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Ferenc Szálasi was born on January 6, 1897 in Kassa. He grew up in a family with many children who lived in poor economic conditions. After his family pursued a military career, he first studied at the Kőszeg Royal Military School and then at the Vienna Military Academy.
In the officer career he reached the rank of Major General. It was published in 1933, the year of its promotion. The plan for the construction of the Hungarian state. which caused a great storm because a military officer could not politicize.
Sick desire for leadership
Shortly after retiring from Szálasi, he created the Hungarian Nation Party (NAP) with a cross-shaped arrow symbol. Lawsuits were filed against Szálasi in 1937-1938 on various lines. One series dealt with incitement offenses and the other with prosecutions for violating the activities of the NAP.
On May 19, 1937, the Budapest Criminal Court sentenced Szálsi to three months in prison, three years in prison, and three years in political rights. The capital’s sentencing panel reduced the custodial sentence to two months and suspended the execution for three years while renouncing the secondary sentence. On January 26, 1938, the Mansion confirmed the second instance verdict. On March 21, 1938 he received another month of excitement. He did not have to sit separately for the sentences imposed. By the time they became final, the Budapest court had sentenced him to 10 months in prison in the NAP case on November 29, 1937, which was compounded by the sentencing panel on July 6, 1938. On August 24 his application was rejected and he was transferred to Szeged Star Prison, where he began serving his sentence.
On August 18, 1938, the newspaper reported on the indictment of the Crown Prosecutor Ferenc Finkey, who delivered before Géza Töreky’s criminal council at the Szálasi trial:
The most significant aggravation, in my opinion, is that the defendant has wrapped his unbridled ambition in a veil of patriotic admiration. The real trigger for the defendants’ actions was overheated ambition, an almost unhealthy yearning for leadership, which was almost on the brink of pathology. The defendant’s unreasonable and reckless attack on the Hungarian constitution, his dangerous attempt to overthrow the existing state legal order, and the restoration of peace and inner peace to unduly excited Hungarian society demand severe punishment for the accused, but at least the king. . uphold the sentence imposed by the sentencing panel.
170 days of Sagittarius reign of terror
Szálasi founded the Arrow Cross Party on March 15, 1939, which operated under this name until August 24, 1944 and after Arrow Cross took office, between October 16, 1944 and May 1, 1945 .
During Arrow Cross’s 170-day reign of terror, deportations halted by Horthy in July 1944 resumed under the leadership of Adolf Eichmann, and with the support of the Arrow Cross government, tens of thousands of Jews and Roma were deported to forced labor. and death camps.
The properties and apartments of the vast majority of Jews left in the capital were confiscated by the Arrow Cross government, herding the people into ghettos. Armed archers killed thousands of Jews in the Budapest ghetto and other parts of the city.
László Karsai is a historian Ferenc Szálasi, the perfect scapegoat In his article, he qualified the sins of the Arrow Cross Party with some interesting and lesser-known facts:
The main, almost exclusive fault of Arrow Cross explains that even today, even among historians, there are those who believe that the deportation of the Jews during the Sztójay government was carried out, among others, by the Arrow Cross party servants, although not only in the deportations, but also the Sagittarians led by Szálasi did not play a role in the organized robbery of the Jews. […] During the presidency of Döme Sztójay (March 22 to August 29, 1944), an order of magnitude more Jews were deported and killed (437,000 deportees, around 320-380,000 murdered) than the Arrow Cross regime (October 15, 1944). 1944, August 15, 1945). April) (approximately 50,000 deportees, approximately 30-40,000 murdered). Almost everyone in Szálasi knows his name today in Hungary, not even history students know who he was. Sztójay deported with enthusiasm, Szálasi only reluctantly.
Szálasi left for Germany on March 27, 1945, where he was captured by the United States. The first American plane carrying war criminals landed in Mátyásföld on October 3, 1945, with László Bárdossy, Béla Imrédy and Szálasi on board. The prisoners were taken by Gábor Péter, Head of the Political Police Department of the Budapest Headquarters of the Hungarian State Police.
According to his prison diary, the defendants at Arrow Cross were treated fairly, none of whom were subjected to physical violence or psychological duress. When he was transferred from Andrássy út 60 to Markó utca on January 24, 1946, he personally thanked the “department head” – as Gábor Péter mentions in his diary – for his “impeccable treatment and behavior.”
Ice cream test at the Music Academy
Ferenc Szálasi was charged, among other things, with infidelity and war crimes, as well as being involved in extrajudicial executions.
