Some of lesser-known events of last months of World War II and the ‘end of the Holocaust’ are to do with the German and Hungarian struggle against the rapidly advancing Red Army in late 1944 and early 1945 which resulted in the Siege of Budapest and the resultant Red Army atrocities against the Hungarian people such as the Rape of Budapest. (1)
These atrocities have been traditionally justified by jews and leftists – sometimes both – by referring to the alleged ‘anti-Semitic atrocities’ committed by the Hungarian Arrow Cross – especially the informal Arrow Cross militia members called the Nyilas – in support of the anti-Communist struggle and their German allies.
These ‘anti-Semitic atrocities’ allegedly occurred from mid-October to early November 1944 in the days before the Siege of Budapest and the claims are based – as far as I can ascertain – entirely on ‘eyewitness testimony’.
Randolph Braham’s 1981 ‘The Politics of Genocide’ which is still the main academic study of the ‘Holocaust’ in Hungary to this day narrates the first of these occurrences as follows:
‘Armed with various types of weapons, including automatic rifles and grenades, the Nyilas gangs slaughtered several hundred Jews in the Yellow-Star houses and labor service units during the night of October 15-16. One of their excuses was that some labor servicemen in possession of arms had shown resistance a few hours earlier, at 31 Nephszinhaz Street and 4 Teleki Square. Most of the victims were taken from Yellow-Star houses after the inhabitants were first ordered to gather in the cellar shelters by the invading gangs. Another relatively large group were labor servicemen caught in Obuda. They were herded barbarically towards Pest and shot into the Danube from the Margit Bridge and the Chain (Lanc) Bridge.’ (2)
So here we have ‘several hundred jews’ who were taken from ‘Yellow-Star houses’ (i.e., small one building traditional ghettos for jews) and labour service units – basically the Hungarian equivalent of German forced labour for inmates of concentration camps – who were murdered by the Nyilas in the ‘cellar shelters’ of the ‘Yellow-Star houses’ – for which we have no evidence nor photographs showing such a thing from the Soviet authorities who would have found examples of this had it been true as it would have been fantastic propaganda – and/or were marched towards Pest and then ‘shot into the Danube’ from the Margit Bridge – the Margaret Bridge - and the Chain (Lanc) Bridge - the Szechenyi Chain Bridge – in Budapest.
This – Braham tells us – was explicitly because of pro-Soviet resistance/guerilla activities that had just occurred with jewish male labour service members fighting against the Hungarian military, police and the Nyilas on 15th October 1944 at two addresses in Budapest at 31 Nephszinhaz Street and 4 Teleki Square, which resulted in the Nyilas engaging in reprisals against the jews for this action.
Braham tells us of a similar chain of events that occurred on 2nd November 1944 outside of Budapest writing that:
‘The plight of the Jewish trench-digging companies worsened considerably after the Soviet forces launched a new offensive against the Hungarian capital on November 2. Shortly thereafter Soviet armoured columns reached Gyalpuszta and Kispest, just 13 kilometres (8.1 miles) from Budapest, and the German and Hungarian armies began to withdraw in panic towards Budapest and Transdanubia. The Jewish companies suffered through two weeks of privations, murders, and atrocities while digging the defence lines: they were herded along the roadbeds and trenches by the accompanying Nyilas and gendarmes, who mercilessly shot those who could not keep pace. Some companies were subjected to particularly brutal treatment while crossing Budapest or when stationed temporarily in nearby communities. The Jews were constantly mistreated by the Nyilas guards, who often also stole their meagre provisions. Many of the Jews, including Jewish ‘foremen commanders,’ were shot whimsically on flimsy pretexts; this happened, for example, in Dunaharaszti, Pestzentimre, Pecel, and Domony. The number of Jewish casualties was especially high when the companies were marched over the Horthy Miklos bridge in Budapest: The Nyilas soldiers and guards would amuse themselves by shooting straggling jews into the Danube. The slaughter assumed such dimensions that special police units had to be called out to protect the Jews from the maddened Nyilas.’ (3)
Now here we see a similar situation where the Nyilas and Hungarian police units – the gendarmes – are rapidly retreating with the jewish labour service members; where the Nyilas and Hungarian police units are allegedly engaging in summary executions of the jews and then drive them over the Miklos Horthy bridge – now the Petofi Bridge – ‘shooting straggling jews into the Danube’.
