Self-Financing Genocide: the Gold Train, the Becher case and the Wealth of the Hungarian Jews - Gabor Kadar, Zoltan Vagi

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.

There is no doubt that one of the most tragic chapters in Hungarian history was written in the year that followed March 1944. In a short space of time Hungary was occupied by the armies of two global powers, in the course of which the whole country became a war zone and more than 40 percent of its national assets were destroyed.

This was not only a period of irrecoverable loss, but also one that saw the destruction of the Hungarian Jews, virtually the last intact Jewish community remaining in Central and Eastern Europe. The large number of people who were looted and the quantity of the wealth that was seized as well as the speed with which all this was done made the liquidation of the Hungarian Jews a unique chapter in the global history of the Holocaust.  From the Authors' Prologue

Central European University Press 2001, hardcover

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