Horváth Rita: A magyarországi zsidók Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottsága (DEGOB) története - Magyar Zsidó Levéltári Füzetek 1. (1997)
Summary The History of the National Relief Committee for Deportees [NRCD]
converging authorities, aims, and spheres of activity, it is most appropriate to write the history of the NRCD by following the history of its two major, well separable areas of activity: social aid and historical documentation. The work of aiding was financed by the Joint which is traditionally concerned with providing social aid. The Joint continued to perform this task until its suppression in Hungary in 1952. A lengthy report on the aid activities of the NRCD, which was written sometime after 30 September 1946, was found in the legacy of József Pásztor, the secretary of the NRCD. According to this document the main task of the aid program of the NRCD from April 1945 until the end of the first few months of 1946 was to provide the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and forced labour service with the basic necessities of life: food, clothes, money, shelter, medical attention, and the means of returning to Hungary and to their former home settlements. During 1945, the NRCD registered 82144 survivors. An additional 1187 survivors appeared in the offices of the NRCD until the end of September of 1946. Another extremely important form of help was to inform the survivors about the fate and whereabouts of their family members. For this purpose, the NRCD not only established a permanently working information bureau, but it also published a newspaper entitled: “News About The Deportees.” It appeared five times between June and October of 1945. When the “great wave” of the returning survivors subsided, the special job of the NRCD came to an end. Afterwards its work fit smoothly into the general social aid program of the National Jewish Relief Committee, which was helping Jews to begin their lives once again. The National Jewish Relief Committee ceased to exist on 24 April 1950, and its role was taken up by the Central Social Committee which functioned as a pail of the National Office of the Hungarian Jews (Magyar Izraeliták Országos Irodája). From the beginning of its existence the NRCD, besides the urgent aid work, was aiming at collecting documentation of the destruction of the Hungarian Jewry. The staff of the NRCD asked the survivors, who came for assistance, to fill in two questionnaires. One of them contained names and information on survivors who were still abroad at that time. The other contained information on those people who perished. The most important aspect of documentation, however, was the taking of protocols. These protocols contain an interview with one or with a group of survivors relating their experiences. The majority of the interviews were conducted according to unified guidelines which practice still left plenty of room for the personal interests of the recorders. The early protocols and documents, which were 58
