Newyorki Figyelő, 1997 (22. évfolyam, 1-8. szám)
1997-05-30 / 5. szám
1997. május 30. NEWYORKI FIGYELŐ PROF. BRAHAM'S LECTURE AT THE MARTYRS' MEMORIAL Part I. A KÁRTÉRÍTÉSI ÜGY HÍREI We have gathered once again to mourn and remember. We are mourning and remembering the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.Our hearts go out especially to the 1.5 million children; we mourn not only the loss of their lives, but also the shattering of their hopes and dreams. We mourn and remember our own family members and close relatives and friends who were among the 600,000 martyrs of the Holocaust in Hungary. Many of us in this synagogue — remnant of the ever dwindling number of survivors ~ still remember and are often haunted by the nightmares of the apocalyptic events of 1944-45. How can we forget those horrible experiences in the ghettos, the brickyards, the labor battalions and forced labor camps, and the many concentration and extermination camps that constituted the Nazis' "Kingdom of Death"? We are among the last witnesses to what Winston Churchill had called "probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the history of the world." This horrible crime was committed in the broad daylight of the twentieth century, when the world at large, the onlookers — our Christian neighbors, the leaders of the Christian churches, the neutral powers, the Vatican, the International Red Cross -- remained largely passive and silent.Some of them found their voice of compassion only towards the end of the war. In the case of Hungary, it was basically only after Miklós Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state, had halted the deportations early in July. But by that time, all of Hungary — with the notable exception of Budapest -- had already become Judenrein. With a few exceptions, the Jews of the Hungarian countryside — from Sepsiszentgyörgy in the east to Sopron in the west and from Érsekújvár in the north to Újvidék in the south — were left to their fate. The relatively few local and foreign samaritanians came to the fore primarily in the fall of 1944 -- during the Nyilas era - when the Soviet forces were already in Romania, fast approaching the borders of Hungary. The destruction of the Jews of Hungary constituted the last major chapter in the Nazis's war against the Jews. It was a chapter that ought not to have been written because by then, in 1944, the leaders of the world, including the national and Jewish leaders of Hungary, were already aware of the realities of Auschwitz; by then they were already familiar with the basic details of the Nazis' Final Solution program. Only one group was left uninformed; it was kept in the dark even at that late hour of the war: the masses of Hungarian Jewry. These masses were neither informed about what happened to the Jews elsewhere in German-dominated Europe nor alerted about the possible need for emergency contingency measures. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War that the Jews of Hungary -- the last relatively intact Jewish community of over 700.000 — were destroyed on the eve of Allied victory. Although discriminated against and subjected to many humiliating social and economic injustices, the Jews of Hungary survived the first four and half years of the war, physically protected by the conservative-aristocratic government of Miklós Kállay. However, after the German occupation of March 19,1944, it was the Hungarian Jewry that was subjected to the most concentrated and brutal destruction process of the Nazis' war against the Jews. This murderous process was launched almost immediately after the occupation — at the time when even the Nazis alreadv realized that the Axis would lose the war. And it was precisely because of this that they and their Hungarian accomplices decided to win at least the war against the Jews. Time was clearly of the essence. The Red Army was fastly approaching Romania; the Allies were about to land in Normandy. By this time, in 1944, the Nazis' machinery of destruction was already well oiled. With experience gained through the mass murder of Jews all over Germandominated Europe, the Nazis were ready and well prepared for a