by Dr. Rafael Medoff
Within twenty-four hours of the Bush administration’s threat to impose sanctions on Sudan, the Sudanese government has announced the outlawing of the Janjaweeb Arab militia and other groups involved in the mass murder of more than one million Christian and other non-Muslim blacks in the southern provinces of that country. This U.S. action has an important parallel to the Roosevelt administration’s belated intervention to stop the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, sixty years ago this week. And the Hungarian precedent carries an important lesson for responding to today’s crisis in Sudan.
As in Sudan, the genocide of Hungary’s Jews took place in full view of the international community. There was no CNN in those days, but other major media reported the situation in detail as the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944 and Adolf Eichmann began preparations for shipping the country’s Jews to the death camps in neighboring Poland. In April, United Press International reported that 300,000 Hungarian Jews had been rounded up by the Nazis and were being held in detention centers. On May 10, five days before the deportations began, a New York Times dispatch disclosed that the authorities were “now preparing for the annihilation of Hungarian Jews,” and eight days later, the Times reported that the first trainloads of Hungarian Jews were on their way to “murder camps in Poland.”
Within twenty-four hours of the Bush administration’s threat to impose sanctions on Sudan, the Sudanese government has announced the outlawing of the Janjaweeb Arab militia and other groups involved in the mass murder of more than one million Christian and other non-Muslim blacks in the southern provinces of that country. This U.S. action has an important parallel to the Roosevelt administration’s belated intervention to stop the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, sixty years ago this week. And the Hungarian precedent carries an important lesson for responding to today’s crisis in Sudan.
As in Sudan, the genocide of Hungary’s Jews took place in full view of the international community. There was no CNN in those days, but other major media reported the situation in detail as the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944 and Adolf Eichmann began preparations for shipping the country’s Jews to the death camps in neighboring Poland. In April, United Press International reported that 300,000 Hungarian Jews had been rounded up by the Nazis and were being held in detention centers. On May 10, five days before the deportations began, a New York Times dispatch disclosed that the authorities were “now preparing for the annihilation of Hungarian Jews,” and eight days later, the Times reported that the first trainloads of Hungarian Jews were on their way to “murder camps in Poland.”
During the earlier phases of the Holocaust, while some five million European Jews were being murdered, the Roosevelt administration refrained from intervening, contending that humanitarian action to aid refugees would distract from the war effort. FDR’s State Department went so far as to deliberately obstruct some rescue opportunities, fearing that saving the Jews would put pressure on the United States to grant them haven. But under intense pressure from Congress and Jewish activists, Roosevelt reluctantly agreed, in January 1944, to establish a War Refugee Board. Thus as the Hungarian catastrophe unfolded, there was one U.S. government agency whose sole purpose was to intervene on behalf of Hitler’s victims.
Roosevelt never intended the WRB to be much more than an election-year gesture to avoid an embarrassing public confrontation with refugee advocates. The WRB was given no government funding. Yet with funds contributed by Jewish groups and a small but dedicated staff, it energetically used every means at its disposal to save Jews from Hitler, including financing the life-saving work of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who sheltered Jews in Budapest to keep them from deportation.
Since the Germans were heavily dependent on the collaboration of the Hungarian government to carry out the deportations, the WRB launched a campaign of psychological pressure aimed at the Hungarian authorities. Threats of Allied retribution were repeatedly broadcast via the Office of War Information, published in the European press, and printed up in pamphlets that were dropped over Hungary by Allied planes. The WRB was even able to wrangle a public statement from President Roosevelt, who until then had almost never publicly mentioned the plight of the Jews.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee issued statements warning the Hungarians to stop collaborating, and pressure from the War Refugee Board eventually persuaded Pope Pius XII and the International Red Cross to appeal to Hungarian leader Mikloz Horthy to halt the deportations.
There was an additional source of pressure. The Hungarian authorities intercepted messages sent from European Jewish rescue activists to Washington, asking for the bombing of buildings in Budapest used in connection with the deportations and railways leading from Hungary to Auschwitz. Although the Roosevelt administration turned down the bombing suggestions without ever studying their feasibility, the Horthy regime feared such bombings might be in the offing.
June 2004