Labor Service

In 1940, Henrik Werth, Chief of Staff of the Hungarian Royal Army was of the opinion that drafting Hungarian Jews into forced labor units served a double goal. On the one hand, this way Jews “could not shirk military service”, and, on the other hand, sending them to distant areas could also prevent the Jews from “engaging in harmful activities in the hinterland.”

In addition, since Jewish forced laborers were often conscripted individually by the so-called SAS draft letters (SAS was an abbreviation of the Hungarian words: hurry, immediately, urgent), the system also provided opportunity for the removal of specific persons targeted because of economic or political reasons.

According to historian Randolph Braham, by 1942, the Hungarian Royal Army’s personnel in the occupied Soviet territories reached over 200,000, including 39,000 Jewish forced laborers. Minister of Defense Vilmos Nagybaconi Nagy believed that around 50,000 forced laborers served in the second half of 1942, but only some 6-7,000 of them returned home after the Don Disaster (mid-January, 1943).

This extremely high rate of loss of forced laborers was not only due to the advance of the Red Army, but rather to the cruelty of the Hungarian guards, and the tasks they assigned for the weaponless forced labor-men. They were tasked to do life-threatening operations in the frontline, like removing land mines. Forced laborers were also required to carry the so-called “Spanish horses” ahead of the Hungarian army trenches. A “Spanish horse” was a construction composed of two large wooden beams densely wrapped in barbed wire. At three meters long, it weighted between eighty and one hundred kilograms. In the autumn nights of 1942, two laborers were forced to carry each piece to the front line near the River Don and connect them to create a line of “Spanish horses” against a potential Soviet field attack. Apart from the painful process of carrying these materials, many forced laborers were shot during this work, some of them thanks to “friendly fire.”

In quite a few companies, the guards took away the winter clothes of the forced laborers. We know of several company commanders who, in the extremely cold Ukrainian winter ordered conscripts to climb the frozen trees and sing like birds until their arms got so tired they could no longer hold on, and they fell with frozen limbs. First Lieutenant Dr. Károly Toronyi not only ordered the Jewish forced laborers he had punished to sit outside in the freezing night, but even ordered water to be poured on them. He also laid those who were unfit for work on the snow during the day, and in the event of an air raid, he led the laborers out of hiding, so that as many of them as possible would be injured or killed. It is also true, however, that there were some particularly civilized commanders who treated the forced laborers decently, even close to the Soviet frontline.

In July 1942, Béla Zsolt, a leftist journalist and publicist, was called up for the auxiliary labor service. According to his own admission (see on this Béla Zsolt’s Nine Suitcases), the then already respected writer was sent to the Soviet-occupied territories with a massage to his commander that his return home was “undesirable from a Christian national point of view”. Nevertheless, Béla Zsolt did return and his post-war writings are important sources on the relationship between the guards and the conscripts. He finds, that generally, Hungarian anti-Semites tended to be a tiny little more lenient with the wealthy classes than with the highly educated people, and Zsolt tries to interpret this phenomenon in a kind of social communication sphere: “…we, the intellectuals, were no longer given any mercy. We were hated even more than the rich. ‘I want to see doctors alongside the horses’ – shouted Major Körösztös when we arrived in Kiev…” Körösztös, elsewhere Major Keresztes, was the commander of the IV Corps, had a reputation being a sadistic, malicious Jew-hater. His wish, quoted here, is a reference to the fact that in the difficult conditions, horses appeared to be not strong enough for the challenging, bad-quality roads and the extreme weather. Instead of them, forced laborers had to drag the army carts full of war supplies for hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine towards the Don River’s bend.

According to an unpublished manuscript entitled the History of the BSZKRT’s Trade Union,

on April 25, 1942, 126 members of the trade union received emergency SAS draft calls for forced labor. “The Hungarian political elite wanted to get rid of the leaders of the working class all at one time, hence, most of these people were called up for forced labor service at the same time.” They were sent to the 401st Special Labor Service Company, of which only 28 returned home from the Soviet territories. The presence of colleagues, the feeling of collegiality could help individuals and smaller groups to survive the inhumane circumstances of wartime forced labor. The employees of the public transport company drafted because of their labor rights activism wore the black uniform of their company even during their labor service. They always tried to stick together, and to make decisions together, for example, when one of them had been offered a place in the 401st Labor Service Company’s kitchen, which was an opportunity that could influence the alimentation of the whole group. A shared occupation could cause bonding among other forced laborers as well, attorneys especially were often seen trying to keep company with one another. However, counter-examples are also important: Sándor Reisz, a Budapest butcher who, despite being too old, had been called up for labor service at the initiative of his direct business competitor, died near the Soviet Front. According to the post-war testimony of the vice-president of the MÜNE, an association of far-right nationalist lawyers, during the war they had drawn up a list on the basis of which many Jewish lawyers were called up for labor service.

Zoltán Singer, who was conscripted from Northern Transylvania to the 110/34 Auxiliary Labor Service Company, in his recollections mentions the local trade organization, the Baross Association, which made sure that the list of those called up for forced labor included the “prominent members of the local Jewish population”. Labor service was, thus, also a method of breaking down social hierarchies at local or occupational level, and of favoring non-Jewish groups. Similar examples can be found in later forms of the forced labor service, such as those at Bor, Csepel Island and other sites. Despite all these stories, it must be acknowledged that, from the spring of 1944 onwards, forced labor was in many cases a refuge from the threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps.

Jewish internees in the Kistarcsa internment camp. May 20, 1944.
© Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár

Forced laborers in the internment camp at the Weiss Manfréd factory in Csepel. Third from the left is attorney Andor Glückstahl.
© Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár

Group photos of forced laborers
© Holokauszt Emlékközpont

Group photos of forced laborers
© Holokauszt Emlékközpont