Gábor Kádár - Zoltán Vági

Rationality or Irrationality?

The Annihilation of Hungarian Jews

 

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The Austro-Hungarian Empire was held together by a network of compromises though it had been growing weaker and weaker as the years passed. One of the strongest threads in this web was the compromise between the traditional Hungarian elite and the upwardly mobile emancipated Jews. Jews arrived at significant positions in industry, commerce and the liberal professions and, within these areas, at a presence well above their numerical ratio within the population. After 1900, the influence of the Jewish intelligentsia began to decline slowly but gradually. Nevertheless, in the first decade of the 20th century, Jews still made up a majority of those engaged in commerce and the professions. This tendency continued after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. In 1930, 55.2 per cent of all physicians, 49.2 per cent of practising attorneys, 30.4 per cent of engineers, 59.4 per cent of bank officials and 45.7 per cent of salesmen were of the Jewish faith. If Hungarian citizens who were Christian by religion but subjected to the anti-Jewish laws are included, proportions are larger still.
Jews in Hungary were fundamentally an urbanised social group, with the middle-classes accounting for more than 60 per cent of them. Only 3 per cent of Jews were engaged in agriculture and 13 per cent were industrial workers. Nevertheless, Hungarian Jewry as a whole was certainly not outstandingly rich. Some religious communities at the time put the ratio of the poor within the Jewish population in 1930 as high as 90 per cent. This is clearly exaggerated. One-third of the entire Jewish community were the owners of small businesses. According to Viktor Karády, the anti-Jewish laws "discriminated against a social group whose members were relatively better off than non-Jewish people at the identical level within the social hierarchy." What is certain is that the majority of the Jews was not wealthy as such. The anti-Semitic notions of the interwar period concerning the miraculous wealth of Jewry as a whole were tendentious. The reason why Jews may have appeared to be wealthy to some was that millions of poor Gentile peasants were practically destitute. But the only way to redistribute property among them would have been the dividing up of the huge estates owned by the Catholic Church and the aristocracy. In the Horthy era, however, for a considerable time, the system was based precisely on the estate-owning Church and aristocracy. Therefore, comprehensive land reform was out of the question. An outdated social model explained why the modest wealth of the majority of Jews and the undoubtedly vast riches of some of them created the impression that, on the whole, Jews possessed wealth, whereas millions of Christians lived in staggering poverty.
Well-to-do Hungarian Jews, some 20 to 30 per cent of them, undoubtedly possessed considerable wealth. The total cultivated land area in post-Trianon Hungary amounted to 16,173,178 holds in 1933. Of this, 790,173 holds were owned by people of the Jewish faith. This amounts to 4.9 per cent of the total land area under cultivation. If we add to this the estates leased by Jews, we arrive at a total of 1,560,000 holds owned or farmed by persons of the Jewish faith. This constitutes 9.6 per cent of the total land area suitable for agricultural cultivation in post-Trianon Hungary. These numbers, however, also show that, in contrast to commerce and finance, Jewish capital did not play a dominant role in agriculture.
At the time of the 1930 census, 26 per cent of tenant-occupied housing in Budapest was owned by persons of the Jewish faith. However, of the total rent revenues of 187,797,856 pengős, owners of the Jewish faith obtained 89,287,392 pengős, or 45.1 per cent of the total. This clearly signals that those of the Jewish faith owned larger and higher quality, multi-storey buildings, which earned higher rents. This is also shown by the fact that in 1930, there were 343 flats and 631 rooms in 100 residential buildings owned by Jews, whilst the national average was 141 flats and 204 rooms.
Jews also occupied significant positions in industry. In 1935, 49.4 per cent of metallurgical and siderurgical works, 41.6 per cent of machine manufacturing, 72.8 per cent of clothes manufacturing and 65 per cent of spinning and weaving industry was owned by Jews. These percentages do not include converted Jews, even though their number was considerable, as many members of prominent Jewish families converted to Christianity or were baptised as infants.

