Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Budapest in the Inter-War Period (1919-1945)
ment from Nazi Germany, they were in fact becoming more and more economically and politically subordinate to Berlin. In 1938 ad 1939 the Parliament passed several racialist laws which deprived citizens who came under the description of Jew of their positions and jobs, and restricted or withdrew their civic and human rights. From the beginning of 1940 Jews employed by the municipality or its institutions, workers, employees, teachers, solicitors, etc., were dismissed, and in 1941 and 1942 the autonomous bodies of Budapest were also made judenrein. Nearly thirty cityfathers were deprived of their seats, and more than forty alternate members were dismissed from the Municipal Board’s list. As a result, the position of the left-wing opposition, particularly of the liberal bourgeoisie, was weakened. In December 1938, 410 newspapers and periodicals, mainly those of the left-wing bourgeois opposition and the labour movement, were suppressed. The further shift to the right, the racialist laws, the entry of Hungary into the war on the side of Nazi Germany (1941), started a new great wave of emigration, and Hungary was deprived of many more famous personalities in politics, science and the arts. It was then that—in protest against fascism—Béla Bartók left Hungary. Although, until 1941, Budapest was sometimes called “haven of peace”, the war put its imprint on the whole life of the city. On the night of 13th October 1937 the first practice air-raid alarm took place in the capital, and in October 1938 the construction of the first public shelter began in Baross Square. Most of the factories were declared war factories or plants of military importance, the Municipal Water, Electricity and Gas Works, for instance, in addition to much of heavy industry and the armaments industry in particular, and were placed under military control. Nonetheless, insufficient preparations were made for a period of war. There were shortages of food and commodities, the black market flourished and queues became a permanent sight. From 1st January 1940 meatless days were introduced; sugar and lard ration cards appeared in April, and further rationing followed. In the end, everything was rationed from bread to soap in a complicated coupon system. In the first years of the war Hungarian independence and resistance movement evolved through the initiative and under the leadership of the Communist Party, working to set up a broad political front devoted to the task of ending the war and achieving a democratic regime in Hungary. In 1941, on 6th October—the anniversary of the execution of Count Lajos Batthyány, Premier of the first Independent Hungarian Government and of the thirteen generals after the Hungarian defeat in the 1848-49 War of Independence—an antifascist demonstration took place around the Batthyány monument and another on 1st November, at the graves of Lajos Kossuth and Mihály Táncsics. At Christmas 1941, Népszava published an anti-fascist number; in 1942 the Communist Party started its underground paper, the Szabad Nép (Free People). In 1943 the Communist Party became the Béke Párt (Peace Party), in which János Kádár played a leading role. In February 1942 the Historic Memorial Committee was legally set up, ostensibly to prepare for the 1948 commemoration of the War of Independence, but acting in fact as a cover for the anti-fascist independence movement. Its founders included the Communist Gyula Kállai, the opposition member of Parliament Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, Gyula Illyés, Zoltán Kodály, the historian Gyula Szekfü. 56
