National memorial site to the victims of the Balf camp

Nemzeti Emlékhely a balfi táborban elpusztult kényszermunkások emlékére

In the winter of 1945/45 tens of thousands of prisoners, most of them Jews from Budapest, had to conduct forced labour under German supervision during the construction of the South-east wall along Hungary's western border. One of the camps was in Balf (German: Wolfs) near Sopron (German: Ödenburg). About half of the prisoners died in the camp, many others died during the death marches after the camp was closed down in spring 1945. In the decades following the Second World War, several memorials were erected in memory of the victims.

History

The village of Balf (German: Wolfs) is situated on Lake Neusiedl (Hungarian: Fertő tó) seven kilometres south-east of Sopron (German: Ödenburg). During the final phase of the Second World War, this region gained strategic importance. To stop the advance of the Red Army into the interior of the German Reich, the fortification line »South-east wall« was to be built along the Austro-Hungarian border.
The German Wehrmacht occupied Hungary in March 1944 and in the following months, with the help of Hungarian authorities, almost all the country's Jews from outside the capital Budapest, were deported, most of all to Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, there were no mass deportations from Budapest, where some 200,000 Jews were still living in the summer of 1944. On October 15, 1944 Miklós Horthy was replaced as head of state and the day after the fascist Arrow Cross Party under their leader Ferenc Szálasi (1897–1946) took power. They agreed to put Jewish forced labourers at the disposal of the Germans. Subsequently, tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to Austria. For the construction of the South-east wall alone, about 30,000 Jews from Budapest had to conduct forced labour. They were put into several dozen camps along the border area, which were under the control of the Organisation Todt, the German paramilitary labour organisation. One of the larger camps was set up in Balf with about 2,000 prisoners. Some of the prisoners there had to dig anti-tank trenches, others had to clear woods or worked in the quarry. The working and living conditions were catastrophic, so that about half of the prisoners died in Balf.
In March 1945, the camps along the »South-east Wall« were to be dissolved and the prisoners transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp. During the death marches, the prisoners were exposed to hunger and cold without protection. In addition, the guards, consisting mainly of young people, murdered many thousands of prisoners arbitrarily and without reason.

Budapest, about 1940, The Writer Antal Szerb (1901–1945), public domain

Balf, 2010, View of the memorial with the castle church and the obelisk from 1948, Erzsébet Szabolcs

Victims

Approximately 2,000 Hungarian Jews were held prisoner in Balf. About half of them died of maltreatment, hard labour or because of the inhuman conditions. Among the victims was the writer Antal Szerb (1901-1945). Altogether, about 30,000 Budapest Jews had to conduct forced labour during the construction of the South-east wall. Thousands died at work, in the camps or on the death marches during the last weeks of the war.

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

The erection of the first memorial in memory of the Jewish victims of the camp in Balf was made possible by donations, among others from Jewish organizations in the USA. The monument in the form of an obelisk, designed by the Sopron architect Oszkár Füredi (1890-1978), was inaugurated in 1948. It stands near a mass grave with at least 100 dead. The Hungarian and Hebrew inscription reads: »Within sight of this monument, more than 2,000 of our Jewish fellow brethren fell victim to human madness from 1944 to 1945. More than 100 martyrs rest here«.
Another monument was inaugurated in 1968. The central element of the monument designed by János Fodor was a bronze relief depicting the death march of the forced labourers. At this monument the writer Antal Szerb, who died in January 1945 in Balf from maltreatment, was mentioned by name. The bronze relief was stolen by metal thieves in 2005. The monument was dismantled subsequently. As a replacement for the destroyed monument, a National Memorial was inaugurated in 2008 according to the plans of the architect Barnabás Winkler and the sculptor László Kutas. At the same time the memorial stone from 1948 was restored. The memorial consists of several symbolic gravestones, which incline more and more towards the obelisk and finally fall to the ground. An object from the demolished monument, a memorial stone in the form of an opened book, was placed on the wall next to the obelisk. The quote by Antal Szerb reads: »Freedom is not only a private matter of a nation, but a matter of all mankind«.

Balf, 2008, National memorial site, József Bárdics

Balf, 2002, The later destroyed memorial from 1968, József Bárdics

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

Fő utca, Szent Farkas vártemplom
9494 Balf

Balf, 2008, View of the memorial with castle church, József Bárdics

Balf, 2008, Dedication of the memorial, József Bárdics

Balf, 2010, The memorial erected in 1948, Erzsébet Szabolcs

Balf, 2010, Memorial plaque at the memorial with a quotation from Antal Szerb, Erzsébet Szabolcs

Balf, 2008, View of the memorial, József Bárdics

Balf, about 1940, View of the village, Győri megyei könyvtár

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