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Several statistical attempts were made to assess the wealth of Hungarian Jews. On the basis of data provided by the Jewish statistician Frigyes Fellner, Zoltán Bosnyák, a well-known anti-Semitic theoretician and editor of the journal Harc, the Hungarian equivalent of Der Stürmer, and the head of the Hungarian Institute for Researching the Jewish Question, established in 1944, deduced that 20.8 per cent of Hungarian national wealth had been in Jewish hands prior to the war. Bosnyák, however, made his often arbitrary calculations based on Fellner's figures from the 1930's. Another problem with the statistics is that they do not reflect the share of converts, or they only contain such data in part, though Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation classified most people in that category as Jews. Using the same parameters, Alajos Kovács, another anti-Semitic statistician, calculated that in 1938, Hungarian Jews owned 20-25 per cent of the country's total national wealth.
There are other calculations which attempt to assess the total value of Jewish assets within the annual national income. In articles published in the journal Magyar Élet, Mátyás Matolcsy, the far right-wing economist, who studied the question in the greatest detail, estimated that in 1930-31, Hungarian national income amounted to 4,636 million pengős. Of this, Jews accounted for 1,112 million, or 24 per cent. In January 1935, László Nagykálnai Levatich published figures pertaining to the year 1934 in an article that appeared in Budai Hírlap:
according to his calculations, national income in 1934 was approximately 2,300 million pengős, of which Jews accounted for 28.26 per cent. Of the two estimates, Matolcsy's figure can be taken as the more accurate. Levatich was a layman who used unprofessional methods such as arbitrarily deducting 100 million pengős from the figure relating to Hungarian Jews "in order to eliminate various errors."
There are also attempts to express the size of Jewish wealth as an absolute amount, rather than as percentage terms. Based on Jenő Lévai's data, Randolph L. Braham estimates this wealth at 7-9 billion pengős.18 Mátyás Matolcsy, who discussed this issue in a professional manner, estimated the collective wealth of Jews in pre-Trianon Hungary to be 12 billion pengős. Alajos Kovács put the
figure at 7-9 billion pengős. Articles published in far right-wing newspapers in 1944 set the total value of Jewish assets at 16-20 billion pengős, based on the preliminary results of the registers and surveys carried out as a consequence of anti-Semitic legislation. These calculations, however, include assets owned by the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in areas re-annexed by Hungary from Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia between 1938 and 1941.
There are complex interconnections behind the revaluing of Jewish assets. The first surveys carried out after the war set national wealth in 1943 at 50 billion pengős, or 9.9 billion dollars. According to Kovács's 1938 estimate, quoted above, approximately a quarter or one-fifth of national wealth was in Jewish hands. Therefore, based on the appraisal of damage in 1945-46, Jews owned 2-2.5 billion dollars worth of assets in 1943, which would be the equivalent of 20-25 billion dollars today. The events of the period from 1938 to 1943 altered these numbers in different ways. With the re-annexations of territories between 1938 and 1941, the absolute size of the collective wealth of Jews increased, but the ratio of Jewish assets was reduced, since the ratio of Jewish properties in Upper Province (Felvidék), Carpatho-Ruthenia (Kárpátalja), Northern Transylvania and Southern Province (Délvidék) was smaller than within the area of post-Trianon Hungary. Between 1941 and 1943, the enforcement of Jewish Laws grew ever more rigorous, which led to a rapid deterioration in the conditions of the Jewish community, both in terms of wealth and their share. In 1944, the occupying German forces primarily seized the properties of those Jews who were arrested and then deported, thereby transporting a huge quantity of Jewish assets out of the country. During the period of Arrow Cross rule (from 15 October 1944), almost the entire movable Hungarian economy was taken out of the country. This had a disproportionately detrimental effect on the nationalised, "Aryanised" Jewish industries. Jews who still occupied relatively strong economic positions in March 1944, suffered a disproportionately large share of the 22 billion pengős of war damage within the total national wealth of 50 billion pengős.
In March 1941, 100 pengős were worth 19.77 dollars, or one dollar was the equivalent to 5.06 pengős.22 Therefore, the various estimates (of 7-20 billion pengős) put the value of the assets of Hungarian Jews at 1.38-3.95 billion dollars. The value of the American currency, however, changed significantly after the war. Thus, a 1945 dollar was worth 8.9 dollars in 1997.23 Taking the periods from 1941 to 1945 and from 1997 to 2001, the dollar was approximately ten times stronger during the war than it was at the start of the new millennium. On the basis of these calculations, taking the estimates of the time at 2001 value levels, Jews owned 13.8-39.5 billion dollars worth of assets. However, the calculations of far right wing laymen in 1944 (16-20 billion pengős) seem to be exaggerated. The data compiled by the experts (Matolcsy, the economist, and Kovács, the statistician) are probably more realistic. As far as the public was concerned, significantly larger, unrealistic numbers were widely believed to be the case. In 1937, for example, Henrik Péchy, one of the founders of the Arrow Cross movement, set the Jewish share of national wealth at 60 per cent. Despite its obvious falsity, many found this figure credible.

