Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the Wealth of Hungarian Jews by Gábor s> Kádár Zoltán Vági (review)

Abstract

366 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 The case for nationalistapologia is most uncompromisinglyarticulatedby Ezergailis.Rejecting the observationsof Raoul Hilberg and other Holocaust historiansthat Latvia abounded with willing collaborators,Ezergailisargues that all killingofJews in Latviaand EasternEuropewas a 'German-organized project'(p. 205).The German occupiers,he maintains,shrewdlymanipulated the local population through anti-Semiticpropaganda, scheming, deception, blackmail,coercion and the recruitingof killinggangs. He discardsas biased and untrustworthysurvivors'testimoniespointing to the zeal of local killers. Always quick to resortto polemics to press his point, Ezergailisdenounces all documentation of locally initiated massacres, such as the Polish Jedwabne incident describedbyJan Grossin feighbors (Princeton,NJ, 200I), as 'folklore' (pp. I92, 202, 209) and reflections of a 'primitivemindset' (p. I93). Behind all apparent collaboration in the killing of Jews, he reiterates,was in reality 'Fuhrerbefehl' (p. I96) in one form or another. German rule in Ostland, however, was anythingbut monolithic, as several studies have shown. Although Hitler wanted no collaboration with locals in Ostland, only vassals executing his will, collaborationwas made possible by the absence of a co-ordinated German occupation policy. Robert Bohn (Germany) points out that the administrative chaos in Ostland induced German occupation agencies to compete for the support of collaboratorsin the pursuitof their special interests. Overall, the book mirrorsthe complex and diverse state of international researchon collaborationand resistancein EasternEurope. It contains much new researchand surprisingfindings,but also disappointments.Disappointing are the blinkered and dated perspectives of Latvian historianswhose work informs the Latvian History Commission and Latvian government policies. Among the surprisesone may count the growingconsensusof Lithuanianand Estonian researcherswith the findings of internationalscholarship.Although planned and initiated by Hitler's regime, it appears widely agreed that the Holocaust could not have assumed genocidal proportionswithout the large number of willing collaboratorsoutside Germany. Department ofHistogy GERHARD P. BASSLER Memorial University ofNewfoundland Kadar, G'aborand Vagi, Zolt'an. Self-Financing Genocide: 7he GoldTrain,the Becher CaseandtheWealth ofHungarian Jews. Central European University Press, Budapest and New York, 2004. xxvi + 413 pp. Notes. Tables. Illustrations.Appendix. Bibliography.Indexes. f28.95. THE Hungarianchapterof the Holocaust is often describedas unique because of the scale, speed and intensitywith which it was executed and because of the conditions under which it occurred. By summer I944 German military strengthwas waning, the world, includingHungary'sJewry, was well informed about German exterminationpolicies and theJews of the free world were by then better placed to intervene with their governments. Still, in the months from May to October 1944, 325,000 of originally 750,ooo HungarianJews REVIEWS 367 were murderedin Auschwitz-Birkenau.GaiborKaddar and Zoltan Vagi offera functionalistexplanation for this tragedy. Their hypothesis is that the main motive of consecutive Hungarian governments for the discrimination and persecution of the Jews was not physical destruction but the expropriation of Jewish wealth. As the tide suggests, they describe this process in three instalments.The first part of the book analyses the wealth and influence of Jews in Hungary and describesthe genesis and implementationof four antiSemitic laws priorto the German occupation. The second part focuseson the ambiguous figure of SS-ObersturmbannfuhrerKurt Becher who played an importantrole in the 'Aryanization'ofJewish wealth in Hungary.Yet Becher has also been seen as saviourof thousandsofJews and as the main influence behind the decisionof Reichsfuhrer-SSHeinrich Himmler to halt the extermination at Auschwitzin November I944. K'adarand V'agitry to make sense of the contradicting faces of Becher using memoirs, eye-witness accounts and court testimonies.In the finalpart the authorsderive an estimateof the value of the goods expropriatedfrom HungarianJews and follow theirjourney (the Jewish Gold Train) through the hands of German and Hungarian National Socialists, the US military administration,and representativesof the Jewish Agency. The advantageof these storiesis that Kaldarand Vagi do not let them end with the year 1945, and insteadshow how the expropriationof Hungarian Jews continued. According to the authors only two families managed to reclaimtheirproperty.The US authoritiespreferredto returnthe stolengoods to internationalJewishorganizations.Moreover, the rightfulrestitutionof the property fell victim to the Cold War and the nationalizationpolicies of the post-war socialistgovernments in Hungary. Individualslike Kurt Becher, on the other hand, who had profited from 'Aryanization'prospered financially after I945Kadar and Vagi are at theirbest when they describethe 'repeatedplundering of the HungarianJews' (p. xx) and the many faces of the plunderersin the...