The Last Days of Budapest review: ‘intrigue, horror and heroism in the Casablanca of central Europe’

Adam LeBor describes wartime Budapest as “the Casablanca of central Europe”, in other words a hotbed of spies, Nazi agents and collaborators, as well as resistance cells and the courageous rescuers of Jews. In his new book, The Last Days of Budapest, he quotes newly revealed diaries and letters from a wide range of participants in that tragic episode of history, and shows what sets Hungary apart from other European nations during the Second World War.

The country was eager to remain neutral, but it was lured into Hitler’s orbit through his promises to give back territories it lost after the First World War. Payback came in 1941 when Hungary was obliged to fight alongside the Wehrmacht on the eastern front. As regards the “Jewish Question”, the Hungarian regent Miklos Horthy was an old-school European “soft antisemite”: no fan of the race in its Orthodox religious manifestation (mostly provincial), but with close friends among the capital’s assimilated Jewish elite. He had repeatedly rejected Hitler’s demands to deport Hungary’s Jews, numbering roughly three-quarters of a million, and by 1944 it was the last virtually intact Jewish population within the Nazis’ sphere of influence.

Hungarian regent Miklos Horthy had repeatedly rejected Hitler’s demands to deport Hungary’s Jews, and by 1944 it was the last virtually intact Jewish population within the Nazis’ sphere of influence

But the Hungarian government was known to be suing for a separate peace with the Allies, so in March 1944 the Germans swiftly occupied Hungary. Under Adolf Eichmann the persecutions began at once, and between May and July some 430,000 Jews were deported from the provinces, mainly to Auschwitz, where the majority were gassed on arrival. When at last the wavering Horthy halted the deportations, only the Jews of Budapest were left. Then, in October, Horthy was deposed and a puppet government installed, led by Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the rabidly antisemitic Arrow Cross Party. The Jews now entered a living hell. They were rounded up, ghettoised, with thousands murdered along the banks of the Danube.

LeBor relates some remarkable tales of rescue. There were, of course, the diplomats – for example the fearless Swede Raoul Wallenberg and the Swiss Carl Lutz, who set up a network of safe houses. But he writes also of the lesser-known Italian Giorgio Perlasca who, as the Spanish embassy’s self-appointed chargé d’affaires, saved thousands of Jews by providing hiding places and safe conduct passes. The quick-thinking Perlasca once rescued two young boys being herded onto a deportation train by telling them to run to his diplomatic car and get in. They did and the chauffeur slammed the door shut. Perlasca then faced down the furious German officer who pulled a gun on him, insisting the car was Spanish diplomatic territory, ergo the boys were under his protection.

The extensive Zionist underground saved many by forging false identity documents, but it’s a shame the book omits the story of the handsome 20-year-old rabbi’s son and Zionist  Pinchas Rosenbaum. With turbocharged chutzpah he would don an SS uniform before strutting into Arrow Cross premises where brutalised Jews were being held, and take over. Shouting “filthy Jews!”, he’d march the terrified prisoners away. Once out of earshot, he would whisper in Yiddish: “Don’t be afraid. I’m a Jew and I’ve come to save you” before leading them to a safe house.

Among the heroic gentiles LeBor gives special billing to is the beautiful actress Katalin Karády, an avowed anti-Nazi. In December 1944 she saw a group of crying, shivering children on the riverbank, surrounded by Arrow Cross gunmen about to shoot them. Offering them her valuable jewellery in exchange for the children, they accepted the deal, whereupon she took the children home and cared for them until liberation. I might add that my own mother, Karády’s friend and fellow actress Vali Rácz, sheltered Jewish friends in her home throughout most of the Nazi occupation – all survived. Both women are honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

At the end of the war there were some 100,000 Jews still alive in Budapest – in the ghetto, in safe houses and with false identities. It was, perhaps, a miracle of sorts.

The Last Days of Budapest

By Adam LeBor

Head of Zeus, £27.99