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The "rationality paradox" of the Holocaust in Hungary

Minister of Industry Lajos Szász formulated the following principles in connection with the eportation of the Jews and the confiscation and redistribution of their assets: "The final and permanent resolution of the Jewish question will not and cannot be allowed to upset the Hungarian economy. It is impossible that it should since the government considers production and maintaining the continuity of production even more important than the solution of the Jewish question."38 Szász's words highlight a serious concern, namely that "production" and "solving the Jewish question" were antagonistic in certain cases. In the space of a few weeks, more than 750,000 people were removed from the economy. Although their assets ended up in government hands, they were locked away uselessly in homes, bank safes, courtyards and warehouses. As we have mentioned, the redistribution of the assets by the government was carried out inconsistently, chaotically and deficiently. In addition, the rapid deportation of the Jews, and the confiscation of their entire wealth led to serious production and supply difficulties in certain economic areas and regions. Thus the elimination of the Jews did not improve the situation of the economy: in some cases it even hampered it.
A report by Gendarme Lieutenant Colonel László Ferenczy who directed deportation and ghettoisation on the spot, paints a rosy picture of the economic consequences of the ghettoisation of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia:
Despite the shortage of capital that has manifested itself, entrepreneurial spirits are high. Industry and commerce await the introduction of the stocks from seized Jewish plants, workshops and stores into the flow of the Hungarian economy with heightened expectations. Feasible ideas and plans are being formulated, which are dominated primarily by self-confidence and uninhibited, brave enterprise. The detrimental and depressing fear that used to stifle Hungarian industry and commerce in its minority position is no longer present.

Ferenczy's unbridled optimism is self-betraying. He unwittingly reveals that there was a shortage of capital but tries to compensate this with positive signs that are meaningless under the given conditions from an economic point of view, such as "heightened expectations" and "uninhibited, brave entreprise". The credibility of Ferenczy's evaluation is also undermined by the next paragraph of his report:

You can no longer see Jews gathered in the streets whispering to each other as they size up approaching non-Jews with sly looks, brewing the poison of rumours and propaganda.

If we add to this the fact that Ferenczy prepared his reports according to precise instructions given by László Endre, the Secretary of State of the Ministry of the Interior, then it becomes obvious that all this is no more than propaganda designed to justify the elimination of the Jews.
The board of directors of the Centre of Financial Institutions, whose members were clearly much better trained in economics than Ferenczy, saw the situation differently. At its meeting on 26 April, it was said that ghettoisation had resulted in "economic life being brought to a standstill" in the Kassa (Kosice) gendarmerie district (which included Carpatho-Ruthenia). Jaross himself was forced to take note of the unfavourable developments. In a letter sent to Minister of Trade and Transport Antal Kunder, the Minister of the Interior admitted that:

with the closure of Jewish shops, there are serious disruptions in the supply of consumer goods to the population of Carpatho-Ruthenia, since most of the merchants in this area are Jewish.

