The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

I must dissent from Istvan Deak’s ironic but incorrect conclusion in his review of Randolph L. Braham’s The Politics of Genocide [NYR, February 4] based on a leap of inference from another source which is justified neither by that source nor by Braham’s work. Firstly, he cites Lucjan Dobroszycki’s assertion^* that the determining factors in Jewish survival during the Holocaust were “1) geography and topography, 2) relations between Jews and non-Jews, and 3) ‘the status of a given country in the German scheme for occupied Europe’ ” (not listed in the order of importance). My own work, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization During the Holocaust (Free Press, 1979), actually studied twenty-two states and regions occupied and allied to Germany to test several competing hypotheses which might account for the difference in the percent of Jews becoming victims. Two variables alone explained most of the difference: the success of the prewar anti-Semitic movement before 1936 in each state and the SS grip over that state in 1941 which was inversely related to its political status. Geography and topography alone explain nothing: the distance between Estonia and Finland is about the same as the route between Denmark and Sweden pioneered by the Danes to rescue the Jews and no Jews were known to have fled to Finland although twenty to twenty-five thousand Estonians fled there in 1944 to escape Soviet domination. Exploiting physical resources always depended on a defense network to help Jews evade the Nazi net.

Prof. Deak’s subsequent inference is egregious: this is the assertion that Hungary’s political status changed between March and July 1944 giving the Germans power to rule by decree through Jewish councils. The Jewish councils did not rule: the government of Hungary did throughout. Hungary was still a self-governing ally of Germany between March and July 1944 able to authorize or cancel deportations as Admiral Horthy did in July. The fact that the Hungarian government could call it off affirms its responsibility. As Braham indicated, the deportations were neither a motive for German intervention nor a non-negotiable demand implying sanctions for noncompliance. Regardless of one’s judgment about Jewish leadership in Hungary (and mine is perhaps more negative than that of Braham), one cannot reasonably conclude (as Deak does) that “the Jewish Councils caused the Jews in the provinces to be put into ghettoes, deported, and exterminated” when deportations were authorized by the Hungarian government and the full police power of the state was mobilized for this goal. Indeed, Adolf Eichmann recalled in an interview granted in Argentina prior to his capture that

It was clear to me that I, as a German, could not demand the Jews from the Hungarians. We had had too much trouble with that in Denmark. So I left the entire matter to the Hungarian authorities. Dr. Endre, who became one of the best friends I have had in my life, put out the necessary regulations, and Baky and his Hungarian gendarmerie carried them out. Once these two secretaries gave their orders, the Ministry of the Interior had to sign them. [Life, December 5, 1961, p. 110]

Similarly, the German ambassador, Veesenmeyer, testified after the war that the deportations would have been impossible without “the enthusiastic participation of the entire Hungarian police apparatus.”

As in Hungary, prewar anti-Semitism most often accounted for the readiness of states to cooperate in segregating the Jews; segregation, in turn, made it more likely they would be caught if deportation raids were executed. Segregation had to be preceded by definition (for registration and enumeration) and stripping the Jews of jobs, property, rights, and statuses. Since German allies and satellites (including Hungary throughout the war) had the sovereign power to agree or refrain from agreement to deport Jews, it was their decision to cooperate which was the promixate cause of Jewish vulnerability in those states. Almost two-thirds of the processing of Jews toward their destruction—definition and stripping—occurred in Hungary prior to the German occupation in 1944.

Thirdly, Deak’s “frightening conclusion…that for the Jews in a given country to have had a chance of survival, that country had to be loyal to the Germans” is unwarranted. German allies and satellites did have the greatest opportunity to prevent or defer deportations as Finland consistently did and Bulgaria, France, and Rumania did after initial collaboration: Jewish evaders (non-victims) were up to 99.5 percent, 80 percent, 70 percent, and 40 percent there respectively. Ninety percent of the Jews of Denmark and 80 percent of the Jews of Italy were saved despite the German takeover and raids (undertaken by German police and troops since Danish and Italian police were not trusted) after German occupation was provoked by what Germany saw as these states’ disloyalty and sabotage. About half the Jews of Belgium and Norway were saved although these states were occupied throughout the war. What we do find in every instance in which the majority of Jews were saved is that the authorities of the dominant church protested (justifying noncooperation and subversion of German orders); and in states without the freedom to deter deportations, resistance movements and/or specialized social defense movements to aid the Jews soon emerged to affirm that they were their brothers’ keepers. To find a road through forest, frontier or sea leading toward a sanctuary when confronted by a sudden and catastrophic threat, a chain of helping hands is needed.

