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The Jewish Underground in Hungary Saved Thousands

(AP) Alon Bernstein - Just before Nazi Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Jewish youth leaders there formed an underground network that in the coming months would save tens of thousands of fellow Jews from the gas chambers. Hungary was home to 900,000 Jews before the Nazi invasion. In the 10 months after the Nazi invasion, 568,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in Hungary. David Gur, now 97, oversaw a massive forgery operation that provided false documents for Jews and non-Jewish members of the Hungarian resistance. "I was an 18-year-old adolescent when the heavy responsibility fell upon me," he said. In December 1944, he was arrested at the forgery workshop and brutally interrogated and imprisoned. The Jewish underground broke him out of prison later that month. The forged papers were used by Jewish youth movements to operate a smuggling network and run Red Cross houses that saved thousands. At least 7,000 Jews were smuggled out of Hungary, through Romania, to ships that would bring them to British-controlled Palestine. At least 10,000 forged passes offering protection were distributed to Budapest's Jews, and 6,000 Jewish children and accompanying adults were saved in houses ostensibly under the protection of the International Red Cross. Robert Rozett, a senior historian at Yad Vashem, called this "the largest rescue operation" of European Jews during the Holocaust.
2023-02-02 00:00:00
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