Economic difficulties resulting from the elimination of the Jews did not only arise in areas where large Jewish communities were deported. In Carpatho-Ruthenia, the proportion of Jews far exceeded the national average of 4.9 per cent. In Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, however, Jews accounted for a mere 1.8 per cent of the population. Even if we consider only towns of county status, the ratio is 3.1 per cent. Nevertheless, the deportation and ghettoisation of the relatively small Jewish community resulted in considerable economic and production difficulties. The elimination of the Jews soon created hold-ups in the food supply. In certain places (for example Kunhegyes and Dévaványa) there were not enough bakers left. Overnight, there was a grave shortage of technicians, engineers, watch makers, butchers, cobblers, shoemakers, furriers, tailors, tinkers and locksmiths. The only printing press in the Lower Jászság district (which also worked for the administration) ground to a halt. Crop yields were high throughout the country in 1944, including Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county. In order to get harvesting and thrashing work under way it was essential to service agricultural equipment. However, most of the mechanics qualified to carry out this work had been ghettoised. The deportation of Jewish veterinary surgeons created a near-catastrophic veterinary situation in the predominantly agricultural county. By the end of the summer, there were only 28 veterinary surgeons available instead of the required 62. As a result, thousands of animals remained unattended in certain areas (for example in the region of Kunhegyes), whilst in other places (for example in Karcag), the compulsory vaccination of livestock was not carried out. Traditional Jewish commerce was also hard hit by the deportations. There were hold-ups in the supply of fuel and building materials as well as in the trade in groceries, textiles, hardware and dry goods.
The government sensed the general problem. In the first half of April, the river surveying department in the Ministry of Agriculture proposed to Minister of Agriculture Béla Jurcsek, that "the notion of the 'economically valuable Jew' (wirtschaftlich wertvoller Jude) should be introduced in Hungary, following the German example." The department mentioned the grave shortage of engineers as a result of army drafts and provisions excluding Jews from certain professions, which had led to the situation nearly getting out of hand.

In spite of these circumstances, the quantity of work expected of the water conservancy service is not decreasing at all, added the author of the document. According to a note on the document, however, Jurcsek did not accept the proposals and disposed that the Jewish engineers employed by the water conservancy service should be discharged in accordance with the intentions of Prime Minister's Decree no. 1240/1944, since the continued employment of Jews would contravene the public interest related to the resolution of the Jewish question.

The attitude of the collaborationist government is illustrated well by the circumstances surrounding the issuing of Prime Minister's Decree no. 1540/1944. This piece of legislation, which forbade the employment of Jews in intellectual professions, was published on 25 April. Article 3 allowed Jewish professionals

be employed for a certain period of time... if it is unavoidably necessary for the seamless flow of economic life or the process of production.

(The procedure was fairly complicated. If there were no "Hungarian citizens of non-Jewish origin available for filling the post", then the firm in question had to file a request to the commissioner for professional unemployment affairs. The commissioner assessed the case and submitted it to the competent ministry, which submitted it to the government.) On the next day, 26 April, the decree was published once again. The only difference was that article 3 was simply omitted. According to the note of correction, the section in question had been "published by mistake" on the previous day. It is hard to imagine that any government would include an article in a decree by mistake. A different conclusion must therefore be drawn. In all probability, the cabinet, in hitherto unknown circumstances, changed its mind and decided that there were no Jews who are indispensable. Thus Lajos Szász's promise, mentioned earlier, that "the government considers production and maintaining the continuity of production even more important than the solution of the Jewish question" was not kept. The exact opposite was true.
This is all the odder as, according to the secret decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior on 7 April and intended to regulate the process of ghettoisation starting in mid-April, officials thought that:

skilled Jewish workers employed in plants, mines and large firms of strategic importance whose immediate replacement would impede production will be exempt from the purge.52

The government had to contend with several other problems, such as, for example, a shortage of capital on the part of the non-Jewish beneficiaries. A (significantly reduced) amount had to be paid for the shop, industrial estate, stock, etc. they took over or wished to take over, and there was rent to be paid, insurance fees, wages and taxes. Per Anger, first councillor at the Swedish legation in Budapest responsible for trade and economic affairs, reported on this matter to the Swedish Foreign Ministry in Stockholm:

the financial assets needed are not available, nor are those required to meet obligations towards banks and other creditors. In most cases, the only cover provided for such obligations were the stock and the equipment [confiscated from Jews]. Concerning the question of whether the stock will cover all the debts, and whether there will be sufficient capital left after liquidation, well-informed people are not willing to comment.

