasion of France pushed forward into territory formerly occupied by the enemy. In the east, the steady advance of the Soviet Union forced Romania into negotiations on a ceasefire.

On August 18, the King of Romania accepted the conditions of an armistice that included an agreement to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina, formerly Romanian territory, to the Soviets. In return, Romania received Transylvania, previously a southeastern province of Hungary. A further condition was that the Romanian army would now have to fight alongside the Russian army. The terms of this armistice were in fact the first step in what was to become Russia’s new colonialism in Eastern Europe.

These developments had a profound effect on Hungary’s national and international position and the government had to institute some pretty drastic changes. First, in early August Prime Minister Döme Sztójay fired three ministers from his administration – Imrédy, Jaross and Kunder – who were more Nazi even than Sztójay himself.

On August 18 the police beat back a demonstration in support of German Nazism. The Germans did their best to put a brake on the ‘historical wheel of progress’ and summoned Admiral Horthy to Germany.

On August 23, Horthy met with the Nazi foreign minister, Ribbentrop, who agreed to reduce German interference in Hungarian internal affairs. But at the same time Horthy had to declare that the Hungarian army would continue to fight alongside the Germans. Then at the end of August Horthy forced Sztójay out of office and replaced him with General Géza Lakatos.

All these events made it clear – even to the politically unsophisticated – that important changes were in the making in Hungary. By September the wildest rumors were flying all over Budapest – particularly the story that Hungary was about to break with the Axis powers. It was said that Admiral Horthy’s wife and son were the chief disseminators of this sensational news, an assumption supported by the story that she was part-Jewish and her son had Jewish friends. Another rumor had it that Hitler had ‘invited’ Horthy to Germany and Horthy had refused to go. In a state of high excitement we listened to one piece of news after another and, amid much discussion, waited for at least one of these stories actually to come true.

But the fate of the Hungarian Jews was already largely sealed. Except for the Jews of Budapest, the others, from the provinces, had already been deported, even those living in the suburbs of the city, like Újpest and Kispest. If things were now to move in a more favorable direction, those left in Budapest – perhaps 100,000 or 120,000 – stood a chance of being saved.

As autumn advanced amid the mild glow of an Indian summer, the sunshine seemed to symbolize our own myriad rays of hope.

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