Innocents Condemned to Death: Chronicles of Survival

By Albert Lazar

Innocents Condemned to Death: Chronicles of Survival, first published in 1961, is a brief but moving account of the Jewish Holocaust in Hungary during World War Two. The book portrays life under the Nazi occupation and provides glimpses into a family's experiences—their separations, deportations to labor camps, interrogations, reuniting, emigration to South America—all interwoven with a powerful faith and will to survive. Included are 4 pages of photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eumenes Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839741067

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

INNOCENTS CONDEMNED TO DEATH

Chronicles of Survival

ALBERT O. LAZAR

Innocents Condemned to Death was originally published in 1961 by The William-Frederick Press, Inc., New York.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

PREFACE 5

INNOCENTS CONDEMNED TO DEATH 6

POSTSCRIPT 64

ILLUSTRATIONS 65

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 69

PREFACE

The memories recalled in this volume belong to the turbulent years of 1938 and thereafter—the years of a madness in Europe which has, apparently, not yet run its destructive course. We who lived through them try to forget rather than to remember—for our memories are necessarily bitter ones, stained with the blood of relatives and of comrades who died as helpless pawns in a senseless conflict not of their own making. Yet I feel that they ought to be recorded, these events—partly because I happened to be involved in many different episodes of that era and may thus contribute toward a more inclusive picture of the march of events as it affected a certain group of people; partly as evidence that, even at a time which seemed devoid of all human decency and compassion, there were still men of good will in all walks of life. Their activities were necessarily circumscribed by the authorities in power, but they did what they could, and many of them died for that little which they were able to do.

I have tried to be as objective and dispassionate as the subject permitted; yet objectivity does not come easily to those who bore, as I did, the stigma of a racial heritage suddenly and arbitrarily branded as disgraceful; and I have given, as nearly as is possible, a factual and unbiased account of the happenings in which I had a personal role or in which I was indirectly involved. The people referred to are real, but many of them still live behind the Iron Curtain; and to forestall undesired consequences they have been given fictitious names. The deep sense of gratitude I feel toward those who aided me in my struggle is difficult to express; yet I hope that I have conveyed some part of it within the pages of this book.

For this is not alone my chronicle but theirs—those who died in the gas chambers, who met death in the incinerators, whose last view of a world in which they had not asked to be born was vouchsafed them from the losing end of a firing squad; who died in battle or from sheer exhaustion and hunger in work details, laboring for a purpose which they hated with their very hearts and souls—at a time when madness gripped the continent of Europe and chaos reigned; when one’s crime was in having been born of a certain faith and nationality, that crime alone sufficient to warrant the death penalty. If I have a story to tell, they also had their stories—by the hundreds of thousands—stories which may remain forever unrecounted. For each such story which we do not hear we are the poorer, for our strength lies in remembering; and if the lesson of mankind is ever to be learned, it must be through our rejection of the mistakes of the past, that we may not repeat them ever again in this world.

INNOCENTS CONDEMNED TO DEATH

Decision in Vienna

When in 1938 the Italian Prime Minister Ciano and German Minister of Foreign Affairs Von Ribbentrop met in Vienna and agreed to return a portion of Czechoslovakia to Hungary, their decision met with great enthusiasm among the Hungarian population affected by the change. Nobody thought or spoke of the high price Hungary was having to pay for this bargain, which in essence meant complete dependence on Germany. Germany was calling the tune, and Hungary would be compelled to dance to it, like it or not.

When Nicholas Horthy took over—after the Czechs had departed—the population was in for a great disappointment, since the important offices were given not to local people but to persons brought in from Hungary proper. The new regime did not trust the resident Hungarians, whose social and economic standing was considerably higher than that of the people in Hungary. Hungary had not yet recovered from the wounds inflicted by the Versailles Treaty, whereas Czechoslovakia—due to the all-out assistance rendered by the Western powers—attained a higher standard of living. The Hungarian government, in order to divert the attention of the population from these matters, turned to the time-tested formula of anti-Semitism.