The government was aware of the size of this problem. On 23 August, Minister of Finance Lajos Reményi-Schneller proposed to the cabinet the introduction of a large state loan scheme. He justified the proposition with the increased demand for loans arising from "the total exclusion of the Jews from the economy and the ensuing obligations of Christian merchants and industrialists." The cabinet approved the idea, thereby shouldering a debt that also had inflationary consequences. Thus, in this respect, the elimination of the Jews created more economic burdens for the government than revenue.
Public administration, police and financial management bodies carrying out ghettoisation, deportation and the confiscation of assets were stretched to the limits and this extra burden didn't help the smooth operation of the state. In the summer of 1944, virtually the entire state apparatus was occupied with organising the elimination of the Jews. This prevailed over all issues, with the exception of defence. The case of the city of Sopron was typical. Financial officials could not handle the job of processing confiscated Jewish assets on their own. Therefore, sixty members of the mayor's staff had to help. This, however, resulted in the mayor's office practically closing down. The military and the public supply departments continued to operate, but other than that, only the most urgent of matters were attended to.
In certain cases, government measures concerning the confiscation and redistribution of Jewish assets triggered conflicts. A good example is the case of the wine trade in Jewish hands. In early June 1944, the National Association of Hungarian Wholesale Wine Dealers and Wine Brokers wrote to the Minister of Agriculture Jurcsek and requested him to sell the approximately 300,000 hecto-litres of wine confiscated pursuant to Prime Minister's Decree no. 1600/1944 (which "constitutes part of our national wealth") to the wholesalers. The National Cooperative of Hungarian Vintners reacted with indignation to this suggestion by the wholesalers. They were afraid that the ministry would sell off the table wines produced on the Great Plain (Alföld) at 24 fillérs per liter, the price set by the ministry's commissioner for prices. The arrival of large quantities of cheap wine on the market would have led to a fall in prices, which would have benefitted the wholesalers. "We consider Jewish wine as part of the national wealth," the vintners wrote, a view which they fully shared with the wholesalers.
A remark made by the representative of the Government Commissioner for Works of Art at the town of Losonc, shed light on a typical problem. Local painters had voiced their concern that "after eliminating the Jewish element, the market for objects of fine art will suffer a severe decline."
Removing Jews from certain professions, such as medicine, engineering and the law was an important means to the economic annihilation of Jewry. Of the three, it was especially the Aryanisation of medical practices which negatively affected the population. Loudmouthed racist ringleaders in the medical profession were present even before the German occupation. Their organisation, Magyar Orvosok Nemzeti Egyesülete (National Association of Hungarian Doctors: NAHD), wished to do damage to Jewish doctors with scant regard for the interests of public health. After the revisionist successes between 1938 and 1940, NAHD demanded that in the re-annexed territories, Jews should be allowed to become members of the chambers of medicine-that is, practise their profession-only up to the quotas set by the Jewish Laws (20, and later 6 per cent). Under these laws, not a single medical practice was shut down. They "merely" stipulated that no new Jewish member was to be admitted to the chambers until, due to natural causes the number of Jews declined below the set proportion. Such regulations created an impossible situation for young, newly qualified doctors. In the re-annexed territories, however, the chambers were re-established, thus in principle there was no legal obstacle to the demands made by NAHD. In the Upper Province 80 per cent, and in Northern Transylvania 44.5 per cent of doctors came under the scope of anti-Jewish laws. For Minister of the Interior Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer, who supervised healthcare, it was obvious that if the number of Jewish doctors practising in the newly re-annexed territories was restricted to 6 per cent in areas already facing a serious shortage of medical practitioners, the entire public health system would collapse. He resisted the demands of the NAHD and nationalised the healthcare system step by step, thus withdrawing it from the competence of the chambers. He then reallocated the practices among doctors at his own discretion and in conformity with the rationale of public health. In the course of 1942, owing to targeted labour service drafts, the situation of Jewish doctors deteriorated rapidly. Probably under the pressure of NAHD, many of them were assigned to unskilled manual labour. As a result, by the end of 1942, there was an alarming shortage of doctors. Minister of Defence Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy, who in any event was intent on rationalising and humanising the forced labour service, decided that from November 1942 on, doctors were to be drafted only for professional service. Some 1500 Jewish doctors were subsequently reassigned to medical service.
After the German occupation and the formation of the Sztójay government, the NAHD thought that the time had come for eliminating Jewish competition once and for all. The racist medical organisation demanded that the Ministry of the Interior discharge Jewish doctors in labour service. Even the Jaross-led ministry realised that the dismissal of hundreds of doctors would have led to the collapse of medical care.63 Jaross, however, showed his true self when, on 21 June 1944, he submitted a draft decree on the regulation of Jewish practitioners to the cabinet with the following arguments:

Successful medical treatment as is known, depends on a specific condition, namely the patient's trust in his doctor, while the doctor must display his expertise in conjunction with a certain ethical behaviour... There is no doubt that the said manifestations of trust and ethics cannot be satisfactorily expected towards and from doctors of the Jewish race.

