For Paul Russell: It would be interesting to learn the source of George Jonas’ information. assuming he didn’t write the article simply off the top of his head! Ian
June 12, 2013
Editor
NATIONAL POST
Toronto
Dear Sir
Genocide, annihilation and mass murder of the Hungarian Jews
Once again (will it never end?) we are reminded today, by the National Post’s George Jonas, of the terrible fate that befell the Jews during WWII, this time with a piece on the alleged extermination of the Hungarian Jews.
As with the broader claim of Six Million Jewish victims, the murder of the entire Jewish population of Hungary does not survive scholarly analysis. According to a leading academic authority on the subject, Prof. Walter N. Sanning (author of “The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry”) who relied on Jewish sources and the International Red Cross, there were 400,000 Jews in Hungary at the end of 1939. In April, 1946, there were 200,000 survivors, including,presumably, the thousands rescued by Raoul Wallenberg. During the war, 27,500 died in the Military Labour Force on the Eastern Front, 25,500 were taken prisoner by the Soviets, 40,000 were deported to the East by the Russians in 1945, 20,000 disappeared through the negative wartime birth rate, 6000 fled to Rumania and 10,000 converted to Christianity. The number of “missing” Hungarian Jews is therefore 71,000.
When the deportations ceased in July, 1944, at least 150,000 Jews remained in Budapest, to be joined in November by 100,000 Jews who arrived from the countryside, according to the International Red Cross.
Concerning the untraced 71,000, some may well have died during internment by the Germans. If so, the cause of death likely would have been typhus or starvation, aggravated by the Allied bombing which deprived the camps of both food and medicine. There is no evidence that even one was executed while in German custody, although very few captured by the Soviet forces survived.
As ever,
Ian V. Macdonald
455 Wilbrod Street
Ottawa ON K1N 6M7
613 241 5389