The Jews Are Blamed for Everything

Orders were given to all citizens of the Jewish faith residing in the liberated territory to register with the police, and Jews were deprived of such military rank as they had attained in World War I. Paid agents—provocateurs—launched a savage attack against the Jews via press and radio. But the Hungarian government soon discovered that the Hungarian Aryans were not deceived by this propaganda, having lived under the Czech administration for twenty years in harmony and friendship with their Jewish fellow citizens, and being fully aware of the fact that the Jews had fostered Hungarian cultural and social activities during the Czech regime.

Further orders were issued for the registration of all Jews who had lost their citizenship by the annexation of the territory to Czechoslovakia and had not been granted Czechoslovakian citizenship. Naturally the registering Jews thought this would be to their advantage, since the Czechoslovakians, as a rule, had withheld citizenship only from individuals known for their pro-Hungarian sentiments. But they were to be sorely disappointed.

In one night the police rounded up several thousand Jewish families—infants and invalids among them—packed them into freight cars with the greatest of secrecy and sent them off on long trains bound for Poland. Having arrived in Polish Galicia, they were transported to Kamenec Podolszk, where they were herded into an open field near the town and mowed down by a battery of machine gunners which stood in readiness. Only a few wounded, pretending to be dead, managed to escape the massacre. Nowhere in the world—with the lone exception of Germany—had such barbaric actions been committed.

Army Life and Labor Camps

In 1940 the Hungarian government recruited the majority of Jews for labor camps, while some were called into military service as enlisted men, shorn of their rank though permitted to wear medals won in World War I. In this manner I landed in a machine-gun outfit of the army.

We were given a six-week retraining course—supposedly to learn the manipulation of modern weapons. It came as a surprise, therefore, to find these modern weapons to be the old models used in 1914-18. The only things new were the horses, the old ones having long since died.

The training was dull and monotonous, our interest awakened only on Saturdays when we had school. The classes were conducted by First Sergeant Lajos, who had been a farmhand in peacetime. School consisted of assembling the regiment in the courtyard of the casern; after the soldiers had cooled their heels for an hour or so, the dreaded Sergeant Lajos arrived; in a thunderous voice he called, Attention! and walked angrily along the ranks while he looked us over at close range, his gorilla head thrust forward as if he wanted to bite off our heads. His opening gambit was always the same: Do you know, you stinking peasants, what it takes to become a top sergeant? Intelligence—and plenty of it. Then followed the educational course: we majored in the art of spitting accurately into somebody’s eye from a distance of ten yards. Sergeant Lajos had attained matchless virtuosity in this field and was well qualified to teach us.

When the training course had been completed, we received orders to keep ourselves in readiness, as we would be leaving for the front line within a week. Our co, Captain Balta, was of German extraction and a rabid admirer of Hitler. His first act, after receiving the order, was to announce that all Jewish recruits would be restricted to quarters for the rest of the week, thus preventing them from bidding their families farewell.

Two days before our departure my wife and three-year-old son loitered in front of the casern all day long, hoping for a chance to say goodbye to me. A major noticed her tearful face and asked my wife why she was crying, to which question she replied that her husband was leaving in two days for the front, but that his battalion-commander had forbidden soldiers of Jewish faith to take leave of their families. The major declared that he wouldn’t brook any such action in his regiment, that as far as he was concerned all soldiers must be treated alike, regardless of creed. He sent immediately for Captain Balta and instructed him to rescind the order. Though inwardly fuming with rage, Captain Balta was forced to comply; but later, when he was again alone in command, he threatened us with dire retaliations upon reaching our destination.

The day of our departure arrived, and a military band, playing a march, escorted us to the depot. Our transport was bound for the Rumanian border, but orders came while we were en route that we should go instead to the Russian border. This change in plan was the more surprising in view of the