The result of the draft was Prime Minister's Decree no. 2250/1944 "on medical practice by Jews and their membership in the chamber of medicine", which entered into force on 23 June. Section 1 of article 1 prescribed that "a Jewish doctor may only treat Jewish patients." Section 2, however, shows that the administration, sceptical as it was concerning the trust in and the ethics of Jewish doctors, did display a degree of rationality, stipulating that the prohibition "does not apply to giving first aid as well as to Jewish medical practice required on account of defense labour service."
Thus the total exclusion of Jewish doctors did not take place, even though this was the goal of NAHD. But the racists ensured their powerful influence when, in early June, the government set up the "government commission for the utilisation of the medical workforce". Although the commissioner was not accorded full competence in the area of health, he could exert considerable influence. The post was given to Antal Incze, a doctor and a prominent member of NAHD, Member of Parliament and a follower of former Prime Minister Béla Imrédy. His views are well illustrated by his June 1942 statement in Parliament that "in a short time" there would be no Jewish doctors in Hungary, since "there will be no Jews" in the country.
Nor did most members of the 1944 government think otherwise. The facts, however, did not favour their plans. According to a survey carried out by the national mobilisation department of the Ministry of the Interior, in all probability before the deportations, of the 13,771 members of the Medical Chamber, 4289 were Jews. In case of general mobilisation, a mere 2782 Christian doctors and "possibly a few hundred volunteer women doctors" would have been available for 6500 civilian medical posts. Thus, Jewish doctors were indispensable. This was to be felt soon after deportations and ghettoisation began. According to a letter sent to Jaross by the Mayor of Nagyvárad (Oradea),

the moving of the Jewish doctors of Nagyvárad into the ghetto has temporarily aggravated the healthcare situation in the city, even though six Jewish doctors, having been granted permission to stay outside, and fourteen assigned for labour service by the Minister of the Interior have been employed.

According to the sub-prefect of Máramaros (Maramures) county, the "removal" of Jewish doctors and pharmacists performing labour service "has given cause for concern". More than half of the general practitioners' posts in the county became vacant, all the gynaecologists and obstetricians were removed. On top of everything, typhus broke out in the city. On 22 May, Lieutenant General András Vincze, the commissioner for Carpatho-Ruthenia, sent a dramatic telegramme to Jaross:

All Jewish doctors and pharmacists are being removed from my area of operations. May I request their immediate and most necessary replacement, mainly on account of the outbreak of typhus?

As a result of the deportations, a single general practitioner remained in the Kisvárda district, which had a population of 55,000 in 18 villages. On 4 May, the National Social Security Institute wrote to the Minister of the Interior, requesting that:

some 600-700 non-Jewish doctors be made available for the Institute nationwide to replace Jewish doctors removed or detained, otherwise the Institute will be unable to ensure medical care.

The deportation of doctors performing labour service was nonsensical not only from the viewpoint of public healthcare. Under existing legislation, Jews in labour service were not to have been deported at all. Occasionally, call-up papers even opened the gates of collection camps for Jewish men. Despite this fact, several hundred Jewish doctors in labour service, who were performing essential work for national healthcare, were taken away.
The Ministry of the Interior received similar calls for help in great numbers from various parts of the country, thus from Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county and Zala county. In several places, the heads of local administration tried to get Jewish doctors exempted from ghettoisation. In reply to a draft proposal, suggesting that indispensable doctors and pharmacists should not be taken away, Secretary of State László Endre simply wrote: "On the contrary! To the ghettos and camps immediately!" An apt example of the disregard for the elementary interests of the population was the case of the doctors in Szolnok. On 2 June, the town was bombed. Several hundreds of severely wounded lay scattered in the streets or trapped under the rubble. Despite the fact that, under the aforementioned Prime Minister's Decree no. 2250/1944, Jewish doctors were allowed to give first aid to non-Jewish patients, the authorities assigned the Jewish doctors to mortuary porter duties. The "interests of production" and "the solution of the Jewish question" came into conflict once again. Those in power again gave preference to the latter.
The reallocation of Jewish-owned pharmacies and medical equipment could not be carried out at one stroke. Prime Minsiter's Decree no. 1370/1944 withdrew the licence to operate pharmacies from Jews and stated that the Minister of the Interior would allocate pharmacies following tenders. Pursuant to article 7,

the Jewish owner of a pharmacy is obliged to ensure further operation of the pharmacy until the new licensee or the representative of the local government takes over the pharmacy.

