Death Head

This day (April 16) in 1944, the Hungarian government ordered the registration of all Jews and the confiscation of their property. At that point in the Holocaust, Hungary was home to the largest surviving Jewish population in Europe. That would soon come to a brutal end. For years, Hungary’s Jews thought they may be spared the worst. Regent Miklós Horthy (though an antisemite who had passed discriminatory laws in the 1920s and 30s) repeatedly refused German demands for mass deportations. Hungarian Jews served in labor battalions on the Eastern Front instead of being shipped to death camps. Then, in a single month, everything changed. On March 19, 1944, German troops occupied Hungary. Horthy was sidelined. A pro-Nazi puppet government took power. Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest with his Sonderkommando and immediately set to work. Within weeks, the Hungarian authorities (who were eager to collaborate with the Nazis) began the systematic robbery and isolation of the country’s roughly 760,000–780,000 Jews. On April 16, the process accelerated: Jews were forced to register every asset. Homes, businesses, jewelry, cash, and even furniture were seized under the guise of “Aryanization.” Then, ghettos sprang up - starting first in the Carpathian region. Yellow stars became mandatory. The Hungarian state and its German masters had prepared the ground for the fastest, most efficient deportation operation of the entire Holocaust. From mid-May to early July 1944, 147 trains carried approximately 434,000–440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eichmann was personally obsessed with speed. Even as the Red Army approached, and Heinrich Himmler began issuing orders to slow or halt the exterminations (to hide evidence as the war turned against Germany), Eichmann ignored the signals and pushed the machinery harder. Trains arrived at a special ramp built at Birkenau just for Hungarian Jews. Selection was brutal and swift. The vast majority, around 80%, were gassed and cremated within hours of arrival. There were so many bodies that the SS resorted to burning corpses (and sometimes living Jews) in massive pits behind the crematoria. In just 56 days, more Jews were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau than in any comparable period of the war; and by the time the killing machine between Hungary and Poland wound down, nearly half a million Hungarian Jews had been wiped from existence. This is why, while many nations may in fact believe they take “never again” seriously, Jews can never again accept being wholly reliant for their very existence on the goodwill of others. Only as a sovereign people in their homeland of Israel can Jews defend themselves, have a voice in the world, and ultimately control their own destinies.

Iranian regime planning to execute first female protester. Bita Hemmati, is set to be executed by hanging alongside her husband for taking part in anti-regime protests in January. Where are western feminists? Where is Jane Fonda? Where is Amal Clooney? They are silent.

Did you know one of the earliest organized attempts at wholesale extermination of Jews in German lands occurred 650 years before the Nazis? Believe it. In April 1298, the Holy Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war between King Adolf of Nassau and Albrecht of Austria. One German knight named Rintfleisch claimed he received a direct mission from heaven: to wipe out “the accursed race of the Jews.” Under Rintfleisch's banner, armed mobs swept through Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria. They went town-to-town burning entire Jewish communities alive at the stake. In just a few months, Rintfleisch and his murderous goons destroyed 146 Jewish communities and massacred up to 100,000 Jews. The pattern, at different levels, would be essentially "rinse and repeat": when central authority collapses or the government needs someone to blame, the Jews become prey. That was the existential condition of the Jews before they regained their sovereignty more than six centuries later with the State of Israel.