Makó Imre - Szigeti János: „Vihar és vész közepette”. A holokauszt hódmezővásárhelyi áldozatai ((Hódmezővásárhely, 2014)
"Amidst Storm and Peril"
The confinement of Jewish population into camps and ghettos was ordered on the 26th April. The plans for this were ready in Hódmezővásárhely as well, but due to the resistance of the local Christian population and the attitude of the local authorities, the plan - maybe the only exception in the whole country - was never implemented. The issue was concluded by the forthcoming deportations. The gendarmerie squad dispatched to Vásárhely started rounding up Jewish citizens on the 16th June. On the 19th June, 737 Jews were transported to Szeged in cattle cars. More than 9 thousand Jews were confined in the camp at the brick factory. These people were deported in three turns, namely on the 25th, 27th and 28th June. The first transport was sent to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, where the elderly and sick were immediately put in gas chambers. The other two transports from Szeged went to Strasshof, near Vienna, where the deportees were sent to do forced labour in various parts of Eastern Austria. Only five of those deported to Auschwitz returned alive while more than two thirds of the privileged deportees to Strasshof survived. Instead of regular armed military service, from 1941 Jewish men were only enlisted for auxiliary labour service. Their companies had "Aryan" officers and guards. Ten percent of the 2nd Hungarian Army, sent to the front in 1942, was made up of Jewish labour servicemen. From Public interest labour service battalion No. 5 under command from Vásárhely, 18 companies were enlisted. Their duties included helping with transportation and loading, as well as the construction of roads, railways, etc. In the battle front they were ordered to dig trenches, build bunkers, sweep and deposit mines, all this with a minimum of provisions. Their companies were mostly destroyed during the 1943 Soviet breakthrough and the subsequent retreat. Their death toll exceeded that of the combat forces. In 1943, 15 Hungarian Jewish labour companies were sent to copper mines in Serbia, to the labour camp of Bor. In the autumn of 1944,70 labour service companies were commandeered to the construction of the Reich's Defence Line. These companies were removed from the front line in death marches - with many fatalities - to German camps. The core of this book contains a database of the families from Hódmezővásárhely who had to suffer through this perilous era. It is based on a list of the local Jewish population made on ministerial orders in 1944, the so-called Jaross list. Victims who died are marked by the conventional symbol of a cross next to the name, and depending on the availability of information, attempt has been made to follow their personal fates. We have knowledge of 100 men and 180 women from Vásárhely who fell victim to deportation, 21 of them children. They made up one third of the total number of deportees. Nearly 100 additional men were victims of labour service. Half of them died in the battlefield by the River Don in 1942-43, the rest within the country or in German concentration camps in 1944M5. Among the victims of the massacre next to Kamyanets-Podilsky in 1941, there was a family deported from here. Including all those interned by the police, then handed over to the Germans for deportation, and those who committed suicide at home to escape the horrors, the total number of documented victims is 400. Thus, it can be stated that nearly every second Jewish citizen of Vásárhely became a victim of the Holocaust. 142