A month later, mass deportations began in the provinces. Thus the Jewish pharmacists were in no position to ensure operation stipulated by law. The relicensing of pharmacies and the inventorying of medical equipment, however, progressed with difficulty. In Szolnok, ten surgeries were closed. In Esztergom county, emergency hospitals and ambulance stations had to contend with a shortage of medical equipment, whilst the medical instruments of deported Jewish doctors were locked away. The Mayor of Újvidék (Novi Sad) did not wait for central instructions. He distributed the medical equipment to the German and Hungarian troops stationed in the city and to the local healthcare institutions. His was probably not the only case, which explains why, at the end of June, Incze ordered that all medical equipment formerly in Jewish ownership be locked away and re-allocations be frozen. According to his instructions,

as to the use of medical instruments thus appropriated and their re-allocation, the relevant measures will be taken at a later date.

Thereby, the commissioner dealt another blow to public healthcare in Hungary, which had already been shaken by the deportation of Jewish personnel.
In conclusion, it is clear that the deportation of the Jews and the pillaging of Jewish assets caused considerable disruption to the life of the country. Under peacetime conditions, the calculations of the anti-Semites may have been economically sound: the collection and the processing of Jewish assets, the central reallocation of Jewish jobs and wealth or, in other words, the redistribution of one-fifth of national wealth may have resulted in an economic upturn. In the short run, however, in a country whose territory was continuously shrinking and which was plummeting towards defeat under increasingly chaotic conditions, the deportation of the Jews had a number of tangible disadvantageous consequences even for the Christian majority. In theory, the economically rational concept (of ransacking Hungarian Jewry, confiscating their personal and real assets and transferring their jobs and wealth to Christians) proved to be plainly irrational in the given conditions. Thereby, a scheme that was originally intended to produce economic benefits (ransacking hundreds of thousands of Hungarian citizens and sending them to their deaths) actually resulted in economic damages and problems in public supply. The given conditions must be taken to include the chaos and the confusion caused by the continuously deteriorating military situation, the truly "irrational", in some cases even pathological, anti-Semitism of László Endre and numerous other members of the government and the measures that resulted from this. This is what we can call the "rationality paradox" of the Holocaust in Hungary.
Even some government representatives were forced to admit to this, initially in private and then publicly as well. During a cabinet meeting on 1 June, Minister of Economics without Portfolio Béla Imrédy, pointed out that:

from a social policy perspective, not much has happened since the current government took office... but many people have grown rich recently. It would be expedient to investigate this increase in riches.

A month later, Imrédy said in a speech to distinguished guests, industrialists and merchants gathered in the town hall of Pécs:

Regarding the Jewish question, I have to admit that mistaken solutions have led to damage and the deterioration of some material goods that has affected the entire nation.

As far as the reasons were concerned, the Minister of Economics was pointing in the right direction:

The anomalies resulted from the fact that we were not prepared for this operation. The solution of the Jewish question was the biggest operation that has been carried out on the body of Hungary for decades. Such an operation cannot be performed clinically, sometimes blood must be shed.

Lest his words should be understood as they were meant, he hastened to add that:

naturally, the word blood must not be taken literally. I would like to affirm here and now that Hungarians do not have the blood of a single murdered Jew on their hands.

The disastrous consequences could not be concealed from the Germans either. At the end of July, Veesenmayer reported to the Wilhelmstrasse:

Generally speaking, production figures have dropped due to the elimination of the Jews, to different degrees in the various sectors.

Publicly acknowledging the difficulties Minister of the Interior Jaross tried to play down the issue:

It is possible that there were temporary stoppages and minor problems in certain plants here and there in the course of the solution of the Jewish question. Such a significant issue, however, cannot be resolved perfectly from one day to the next.

He went on to add:

The evaluation of the problems is currently under way. We are already in a position
to deny the notion that Hungarians cannot live without Jews.

The facts detailed above point in the opposite direction.

 

Gábor Kádár - Zoltán Vági
are the authors of Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the Wealth of Hungarian Jews, Budapest-New York, Central European University Press, 2004.