The problem with this narrative is simply enough and is illustrated by looking at photographs of the Miklos Horthy Bridge at the time which we can see from this photo from 1937 when it was first opened: (4)
And this undated but clearer photo around the same time: (5)
The problem should be fairly obvious: there is no realistic way to shoot jews off of the Miklos Horthy Bridge unless you had them stand on the rails, which while possible is rather unlikely at best. Put another way Braham’s account based on the ‘eyewitness testimony’ recorded after the war doesn’t make any practical sense.
The same holds true for the Margit (Margaret) Bridge: (6)
Similarly, the Szechenyi Chain Bridge has similar issues and is probably even harder to shoot people off of: (7)
Thus, we can immediately see that Braham’s account of the Nyilas and Hungarian police units shooting hundreds if not thousands of jews off of these three bridges in Budapest is not only extremely unlikely but nigh impossible if just because of sheer impracticability of doing so.
The further problem with the idea that:
‘In 1944-1945, Hungarian Nazi-collaborators from the Arrow Cross shot thousands of Jews on the banks of the Danube.’ (8)
Is that when in 2019 a jewish team from Israel used sonar to scan the bottom of the river Danube between these bridges and found no bones or human remains whatsoever, which is extremely improbable if these events did occur. (9)
We can this by looking at where these bridges are geographically in Budapest – the river runs south so down on these maps – with the Margit (Margaret) Bridge to the Szechenyi Chain Bridge first:
Next to the Szechenyi Chain Bridge to the Miklos Horthy Bridge:
The point is very simple: if the Nyilas and Hungarian police units did shoot hundreds if not thousands of jews off of these three bridges – or even from the riverbanks which is an altered version of the bridge claim – then where are the bodies?
The point being even if we suppose that the hundreds if not thousands of jews were shot into the Danube by the Nyilas and Hungarian police units in late 1944 then a significant number of these corpses would have become trapped at the river banks over time and some of these in turn would have sunk to the bottom – probably in part due to animal predation and the Hungarian authorities having other things on their mind (the advancing Red Army) than cleaning up large numbers of corpses of jews floating in the Danube - leaving the bones that would have been found by the Israeli team but weren’t.
Why?
Because this didn’t in fact happen.
The most that has been found is 20 skeletons of women and children near the Margit (Margaret) Bridge in 2011 who may have been jewish and were treated as such when it came to burial in 2016. (10)
However, these could also be explained by something that Braham states as an aside later in his account:
‘Most of the patients arrived in critical condition. There were hundreds of suicide cases, mostly among the converted and highly assimilated jews – those who suddenly found their world in shambles; others were brought in with serious injuries following armed attacks by the Nyilas – some of them after having been shot into the Danube or in the wake of Soviet bombardments.’ (11)
Put in other words: they may well have been killed as the result of Soviet artillery bombardments of Budapest and the subsequent battles of the Siege of Budapest that lasted between December 1944 and February 1945.
Thus, we can see that in spite of all the claims to the contrary: there is no real evidence whatsoever that thousands of jews were shot into the Danube in Budapest by the Arrow Cross in late 1944.
References
(1) On this see for example: Andrea Peto, 2003, ‘Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna in 1945’, pp. 129-148 in Richard Bessel, Dirk Schumann (Eds.), 2003, ‘Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York; on the struggle for recognition of this outside of Hungary see Andrea Peto, 2021, ‘The New Monument to Victims of Military Sexual Violence in Budapest’, Hungarian Studies Review, Vol. 48, pp. 209-215
(2) Randolph Braham, 1981, ‘The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary’, 1st Edition, Columbia University Press, pp. 829-830
(3) Ibid., p. 837
(4) https://pestbuda.hu/en/cikk/20220910_horthy_miklos_bridge_was_built_eighty_five_years_ago_after_the_post_war_reconstruction_it_became_petofi_bridge
(5) Idem.
(6) https://pestbuda.hu/uploads/media/news/0001/04/thumb_3864_news_big.jpg
(7) https://historicbridges.org/hungary/chainbridge/chain_original_1904.jpg
(8) https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-remains-of-holocaust-victims-unearthed-in-sweep-of-the-danube/
(9) Idem.
(10) https://www.timesofisrael.com/remains-of-jewish-holocaust-victims-laid-to-rest-in-hungary/
(11) Braham, Op. Cit., p. 864