GHETTOIZATION AND THE HOLOCAUST IN TRANSCARPATHIA IN TESTIMONIES OF VICTIMS AND WITNESSES (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE REGIONAL EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION)

Abstract

The article examines the ghettoization process in Transcarpathia during the Holocaust based on testimonies of victims and witnesses collected by the regional commission to investigate and determine crimes and losses committed by Hungarian-German fascist invaders in the spring of 1946. This source is examined within the methodological approach of the political scientist and Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. He coined a typology of social roles' triad in the period genocide, based on behavior and sequence of actions: perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. I analyze the testimonies referring to these three conceptual categories. Thus, I examine the testimonies of perpetrators and their perceptions by victims. They were middle- and lower-level authorities, ghetto scribes, and midwives who performed violent searches of Jewish women. Mostly, they were all ethnic Hungarians and SS members, but there are references in testimonies to local ethnic Germans, Rusyns, and Roma. This category of persons utilized self-censorship in their testimonies to avoid possible criminal prosecution. In this article, I also investigate the testimonies of Jewish victims of the Holocaust and their traumatic experiences. The main focus of their testimonies was on the process of ghettoization: the confiscation of values, concentration to ghettos, and living there, and deportation to Auschwitz. Victims focused on the experience of their everyday violence in ghettos: humiliating, beating, torture, and rape. Moreover, they mentioned numerous perpetrators, including from the local population. Also, the testimonies contained information about the mass and individual killings of Jews, as well as exhumation processes conducted by the Extraordinary Commission investigators. Finally, I examine the aspects related to the category of bystanders, based on an investigation of their testimonies and their perception by victims. People have mentioned some cases of assisting by local inhabitants to Jews imprisoned in ghettos, and about non-Jews, who witnessed the violence living in ghettos. In addition, many bystanders testified that they did not know anything about violence against Jews. Notwithstanding the deficiencies of this source, also analyzed in the article, it remains crucial for further academic research within the examination of the Holocaust in Transcarpathia.