2004 Days of Remembrance

For Justice and Humanity
Days of Remembrance, April 18-25, 2004

“In the name of justice and humanity let all freedom loving people rally to this righteous undertaking.”

— President Franklin D. Roosevelt calls for the rescue of the Jewish population in Hungary, March 24, 1944

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is mandated by Congress to educate Americans about the history of the Holocaust and to annually commemorate its victims in the national Days of Remembrance ceremony. The Museum has designated "For Justice and Humanity" as the theme for the 2004 Days of Remembrance in memory of the Jews of Hungary, deported sixty years ago in the final stages of World War II, and to honor those courageous individuals as well as the few organizations and countries who attempted to rescue them.

In 1944, Nazi Germany and its collaborators continued, even accelerated, the killings of the "Final Solution" despite certain military defeat. By late summer 1944, Soviet forces, having crushed the German Army in Belorussia, were approaching Germany from the east, while British and American forces, following their successful D-Day invasion of France in June, approached from the west.

A transport of Jews from Hungary arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, May 1944. Yad Vashem Photo Archives/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum #77354

Suspicious of Hungarian efforts to desert the Axis alliance, German forces occupied Hungary in March 1944. In May, Hungarian officials, with German guidance, began the systematic deportation of Jews from Hungary. Most of the victims were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland, while a minority was deported to a string of transit and forced labor camps on the Austro-Hungarian border. In less than three months, German and Hungarian authorities deported approximately 440,000 Jews. At least half of them were killed in gas chambers immediately upon their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the time the Red Army drove the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators out of Hungary in April 1945, nearly four-fifths of the Hungarian Jewish community had been killed.

Yet there were some individuals, organizations and countries that asserted the value of human life in the face of the systematic murder of men, women and children. The War Refugee Board (WRB), established on January 22, 1944, by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, worked with Jewish organizations, diplomats from neutral countries, and resistance groups in Europe to rescue Jews from occupied territories and provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Its mandate was to take "all measures to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death."

Portrait of Henry Morgenthau Jr. at his desk in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1891-1967), served as Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin Roosevelt, and as such, was the highest ranking Jewish official in the administration. In January 1944, after receiving a report prepared by his subordinates on "the acquiescence of this government in the murder of the Jews," Morgenthau wrote a personal report to the President which led to the establishment of the War Refugee Board. After the war he became Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal and served in that capacity until 1950. Washington D.C., 1941-1944.

Portrait of Henry Morgenthau Jr. at his desk in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. USHMM #03919/courtesy of National Archives

The creation of the WRB was largely the work of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and his team. Following the 1942 confirmation of the mass murder of Europe's Jews, the failure of the Bermuda Conference on rescue in April 1943, and the growing outrage of the American Jewry at how little was being done to rescue the remnant of Europe's Jews, there was pressure on Roosevelt to take action, which he finally did in establishing the WRB in 1944. Measured against the enormity of the Holocaust, the work of the WRB and its accomplishments were far too late and exceedingly modest. Yet, when viewed in the context of the military situation in early 1944, and the enormous challenges faced by the agency, the activities and results of the WRB were significant.

Per Anger, Swedish diplomat who participated in efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews from arrest and deportation. This 1985 photograph shows him seated, in his office, in front of a large image of Raoul Wallenberg.

Per Anger, in his office, in front of a large image of Raoul Wallenberg USHMM #00018/courtesy of Per and Ellena Anger

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat based in Budapest, Hungary, led the War Refugee Board's most extensive rescue efforts. Wallenberg and his Swedish colleagues, such as Per Anger, helped protect tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from being deported to Auschwitz by distributing protective Swedish passports or travel papers. As Sweden was a neutral country, Germany could not easily harm Swedish citizens. Diplomats from other neutral countries joined the rescue effort. Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat, issued certificates of emigration placing nearly 50,000 Jews in Budapest under Swiss protection. Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca, posing as a Spanish diplomat, issued forged Spanish visas and established under his "authority" safe houses, including one for Jewish children. Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Budapest, protested the treatment of the Jews and issued thousands of Vatican protective passes. When Soviet forces liberated Budapest in February 1945, more than 100,000 Jews still remained in the city because of the efforts of Wallenberg, Lutz, Perlasca, Rotta, and other diplomats and individuals. The War Refugee Board played a crucial role in the rescue of as many as 200,000 Jews in German-occupied Europe.

