elements were largely homogeenous. At the same time, the experience of
Jews under Nazi occupation varied from state to state. One of the striking
ironies of the Jews’ wartime experience is that Jews in Nazi-allied states –
Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria – had a far greater rate of survival
than Jews in states at war with the Hitler – Poland, France, and the Soviet
Union. In each Nazi-allied state, the treatment of Jews depended largely on
a combination of local self-interest and the preexisting relationship between
Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors.
In Hungary, the situation of the Jews had deteriorated precipitously since
the early 1930s as the Horthy government and public opinion shifted to the
right. While himself a rabid anti-Semite and fascist, however, Horthy held
the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazi Party, at bay into the 1940s. While
implementing a series of anti-Jewish laws in 1938 and 1939, which placed
strict limits on the number of Jews in business, industry, and the professions,
and imposed a racial separation between Jews and non-Jews, Horthy refused
to allow Hungarian Jewry to come under Nazi policies toward Jews.
This is not to suggest that Horthy did not treat Hungarian Jews with
much cruelty. On the contrary, by 1940 he had conscripted thousands of them
into forced labor. At the same time, he refused to allow Hungarian Jews to be
deported to the death camps; few were deported until Horthy was forced to
resign in the fall of 1944. For Hungarian Jews, this would prove decisive.
Upon Horthy’s departure, Adolf Eichmann set in motion a two-stage plan for
the annihilation of Hungarian Jews. Stage 1, the deportation of Jews from the
Hungarian countryside, was largely completed between June and September
- These Jews, while having been protected from Nazi occupation for
most of the war, had the misfortune to be deported when Auschwitz-
Birkenau and other death camps were operating at maximum efficiency; few
of these Jews survived. Stage 2 of Eichmann’s plan, the deportation of more
than 100,000 Jews in Budapest, was never put into effect; Budapest was lib-
erated first by the Soviet Army. In retrospect, these Jews were spared the
horrors of the death camps by Horthy’s refusal to comply with Nazi demands
that Hungarian Jews be deported.
Romanian Jews had a higher rate of survival. In this case, the opportunism
of Romanian statesmen determined the fate of Romanian Jews. Until 1943,
when Romania was allied with Hitler, more than 300,000 Romanian Jews
were systematically killed by the Romanian government. After Romania
changed sides, however, the killing of Jews was halted, allowing nearly
100,000 Romanian Jews to survive the war. As in Hungary, Romanian Jews
were aided by state leaders who were themselves rabidly anti-Semitic.
In contrast to Hungary and Romania, the high rates of Jewish survival in
Italy and Bulgaria were the results of a powerful humanitarian tradition and a
highly loyal and acculturated Jewish population. The deportation of
Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews was averted almost single-handedly by Prime
Minister Dimitar Peshev and King Boris III, who regarded Bulgarian Jews as
224 From renewal to devastation, 1914–45