In addition to the first defendant, four other members of the Szálasi government appeared before the Budapest People’s Court: Gábor Vajna, former Minister of the Interior, Jenő Szőllősi, Deputy Prime Minister, Third Party, Baron Gábor Kemény, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Károly Beregfy. Minister of Defense. The quaternary defendants Sándor Csia and József Gera were not members of the government.
The trial, which began on February 5, 1946, was held in the Great Hall of the Academy of Music, as there was no more welcoming indoor venue available in the ruined capital. Due to the great interest, the otherwise icy room could only be entered with a ticket.
Péter Jankó was the president of the Council of the People’s Court, which also sentenced László Rajk to death in the first instance three years later. Here is a typical dialogue between the president and the accused:
President: What is your occupation?
Szálasi: He is the national leader of Hungary. (Serenity in the ranks of the audience).
President: Silence please! So this is your mania, it still lasts. But maybe not even mania, but a bad joke with the nation or cheek. Next, we will find out which of these cases concerns us. Was he punished?
Szálasi: Please, here I have my rights of defense …
President: (Interrupts.) This is not a defense, it is cheek.
Szálasi: No, I was legally elected leader of the nation. (Vibrant serenity in the audience).
President: Quiet!
Szálasi: Biased judges.
President: You can do it. Respond if he was punished.
Szálasi and his defenders then presented a partiality objection and a nullity reason, but the popular court rejected both. The defendant then responded to the president on one issue: “As a maniac, what should I answer to that?”
Szálasi did not feel guilty, as he explained in response to questions, he was confident in the victory of the Germans, which he based on his newly developed weapons. During the trial, he spoke several times about his patriotism:
I have always taken measures that I believe are intended to serve the glory and happiness of the Hungarian nation.
Prosecutors asked for the harshest punishment, defenders for a merciful verdict. Szalissi was allowed an entire ideological-political defense to the right of the last word on February 25, 1946. The only executed Hungarian head of state spoke for four hours. He claims that in the summer of 1944, Angelo Rotta, who was intervening for the good of the Jews, told the papal nuncio in Budapest that
On March 19, 1944, there was such a significant change in the public law situation in Hungary that neither the Hungarian nation, nor the Hungarian people, nor the Hungarian government could be held responsible for everything that happened here.
He closed his speech with a quote related to his name:
You may die in the service of our nation, but you will never tire. God be my nation. I’ve finished.
Epilogue
On March 1, 1946, the Budapest People’s Court rendered the verdict in the trial of Szálasi et al. All the defendants were found guilty and Ferenc Szálasi, Sándor Csia, Gábor Vajna, Károly Beregffy, József Gera, Gábor Kemény and Jenő Szőllősi were sentenced to death by rope with total property confiscation.
Since there is no appeal in people’s court proceedings, defendants can only appeal for clemency.
Szálasi’s defender, Sándor Zboray, called for the execution by rope to be changed to bullets if the death penalty was upheld. This request was also rejected. Szálsi, Beregfy, Vajna, Gera and Ferenc Rajniss, convicted in the Imrédy trial, were handed over to the executioner on 12 March. The former national leader completed his earthly career in front of a large crowd, in the trees of the Markó street prison.
At the end of World War II, people’s courts were established to “Those who were the causes or participants in the historical catastrophe that befell the Hungarian people, be punished as soon as possible”. The Provisional National Government headed by Prime Minister Béla Miklós Dálnoki did not delay, since on February 81, 1945, the 81/1945 on People’s Courts was promulgated. Regulation No. However, the popular courts barely complied with the rules. Furthermore, before the decree was issued, the first court had already ruled: on February 3, three corpses from a labor service unit were sentenced to death. After their request was denied, they were placed on the Oktogon streetlights. Five parties of the Hungarian National Independence Front have delegated one member to each council of the people’s court. Thus, the council consisted of a communist, a social democrat, an independent smallholder party, a bourgeois democrat and a candidate from the peasant party, and a leading council judge. The protection of the main culprits could only be provided by an attached lawyer because the Bar Association considered that the voluntary assignment was incompatible with the honor of being a member. In addition, the Ministry of Justice threatened to punish a lawyer who, through an appeal for reconsideration, obstructs the execution of a possible death sentence. The Budapest People’s Court, which heard the trials of the main war criminals, operated until October 31, 1949, while the last, the Szeged People’s Court, ended its activities on April 1, 1950. According to the historian Tibor Zinner, 58,953 people were brought before the popular courts, and 26,286 of them received convictions and 14,683 acquittals, in other cases the cases were closed by other means. A total of 476 people were sentenced to death and 189 were also executed.
(Cover image: Prosecution of the main war criminals before the people’s court headed by Dr. Péter Jankó, in a hearing held in the Great Hall of the Academy of Music in 1946. Right: Ferenc Szálasi. Photo: Fortepan)
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