Helen Fein

New Paltz, New York To the Editors:

Permit me to offer a correction on two grave errors I discovered in Professor Istvan Deak’s review of Braham’s Genocide…. I must state in advance that in both instances Professor Deak is not to blame. He got them from Braham, who made the errors in the first place. On page 26, in the second column, just under the drawing, Professor Deak wrote that the Council Members were exempt from wearing the Yellow Star, and from the other restrictive measures. False. The Council Members enjoyed no such exemptions. Just as all other Jews, they were forced to wear the Yellow Stars and were subject to all other restrictions. The Presidential Troika, however, Samu Stern, Charles Wilhelm, and Ernö Petö, did receive in August the Gubernatorial Exemptions from Regent Horthy, in the Edict 2040/1944ME. of August 22, 1944. Braham committed this error on page 429/30 in the Genocide, but 353 pages later Braham contradicted himself, when he reported that the Trio applied for and did receive the Gubernatorial Exemptions. Now then, if they were exempt from the very beginning, why on earth would they apply for it in the end of August 1944? Furthermore the Zionist leaders were not exempted either, only the Four Leaders of the Vaadat Ezra Vhatzalah, i.e., the leaders of the Rescue Committee, Dr. Otto Komoly, Dr. Rezsö Kasztner, Joel Brand, and Andreas Biss, and their families. They indeed enjoyed complete exemptions from all restrictions. They got it, from the Gestapo which appreciated their collaboration and their efforts to fill the Nazi luggages with gold, diamonds, hard currency and other valuables.

The other fallacy is, in the last column on page 27, the reviewer said, “The German action through the Jewish Council caused the Jews in the provinces to be put in ghettoes, deported and exterminated.” This is utterly false on two accounts. First of all, in Hungary, not the Germans but the Royal Hungarian Government ordered and carried out the deportations through its own gendarmes and civil servants. Sure, the Gestapo and the Nazi Foreign Ministry (Ambassador Veesenmayer) pressed for it, but the whole de-Jew-ification “cleansing” operation was a Hungarian enterprise from A to Z. Dr. Deak referred to the valuable document collection called Vádirat filled with edicts from Hungarian ministries, foremost among them the Secret Edict 6163/144 res. from the Ministry of the Interior ordering the round up and deportation-called-evacuation of the Jews. The Hungarian ministries acted and carried out the devilish plan of ridding Hungary of its Jews through their own officials and own security forces (gendarmes and police). The Jewish Council had nothing to do with it. The only exception was the Judenrat in Budapest, appointed by Eichmann, which did send out summons to fellow Jews to be arrested, interned, and in the end deported. The Stern Judenrat accepted such a list almost daily from both the German as well as the Hungarian Gestapo (László Koltay) and ordered those fellow Jews to report at Rökk Szilárd utca 26 for internment. The Judenrat (Stern-Wilhelm-Petö) did this in March-April and the first part of May, 1944. At no other place in all of Hungary had the Judenrat anything to do with the deportations of fellow Jews….

Dr. Albert B. Belton

New York, New York

To the Editors:

Istvan Deak ends his review of Randolph Braham’s Politics of Genocide with a misleading dictum. “The frightening conclusion we must draw is that for the Jews in a given country to have had a chance of survival, that country had to be loyal to the Germans.” In the preceding sentences Deak tells that Hitler’s two murderous assaults on the Hungarian Jews during 1944 were directly connected with two Hungarian attempts to surrender to the Allies. His conclusion thus implies that it was directly harmful to the Jews if a European government tried to join the Allies. Frightening indeed! But is the rule true? Hardly! What about Rumania, where the government saved the remnant of the Jewish community in the late summer of 1944 by successfully jumping onto the Allied side? What about Denmark, where the society saved the Jews while the government never really left the Allied side? Even Deak’s logic is wrong in his concluding sentences. He argues syllogistically from some Hungarian acts of commission to derive a general law of omission.

The conclusion is not the only misleading part of the review. Throughout it Deak snipes at the notion that democratic behavior and liberal ideology were useful or would have been useful to the Jewish cause. Early on he remarks: “the conduct of several Axis countries such as Italy, Bulgaria and even Rumania was…more humanitarian than that of some neutral and Allied powers.” We swallow that half truth only because it seems a passing wisecrack and because Deak attributes it to Braham, mentioning “thirty-two long chapters” of good scholarship. There-upon Deak proposes that the Jews of Hungary were perfectly correct between the wars in tying their fate to Horthy and his aristocratic entourage instead of steering a middle-class liberal political course. Well, certainly they chose the easy way, the Magyar nationalist way and a parochially comfortable way; but were they above criticism?

“Many factors determined the fate of the Jews in Hitler’s Europe, but the least important factor of all was the democratic or undemocratic character of the countries where they lived.” Deak makes this central statement of his review in a context that implies its applicability to interwar as well as to wartime Europe. Patently it does not apply. The British Jews of interwar Europe were saved, and they were saved by Liberalism and democracy. The emigrant Jews of interwar Europe were saved, and they too were saved by Liberalism and democracy. The bulk of the Soviet Jews were saved also, and this because they were ruled by a regime which until 1948 was too inhibited by its residual of European democratic socialism to become overtly anti-Semitic. Even when Deak’s statement is applied to Hitler’s Fortress Europe it does not really hold water. Again, what about Denmark? And what about Hungary? Deak labels the Horthy regime as “often anti-Semitic and unquestionably antidemocratic, antiliberal and antisocialist.” Well and good for the context of 1919-1939! But in the context of Festung Europa it has seemed to many historians that some at least of Horthy’s clique were astoundingly and anachronistically liberal, and that precisely because of their gentlemanly nineteenth-century Liberalism the Jews of Hungary evaded Hitler as long as they did.