Part One of Two
The history of Jewish life in Hungary is a very long and complicated one, and I will attempt to answer your question in as brief a manner as I can. Hungary, in the years leading up to the Second World War, came to be dominated by politicians who sought to rearm Hungary, both in the face of the perceived threat of Bolshevism and the desire for some n Hungary to reclaim lost land and pride from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To this end, politicians began aligning Hungary with Nazi Germany and push for rearmament. This would culminate in late 1937/early 1938 in a new program of rearmament that would also seek to limit Jewish influence in the economy and Hungarian cultural life, similar in the way that Germany's Nuremberg laws sought to limit Jewish involvement in German social life. The Gyor program, as it was called, entwined the so-called "Jewish Question" with the rearmament of Hungary, and essentially made anti-Semitism a state-sponsored government program. A number of Anti-Jewish laws would soon follow, the first in May of 1938 and the second a year later in May 1939. An important note to follow is that these early actions, though influenced by the Germans (who were becoming an important ally and trading partner, allowing Hungary to reclaim lost territory from Czechoslovakia) were written and passed by anti-Semitic Hungarian politicians. Another important note is that the Jewish community in Hungary did protest these laws.
In November 1940 Hungary joined the Axis, and in April 1941 a new Prime Minister, Laszlo Bardossy, was appointed by Admiral Horthy, Hungary's head of state. Bardossy was more openly anti-Semitic than the former PM, and Hungary's persecution of Jews increased. He was responsible for passing a third anti-Jewish law, and ordering that many non-Magyar (ethnic Hungarians) leave the country if they could not prove that they were citizens of Greater Hungary before October 31 1918. The third anti-Jewish law was the most severely anti-Semitic, defining Jews racially and forbidding marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. Beyond the legal ramification of the this third law, historian Randolph Braham argues that "it prepared the ground for the acceptance by Hungarian public opinion of the draconic measures that were to be adopted during the German occupation." During this time period Hungary also entered the Second World War, joining the Axis in their war against the Soviets, which, back in Hungary, as it was in Germany, was billed as a war against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The entry into the war was accompanied by a propaganda campaign against Jews and an increase in anti-Semitism in Hungary. A call to resettle "foreign Jews" living in regions Hungary had reclaimed from Czechoslovakia and Romania led to the arrest of 35 000 Jews and the "resettlement" (deportation) of 18 000 Jews near Kamenets-Podolsk in July 1941. There, SS troops massacred Jews from 27-28 August. More massacres, this time by Hungarian army units, took place at Sajkas and Ujividek in the Hungarian occupied Yugoslav territory, under the cover of rooting out partisans. Most of those killed were Serbs but many were also Jews targeted by anti-Semitic army units. These massacres, committed by Hungarians on innocent civilians, shocked and enraged many Hungarians, though attempts to bring the culprits to justice failed. At the same time that Hungary's political situation remained volatile, as Bardossy was removed from office and replaced with a less pro-German PM, Jews were being used as forced labour units in mines and on the Eastern Front, where many would lose their lives. The change in PM also did not bring a change in the Anti-Jewish laws.
The period of Kallay a Prime Minister saw him begin to explore alternatives to the Axis alliance, including secretly exploring possibilities of a separate peace with the Allies, as Italy had done in 1943. While not as virulently anti-Semitic as his predecessor, Kallay still implemented additionl anti-Jewish laws at the behest of the far-right in Hungary, and declared that a possible solution to the "Jewish Problem" in Hungary was to deport all of Hungary's 800 000 Jews after the war. After the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Martin Luther, a Nazi official who represented the Foreign Office at Wannsee, began applying pressure on Kallay to agree to allowing Hungarian Jews living outside Hungary to be deported, to force Jews living in Hungary to wear the Star of David, and eventually to deport the Hungarian Jews in a Final Solution program similar to that which was being applied in Romania and Croatia. Kallay ignored these requests and even instructed Hungary's foreign service to ensure that the rights of Hungarian Jews (however limited they were) were being respected by the Third Reich. Kallay justified this defiance by arguing that Hungary's Jews played a disproportionately large role in the war economy and that a Final Solution program would damage the war effort. This defiance would continue throughout 1942 in the face of sustained diplomatic pressure from the Germans, with Kally fighting to maintain control over what he saw as Hungary's internal domestic policies. By 1943 Kallay faced significant pressure from the Hungarian Radical Right, and a German government that increasingly questioned Hungarian loyalty in the face of Kallay's defiance and the word that he was trying to negotiate with the Allies. This would culminate in the March 1944 occupation of Hungary by Germany, and the formation of a fascist government by Hungary's Arrow Cross party in October 1944.
cont. below