lightning operation in Hungary. Toward this end, they updated the death factories in Auschwitz; they extended the rail lines to Birkenau, to the immediate vicinity of the gas chambers. And, above all, they acquired the wholehearted support of the Hungarian Quisling government of Döme Sztójay for the Final Solution program. Without this unequivocal Hungarian support, the Nazis would have been helpless. The SS commandos were amazed at the enthusiasm with which their Hungarian counterparts were ready to implement the program, The new Hungarian leaders placed the instruments of state power at the disposal of the Eichmann- Sonderkommando. With Miklós Horthy still at the helm, providing the facade of national sovereignty, the Hungarian police, gendarmerie, and civil service collaborated with the SS in the "solution" of the Jewish question in Hungary - in carrying out all the brutal anti-Jewish measures - with a routine and efficiency that impressed even teh Germans. Within less than two months - from late March to mid-May, 1944 - they and their Nazi "advisors" completed the first phase of anti- Jewish drive: the Jews were isolated, expropriated, and placed into ghettos; during the next two months, the Jews were subjected to the most barbaric and speedy deportation and extermination program, It was so massive and so speedy in fact that the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, updated as they were, could not cope. Special ditches had to bew dug to burn the thousands of victims the crematoria could not handle. (Continuation in the next issue.) KÉRJÜK OLVASÓINKAT, HOGY HIRDETŐINKET TÁMOGASSÁK! VÁSÁRLÁSAIK ALKALMÁVAL HIVATKOZZANAK LAPUNKRA! A svájci szövetségi tanács és a zsidó kártérítési világszervezet (World Jewish Restitution Organization) között megállapodás jött létre, amelynek értelmében alap létesül a rászorult áldozatok megsegítésére. Az alap alapösszege 70 millió dollár, amelyet más svájci bankok várható csatlakozása esetén 250 millió dolláron felüli összegre fognak emelni. A kedvezményezettek a keleteurópai, volt kommunista országok lakosai lesznek. Végleges döntés nem született arra nézve, hogy további folyósítás nyíljék a más országokban lakó, rászoruló túlélők részére is. A Claims Conference erőfeszítései ellenére a német kormány ezideig nem változtatta meg elutasító álláspontját olyan igényekkel szemben, amelyeket volt munkaszolgálatosok, valamint azon magyar deportáltak támasztottak, akiket az utolsó szállítmányok keretében Ausztriába hurcoltak. A német hatóságok - szerintünk tarthatatlan - nézetüket arra alapítják, hogy az Ausztriába szállítottakat nem koncentrációs táborba, hanem munkaszolgálatra hurcolták és munkájukért javadalmazást kaptak. A jogvita tovább folyik. Illetékesek azon fáradoznak, hogy további bizonyítékokat találjanak az irattárakban és a vészkorszakirodalomban annak bizonyítására, hogy az ausztriai táborok a német koncentrációs táborok alá voltak rendelve és azokkal egytekintet alá esnek. A továbbiakról folyamatosan tájékoztatjuk olvasóinkat. Kedves Olvasóink! Kérjük mindazokat, akik előfizetési díjukat még nem küldték meg, de lapunkat továbbra is kapják, hogy azt késedelem nélkül szíveskedjenek beküldeni, hogy a Newyorki Figyelő továbbra is megjelenhessek és küldhető legyen. FELHÍVÁS ! Kérjük mindazok sürgős jelentkezését, akiknek Forint-, vagy Dollár-számlájuk van a budapesti székhelyű Pénzintézeti Központban, s akik nem kapnak rendszeresen értesítést számlájukról, illetve akiknek a bank nem fizet kamatot a számlán elhelyezett betétjük után. vagy bármiféle feltételhez köti a bankszámlán lévő pénz átutalását í Kérjük a pontos nevet, címet és telefonszámot megírni nekünk, hogy azonnal kapcsolatba léphessünk Önökkel Címünk: Pénzintézeti Központ Claim. P.O.Box 4S0218 Los Angeles. CA 90048 MAGYARUL BESZÉLŐ SZEMSPECIALISTA! Fogadás előzetes megállapodás szerint Dr. Thomas Steinmetz Fellow, American College of Optometrie Physicians Általános szemvizsgálatok, legmodernebb kezelési módszerek, legújabb technikai felszerelések. Specialista minden fajta kontakt lencsében és gyermekszemészeti problémák megoldásában. 1320 52nd Street, Brooklyn, N. 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