Kristóf Kállay
Endgame 1944
A Wartime Prime Minister's Son Remembers
In the early hours of March 19th 1944, Keresztes-Fischer, the Home Secretary,
rang my father to tell him he was on his way to the Prime Minister's Office
since the Germans were on the move on all our borders. My father ordered me
to be present too, and I immediately went up to the Castle, to his office
and residence, taking my wife, our two-and-a-half-month-old son, and his nurse.
I rang the General Staff but Bajnóczy, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff,
could not be located. It took two hours before I managed to find him; he turned
up together with a wire from Szombathelyi, the Minister of Defence, which
stated that no measures whatever were to be taken until the Regent got back,
and that a friendly reception should be given to the Germans. Fortunately,
I found two officers who proved truly helpful, Colonel Gyula Kádár and Major
Kálmán Kéri of the General Staff, who in spite of the opposition of Bajnóczy,
who was skulking in a corner, rang the various corps commanders and asked
them to present themselves at the Prime Minister's Office. In response to
my father, Colonel Generals Beregffy and János Vörös declared that in view
of the absence of the Supreme War Lord and of Szombathelyi's wire to Bajnóczy,
they were not prepared to offer any kind of resistance. Anyway, there was
not a single military unit in a state of readiness, except for the 1st
Army in the Carpathians and the 2nd Army in Northern Transylvania. Náday,
the commanding general of the Army in Russia, declared that he was prepared
to accept the Prime Minister's instructions but he was unable to bring home
troops who were constantly in action because of the absence of the appropriate
transport. It may well be of more use for the Regent to have any army-even
a battle-weary one-at his disposal later. I rang Lajos Veres, the Commanding
General of the Army in Northern Transylvania. He showed himself ready to alert
the three army corps at his disposal, but he asked my father to consider that
nine Romanian corps were stationed in Southern Transylvania, which would promptly
move, even without German encouragement. The German military attaché meanwhile
notified us that eleven German divisions were deployed against us, the Romanian,
Slovak and Croat armies being mobilized as well; those, however, would not
cross the frontier in the absence of Hungarian resistance.
There we stood with a bunch of useless generals-Bohry and the Corps stationed in Szombathely being the only exception-meanwhile there were reports over the phone that the Germans in the provinces were already engaged in manhunts for Jews. Not moving from the telephone I informed our Jewish friends, various politicians at risk, Peyer, Passai, István Bethlen, internment camps for the French and Poles, friendly diplomats, the Papal Nuncio and the Swiss, Turkish and Finnish ministers. Meanwhile, Ghiczy's coded telegramme to his wife also arrived. Air Vice Marshal Hellebronth, the commander of the Air Force, was not prepared to take measures to have available aircraft concealed on provincial airbases but this proved to be possible with the help of Kádár and Kéri. An hour later Flight First Lieutenant István Csanády, a relative of my wife's, hastily reached the Prime Minister's Office, saying that his aircraft was fuelled and that he would take my father to Turkey. Of course my father was not prepared to leave the sinking ship. Dawn was not
far off when two SS men turned up with the intention of taking my father to the German legation. Fortunately my young brother András was there in his Life Guard 1st Lieutenant uniform, with handgren-ades on his belt, so the two Germans left.
The wife of the Turkish minister telephoned my mother and told her she was welcome if she cared to come. She handed the receiver to me and I thanked the Turkish minister for the invitation. He confirmed that both my father and my mother were welcome at the Legation.
Meanwhile the Germans had arrived in Budapest but they did not impose any traffic restrictions. Visitors, frightened out of their wits, arrived in quick succession. The radical opposition politician Endre Bajcsy Zsilinszky came in the company of General (ret.) János Kiss and demanded prompt armed resistance. At my father's request, I sent a car for Samu Stern, the chairman of the Hebrew Congregation. My father and Stern embraced each other. Bajcsy- Zsilinszky wanted to arm Stern right there in the ante-chamber.
There was news that the Regent's special train was on its way back at a snail's pace from Hitler at Klessheim, being held up at every station, until it reached Hegyeshalom, at the Hungarian border. My father called for Ambrózy, who headed the Regent's office, and General Béla Miklós, who headed the military office, asking them to meet the Regent even before he reached Budapest. He first talked to Ambrózy in my presence, asking him to inform the Regent of all that happened, then he wished to talk to Béla Miklós. Miklós was hostile, declaring that military matters were none of the Prime Minister's business. He would make up his own mind what he would tell the Regent. Later, in Soviet-occupied Debrecen, he headed the Provisional Government, becoming the first satellite Prime Minister.
My father and I waited at Kelenföld
Station. Finally, the Regent's train arrived. In the car, on the way to the Castle, the Regent told us what had happened at Klessheim where he saw Hitler. He ordered a Crown Council to be convened in the afternoon. This was made up of members of the government, members of the Supreme Defence Council, of the heads of the Regent's military office and his secretariat and, of course, the Chief of the General Staff. The Regent gave an account of his visit. When he finished, my father and Keresztes-Fischer declared that all measures taken, dismissal of the government or appointment of a government, were illegal and null and void. My father said he would no longer countersign any measure taken by the Regent, nor would he authenticate the minutes of the Crown Council. That was the end of the session. My father still stayed with the Regent and mentioned that the Germans had looked for him, and István Bethlen, in the Prime Minister's Office. The Regent was indignant and ordered General Károly Lázár, the commander of the Life Guards, to take all necessary measures to protect the Prime Minister's Office. This happened immediately, and when we got back my brother András and another Life Guard lieutenant called Zólyomi were waiting for us at the entrance with sub-machine guns.
I rang the steward at our Kállósemjén es
tate asking him to send up a lorry the next day for our belongings. Then we went to bed. At first light András called from the lodge saying that a whole lot of German trucks were there, filled with German soldiers and officers, wishing to speak to the former Prime Minister. I woke up my father and asked him what we should do. He started to dress and asked my mother to pack a small suitcase. Fortunately, my brother András came up, leaving Zólyomi in charge of the Life Guards whose rifles were cocked. He said that when he received his training as a Life Guard he was shown secret underground passages that connected the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Castle. He would lead us to the Castle through them.
I rang the Regent's Office. Gyula Tost, the aide-de-camp, woke up the Regent and his wife and they immediately instructed me to bring over the whole family to them in the Castle. After innumerable steps along the underground passage we reached the Regent's rooms. They were both there, in dressing gowns, waiting for us. Somewhere on the steps, András, our baby son, had lost his dummy, and he would not stop screaming. The Regent's wife remembered that she had kept one of her grandson's as a memento, but that was not good enough for our baby and the screaming continued.
The Regent's wife arranged for rooms for my mother, my wife and the nurse. We men took tea with the Regent. My father said that if he stayed, the Germans would make difficulties. The Regent answered that it was his own business who he asked to his house. Then I mentioned the Turkish minister's invitation, and the Regent felt reconciled to that. I therefore rang Mr Kececi and, with reference to our conversation of the previous day, I asked for political asylum on behalf of my father. The Turkish minister immediately agreed. I rang Gedeon Fáy Halász, who had been at school with me and who had served as my father's secretary when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs, and asked him to pick up my father at the back entrance of the Castle Gardens. He was soon there. My father, with his small suitcase and equipped with a revolver took his seat in the car, and the minister was already there waiting at the gate of the Turkish Legation. He mentioned that his government had provided him with full authority, and that my mother was also most welcome.
[...]
At a recent session of the Scholars' Club of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kristóf Kállay,
son of and private secretary to Miklós Kállay, wartime Prime Minister (1942-44) of Hungary, described the dramatic events his father lived through following the German occupation of Hungary.