U.S. officials knew about German plans to murder the European Jews more than a year before taking specific action, in establishing the War Refugee Board, to help rescue Europe's Jews. Even though this action was late, it saved lives, reminding us of the terrible consequences of indifference and of the possibility for individuals, organizations and countries to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity.

Speeches at the ceremony:

	Ambassador Ayalon, His Excellency, Ambassador of Israel
	Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
	Elie Wiesel, Founding Chair, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
	Benjamin Meed, Member, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
	Ruth B. Mandel, Vice�Chair, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
	Fred S. Zeidman, Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council

Chronology

January 22, 1944	President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing the War Refugee Board to take "all measures for the rescue of victims of enemy oppression."
March 19, 1944	German forces occupied Hungary.
March 29, 1944	The Hungarian council of ministers, working in cooperation with the Germans, issued anti-Jewish decrees including the requirement that Jews wear an identifying Star of David badge beginning April 5.
May 15, 1944	Hungarian police officials, in coordination with German officials began the mass deportation of around 440,000 Jews from the Hungarian provinces, mostly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland.
June 6, 1944	D-Day. Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. By September they approached Germany.
June 22, 1944	Soviet forces launched a major offensive in Belorussia. By the end of July they reached the east bank of the Vistula River, in the suburbs of Warsaw.
July 7, 1944	In light of the deteriorating war situation, increasing Allied threats to prosecute perpetrators, and appeals from Pope Pius XII and King Gustav V of Sweden, Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy suspended the deportations of Jews from Hungary. However, by this time, the only remaining community of Jews in Hungary was in Budapest.
July 9, 1944	Swedish embassy attach� Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest with authorization from the Swedish government to distribute certificates of protection (Schutzp�sse) to Jews in Budapest.
October 15, 1944	After learning that Hungarian authorities were prepared to negotiate an armistice with the Soviets, the Germans supported the fascist Arrow Cross Party in a successful attempt to seize power. Over the next several weeks, Arrow Cross units raided buildings designated for Jews, killing hundreds.
November 8, 1944	Hungarian Arrow Cross authorities began a forced evacuation of Jews to the Austrian border, where they turned them over to the Germans to work on a defensive wall protecting Vienna.
December 10, 1944	Budapest ghetto was sealed.
December 25-27, 1944	Soviet troops complete the encirclement of Budapest
December 31, 1944	Arrow Cross units raided the "Glass House," a building under the protection of the Swiss government that sheltered several thousand Jews. Arrow Cross raids aimed at capturing Jews continued throughout Budapest for the next few weeks
January 20, 1945	Leaders of the National Independence Front, a provisional Hungarian government established behind Soviet lines in Debrecen, signed an armistice with the Soviet military representatives; Arrow Cross elements continued to hold out in besieged Budapest and in western Hungary
February 13, 1945	German-Hungarian garrison in Budapest surrendered to Soviet military authorities, ending the fighting in the capital. Around 120,000 Jews survived in the city
April 4, 1945	Pro-German Hungarian units driven out of Hungary into Austria by the Red Army

Bibliography
Adachi, Agnes. Child of the Winds: My Mission with Raoul Wallenberg. Chicago: Adams Press, 1989.

Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. Washington, D.C.: The Holocaust Library, 1995.

Bierman, Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust. New York: Viking Press, 1981.

Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. 2 volumes. Boulder, Co.: Social Science Monographs, 1994.

Braham, Randolph L and Miller, Scott. eds. The Nazis' Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

Deaglio, Enrico. The Banality of Goodness: The Story of Giorgio Perlasca. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

Feingold, Henry L. Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Larsson, Jan. Raoul Wallenberg. Uppsala, Sweden: Swedish Institute, 1995.

Morse, Arthur. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1998.

Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945. New York: The New Press, 1998.

Related Links
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Holocaust Encyclopedia

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Library

Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

PBS: America and the Holocaust

USHMM Library bibliography: Raoul Wallenberg

USHMM Library bibliography: The United States and the Holocaust

Holocaust Encyclopedia article: The United States and the Holocaust

Holocaust Encyclopedia article: Rescue

Web Links: Holocaust Commemoration and Days of Remembrance Worldwide
City of Liverpool, United Kingdom: Book of Commitment

Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom

Yad Vashem

Fort Monmouth Holocaust Commemoration web pages