Memorial for the victims of the German occupation

A német megszállás áldozatainak emlékműve

In 2014, a new memorial was inaugurated on Budapest's Liberty Square that is supposed to commemorate the victims of the German occupation of Hungary in 1944/45.

History

Hungary has been an ally of the Axis powers since 1940 and took part in the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany. On March 19, 1944, the German Wehrmacht marched into Hungary. The reasons for the occupation of an allied state were diverse. Berlin was worried that Hungary could leave the alliance, but also worried about the flank in South-Eastern Europe where the Red Army was rapidly advancing. Economic motives also played an important role in the decision as Hungary was an important supplier of resources for the war effort. Most importantly, Hungary was seen as a reservoir of fresh labour force.
After the Wehrmacht marched in there were initially only minor changes in the state structures. Miklós Horthy stayed in office as head of state, but in a matter of days, pro-German politicians took over government. In the spring and summer of 1944 hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported from Hungary to concentration camps with the active collaboration of the Hungarian state apparatus. Most of the deported Jews were immediately murdered upon their arrival, tens of thousands were selected for slave labour.
With time, German influence grew steadily in Hungary. After the failed attempt of Miklós Horthy in October 1944 to leave the alliance, the Germans installed a new government led by Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the national socialist Arrow Cross Party. At this time there were already Soviet troops in the Eastern parts of the country. The Arrow Cross installed a terror regime. Especially in Budapest they murdered thousands of people, mostly Jews, with unmatched brutality. Their reign wasn't over until the end of hostilities in Hungary in April 1945.

Budapest, 1945, The ruins of the city after the end of fighting, fortepan.hu

Budapest, 2015, Dedication in various languages, Stiftung Denkmal

Victims

Before the German troops marched in, Hungary had defied German pressure to begin mass deportations of Jews. With the occupation those political forces who had openly demanded the deportation of Jews rapidly gained influence. As a consequence, approximately 400,000 Jews from Hungary perished in German concentration and extermination camps.
The fighting in Hungary would have been much less intensive without the presence of the Wehrmacht. As the front rolled over the country in 1944/45, at least 60.000 civilians perished. The number of soldiers who lost their lives was also very high.

Following defeat in the First World War and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary had to surrender two thirds of its territory and sixty percent of its population to its neighbours in 1920. The trauma caused by these losses led Hungary, under the leadership of Miklós Horthy (1868–1957), to gradually ally itself with Nazi Germany from 1937 onwards. Between 1938 and 1941 Hungary managed to almost double its territory in several stages of border revisions. Faced with the advance of the Red Army the country began to distanc itself from Nazi Germany and was therefore occupied by the Wehrmacht in March 1944. Miklós Horthy retained his position as head of state. Almost immediately after the invasion and with the assistance of Hungarian authorities, the SS began to deport Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp, something that Hungary had refused to do up to then, despite having introduced anti-Jewish legislation. Of the 825,000 Jews from »Greater Hungary« the number murdered in Auschwitz stands at way over half a million. Up to 300,000 of these Jews came from the regions of what is today’s Hungary. In addition, around 140,000 soldiers along with some 170,000 non-Jewish civilians perished during the Second World War. After 1945 Hungary was in the Soviet sphere of influence. Up to 1989, official commemorations in Hungary did not remember the war but rather its end as the »liberation from fascism«. However, for the majority of the population 1945 was the start of a long period of repression. For many Hungarians, memory of the national uprising in 1956 that was crushed by the Soviets overshadows that of the Second World War. Following the uprising the war was viewed as the inglorious prelude to the suffering under communist rule. At the same time, there were many state monuments celebrating »Hungarian-Soviet friendship«. During the communist period there was no official remembrance of those who had died during the war on the front, at home and during the genocide, nor were there any Holocaust memorial sites outside of Jewish institutions. The only related site was the Jewish Museum in Budapest, founded in 1932 and reopened in 1947. In 1985 the Jewish community in Budapest opened a »Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park« alongside the large synagogue located on the edge of the former ghetto. A state monument to Raoul Wallenberg (*1912–?) was inaugurated in 1987 in connection with a visit by the communist head of state János Kádár (1912–1989) to Sweden. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Budapest Jews. He was deported by the Soviet occupation force in 1945 and since then has been missing, presumed dead. This monument marked a turnaround in the decades of silence regarding the Holocaust. Only since the new millennium have numerous Holocaust memorials and memorial sites emerged in Hungary. These include the »Shoes on the Danube Promenade« in Budapest, inaugurated on 16 April 2005, the date of the Hungarian Holocaust Remembrance Day introduced in 2000. This memorial remembers the murder of up to 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto in January 1945 by the »Arrow Cross«, a right-wing extremist party that had assumed power in Hungary on 15 October 1944. A national Holocaust Museum was opened in the capital in 2004. However, there are still very few memorials to other victims. Symptomatic of the way in which post-communist Hungary has dealt with its 20th century past is the fiercely debated »House of Terror«, opened in the centre of Budapest in 2002, which deals with the history of »both totalitarian dictatorships«. The involvement of Hungarians in the deportation of their fellow Jewish citizens often recedes into the background.

Remembrance

At the beginning of 2014 it became known that the Hungarian government was planning to erect a »Memorial for the victims of the German occupation« on Budapest's Freedom Square in an accelerated procedure. There was no prior discussion or a design competition. The statue of the artist Péter Párkányi Raab shows Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of Hungary, in the moment when an eagle symbolizing Nazi Germany hits the imperial orb out of his hand. On the classicist portal behind the figure the name of the memorial is inscribed.
The memorial sparked great controversy in the Hungarian public. Critics accused the government of trying to trying to change the discourse in remembrance politics without consulting civil society. Above all they saw an attempt to downplay Hungary's complicity in the Holocaust. While the memorial suggests that Hungary had been an innocent victim of German aggression, many historians noted that contrary to many other countries under German occupation, the Hungarian state still had room for manoeuvre even after the Wehrmacht marched in.
Due to the fierce public disputes the memorial was put in use in July 2014 without an inauguration ceremony. Opponents of the memorial – among them Holocaust survivors and victims' family members – organized public discussion rounds in front of the statue under the motto »Vivid Memorial«. Many pictures, signs and candles are on display since then, installed there by common citizens. They have not been removed.

Budapest, 2015, View of the memorial with elements of the »Vivid Memorial« of the opponents, Stiftung Denkmal

Budapest, 2015, »My mother, a few weeks before Auschwitz«, Stiftung Denkmal

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times

Contact

Szabadság Tér
1054 Budapest

Budapest, 2015, Detailed view of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

Budapest, 2015, Elements of the »Vivid Memorial«, Stiftung Denkmal

Budapest, 2015, Rear view of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

Budapest, 2015, View of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

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