Discusses the process of the economic annihilation of the Jews in Hungary, who– from the economic point of view – were more influential than any other Jewish community in Europe. Following the German occupation in March 1944 the collaborating Hungarian government attempted to assert its claim concerning the complete confiscation of Jewish assets at all stages of the road leading to the extermination camps. The cooperation with the Germans proved to be the most problematic in this area. The story of the Jewish Gold Train is a relatively small but all the more emblematic chapter of the economic annihilation. The circumstances of the freight’s assembling, the German-Hungarian conflicts concerning the train, the looting attempts, the fate of the assets seized by the Allies (double victimization of the survivors) provide the reader with an insight into the history of the repeated looting of the Hungarian Jewry The book analyzes the role played by SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Becher, one of the most controversial and mysterious figures in the Hungarian and universal history of the Holocaust. Becher, delegated to Hungary by Himmler, administered and benefited from the confiscation of an enormous amount of Jewish assets.
- Cover
- Front matter
- Title page
- copyright page
- Table of Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- LIST OF TABLES
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- PREFACE
- PROLOGUE: The specifics of the genocide againstHungarian Jews
- PART I. RATIONALITY AND HOLOCAUST: SELF-FINANCING GENOCIDE
- 1. Hungarians and Jews
- 2. The demography and sociology of the Jews before the German occupation of Hungary
- 3. The economic status of Hungarian Jews
- 4. The wealth of the Hungarian Jews
- 5. The wealth of Hungarian Jews in international comparison
- 6. From crisis to crisis: Anti-Semitic concepts and practice(1919–1936)
- 7. Race-protectionism, the wealth of Jews, Aryanization (1936–1944)
- 8. The road to the Holocaust: Hungarian Jews during the Second World War (1939–1944)
- 9. 1944—The looting of Jewish wealth and its main problems: Speed, legal controversies, institutional rivalry, and the Germans
- 10. Lofty goals and disillusioning reality
- 11. Self-financing genocide 1: From death camps to budget, or: The Reich, occupied Europe, and Operation Reinhard
- 12. Self-financing genocide 2: Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German budget, and the postwar fate of Hungarian Jewish property and the Melmer deposits
- 13. Self-financing genocide 3: The profit to the Hungarian budget
- 14. Multiple plunder: The fate of Hungarian Jewish asset sat the end of the war and after 1945
- PART II. LEGEND AND REALITY: THE STORY OF KURT BECHER
- 1. The character and the sources
- 2. Soldier, businessman, bureaucrat, mass murderer?Becher’s career until 1944
- 3. Artificial chaos: Becher’s position in Hungary
- 4. In the gateway to success: The Weiss Manfréd affair
- 5. The Kasztner affair
- 6. Stopping deportations and death marches from Budapest
- 7. Halting the mass extermination of the Jews
- 8. Becher: Savior of the Pest ghetto and Chief Inspector of the concentration camps?
- 9. Evacuation: Removal of the Hungarian industry to the Reich
- 10. Becher’s personal gain
- 11. Assessment of Becher’s character
- PART III. THE STORY OF THE HUNGARIAN JEWISHGOLD TRAIN
- 1. Assembling the contents of the Gold Train
- 2. The train’s journey
- 3. The trucks and Toldy’s journey
- 4. International legal background and problems of definition
- 5. The fate of those contents of the Gold Train which fell intoAmerican hands (1945–1957)
- 6. Hungarian attempts to recover the contents of the Gold Train
- 7. Critique of U.S. restitution policy and practice pursued in relation to the Gold Train
- 8. The fate of the treasure that fell under French control
- 9. The value of the contents of the Gold Train
- 10. The historiography of the Gold Train
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- APPENDIX
- ABBREVIATIONS
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES
- INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES
- SUBJECT INDEX
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