Turning the Yellow Star Houses into Protected Houses

Abstract

Creating Yellow Star houses meant radical changes in the power structure of the apartment buildings. Concierges rose through the ranks quickly, and they became more and more indispensable. As the authorities did not show too much interest in regulating the inner life of the ghetto buildings, it remained largely unclear what was allowed and what was not inside the Yellow Star house. In the autumn of 1944, towards the end of the war the Hungarian state administration started to fall apart, and this had implications both inside and outside of the Budapest apartment buildings. Outside, in the broader national context, it brought a German-backed coup of the extreme-right Nyilas or Arrow Cross movement, while inside its effect varied from building to building. Within the Arrow Cross the different factions had different goals; one of these was to gain international recognition for Ferenc Szalasi’s government.1 This goal indirectly led to the appearance of a modified version of the ghetto house, the so-called “Protected house” in November 1944. This protection in theory meant that a certain neutral country got authority over a specific group of Jewish Hungarian people, who were connected to this state by family or business relations. Then these people could move into buildings placed under the supervision of the certain state. In the autumn of 1944, the expectation of the new Arrow Cross rulers was that if they allowed the establishment of “Protected houses”, then those neutral countries that set up these sheltering buildings were going to recognize Ferenc Szalasi as the legitimate leader of Hungary.2