Gendarmes, Bureaucrats, and Jews: A Documentary History of the Destruction of Hungary’s Jews, Spring-Summer 1944

Edited by Judit Fejes Schulmann, David Alan Rich, and Judit Molnár.

Between May and July 1944, over 440,000 Jews were deported from the Hungarian provinces to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where 330,000 perished. Gendarmes, Bureaucrats, and Jews offers a fresh perspective on these events, examining not only the Nazi regime but also the complicity of the Hungarian state, particularly its Gendarmerie, in facilitating these deportations. This book presents for the first time in English the essential, unabridged, primary sources on the concentration, ghettoization, and deportation of Hungarian Jews. Of particular significance are progress reports of Gendarmerie Lieutenant Colonel László Ferenczy, Hungary’s liaison to Adolf Eichmann, and the previously unpublished reports from two cities, Ungvár and Szolnok. These ninety-nine documents, fully annotated in translation, provide crucial insight into one of the darkest chapters in European history, making this book a much-needed chronicle of the Holocaust.

Judit Fejes Schulmann holds a PhD in twentieth-century Hungarian and European history from the Lajos Kossuth University in Debrecen, Hungary. After working as a research historian at the History Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, she subsequently investigated war crimes committed during World War II as a researcher in the Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. justice department, a position she held for twenty-four years until she retired.

David Alan Rich holds a PhD in Russian and East European history from Georgetown University. He worked for twenty-three years as an investigative research historian on Nazi-era crimes for the Office of Special Investigations in Washington DC. Specializing in the Aktion ‘Reinhardt’ and Ukrainian auxiliary police cases, he has published research on the evolving legal framework that supported Soviet postwar trials of these perpetrators and collaborators.

Judit Molnár is associate professor of history at the University of Szeged and, since 1994, the deputy director of the Hungarian research group of the Yad Vashem Archives. She organized the first Hungarian permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest (2004-2006). Her primary research interest is the role of Hungarian Jewish leaders and the gendarmerie during World War II and the Holocaust.

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Acquisition. A limited time discount is available of 50% using a discount code – SCHU1124 – valid until 30 November on print orders placed directly via the Berghahn book webpage:  https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SchulmannGendarmes