Russian Conquest — The Siege of Budapest
“… the events could be characterized as a conquest by a hostile, foreign army.”[PK 38
The siege of the capital, from the appearance of the first Soviet tank at the boundary of the city to the final capitulation of German and Hungarian forces, lasted for 102 days and concluded on February 11. This was a far longer siege than that of any German city or, indeed, any European city outside of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. By comparison, the fighting for Berlin lasted two weeks, and for Vienna, only one week. [PK 35-36 ref KU]
The Russian siege of Budapest began on December 8, 1944 with the entire city a battleground, the six weeks struggle for the Hungarian capital became one of the war’s bloodiest. To the residents, it also seemed agonizingly slow. [KM 129]
I have very little information from Cousin Lily about our life during this period. Most of the information in this section is quoted from referenced writings. However, she told me that a few days after the “liberation,” we returned to our home at 17 Kossuth Lajos Street from a Swedish “protected” building on ……
For most of the siege, the city was divided into Pest and Buda. Much of the following section relies on the entries of FW [3]. Ferenc and his sister lived in an apartment building in Buda, and unless otherwise indicated, he chronicled his Buda experiences.
The day before Christmas Eve, Russians were in the eastern suburb of Budapest.
After Christmas, a number of motherless babies were left in the maternity ward of a hospital, where it was becoming impossible to feed them for lack of mother’s milk and other nutrients. In despair, the nurses clutched the babies to their breasts so that they might at least enjoy the comfort of a warm human body before fading away. After a while, the nurses found themselves producing milk, and the babies were saved from starving to death." KU 278
Wednesday 27 December
They have stopped the ARS because there is constant air raids and there are continuous cannon shots aimed at the city. It is 7C outside. After lunch, Ilonka [a friend] came by with some bread and rushed home before the curfew. In the evening, the constant bombing and cannon fire started again, then our electricity went out, and the radio went silent. In some places, both the gas and water went out. We sat up until 11 pm in candlelight.
Thursday, 28 December
At dawn, we thought the Russians had reached the Baross coffeehouse [in Pest] because of the rumbling of the tanks, machine gun fire, and the explosion of hand grenades (on the other hand, the German Tiger tanks [tigristankok] were escaping from the east on the Horthy bridge to Buda). At 6:10 am, with a great explosion, the Germans brought down the railroad bridge behind them. Despite all this, I checked in at the office [in Pest] and from there went to Ilonka for some bread. Despite all the bullets flying around Tisza Kálmán square, it was full of people: with axes and saws, they attacked the trees and the bushes. (This happened all winter in all the parks, the castle gardens, the decorative trees of Gellért hill, all for [heating and cooking] fires. Naturally, the nearby street parks went first, as well as the private library of many apartments.) There were still German anti-aircraft placements in the city that might have hit our building. We sat up all night, by candlelight, in our armchairs, listening to the approaching noises.
Friday, 29 December
Today, the siege became intense. I went by the office. There was a lot of gunfire. The dead lay in the streets. On my way home, I tripped over three bodies. With the constant bombing and gunfire, I hurried everyone’s move into the cellar. This was our first night in the cellar.
Saturday, 30 December
As of Friday evening, a terrible air battle is taking place above us. There is no way we can sleep in our apartment, but there was no place for us in the shelter. Margit and I sat all night on a bench in the hallway to the shelter, listening to the battle, but it was very cold. Around 9:30 pm, we very carefully went up to our apartment, less for dinner than to listen to the English radio. They announced that on the northern border of Buda, two Russian officers carrying a white flag were gunned down by the Germans to stop the surrender of Budapest.
Sunday, 31 December
Around 9 am, we heard the 127th ARS. We rushed down to the shelter. Later, there were the same battles as before. … On my way, I was stopped by an Arrow Cross man who had a hand grenade, asking for a cigarette; then he forced four 1/4kg cans of Gooseliver into my hands. I threw them away, disgusted, because who knows from which store he stole them. (During the ARS, people are starting to break into and steal from the stores, encouraged by the example shown by the Arrow Cross and the Germans.) We had our dinner — New Year sardines — and we knew this was our last dinner in the apartment. Around 10 pm, we moved down to the shelter. [Eventually] some of the men went upstairs carefully to see which apartment was destroyed. … We went from apartment to apartment, and everywhere glass crackled under our feet. In our apartment the remains of a small Beni-head shone white against the carpet. … All our windows on the street side were broken, actually 64 panes, were broken.
Conditions in Pest
The streets are deserted, the shops closed, the people in unheated cellars. Gas is not available and electricity only in a few places in Pest. Demolitions by non-experts often make the water pipes unusable for days. Since 1 January the population [non-Jews] has been receiving 50 g of bread daily. As from 31 December all the horses are being slaughtered. Food supplies cannot last longer than 10 to 14 days, even if systematically collected. The hospitals are unheated. There is not even enough fuel for the operating theaters. The deprivations of the population are beyond imagination." Almay in KU 277
30 December, 1944
On the ground, nearly 1000 guns opened fire, and in the sky, bombers droned continuously, dropping their deadly loads. The barrage lasted between seven and 10 hours daily for three days, and the intervals were filled with constant air raids. Nearly 1,000,000 people took refuge in overcrowded cellars,[2] many of which received direct hits, killing their occupants. Civilians ventured into the streets only when it was absolutely necessary, hugging the walls as they hurried to fetch water from a standpipe or bread from one of the bakeries that had been ordered by the Arrow Cross regime to remain open.”
"In the city centre the streets were covered in a jumble of broken glass, torn overhead streetcar cables, toppled lamposts, and other objects that had lost their original purpose. The rubble was interspersed with dead bodies in torn, soiled, and bloodstained clothing, frequently with their necks and chests exposed and their pockets turned inside out in the search for their identification discs, personal documents, and valuables. Their eyes were wide open, their hands waxen yellow, their ears and noses bloody. They were lying in pools of blood and strangely contorted postures where the force of the explosions had thrown them, and many had lost an arm or a leg. Houses were aflame. Where shells had exploded, blueish-yellow gunpowder vapor lingered in the air. Mountains of refuse piled up, no longer collected by the municipal services.”
“The Soviet troops have been reinforced with large quantities of heavy weapons as well as fighter bomber aircraft.”
KU 124, 125
In late December, 200 Jews, living in the Swedish protected house on Katona Jozsef Street [3], were awakened by the relentless pounding on the door, whose meaning was known to all of them. There was no point in not opening. The idea was to open the door and, simultaneously, send someone to get Wallenberg. which is what these bone-wary, terrified people did. The eight Arrow Cross brutes herded mothers, babies, and the old into a neat convoy and briskly marched them off. [KM 130]
During the siege of Budapest, crimes unparalleled anywhere else in Europe under Nazi rule were perpetrated – with the approval or at least tolerance of the state – against Jews. After the failure of hotties cease-fire attempt of 15 October 1944, the Arrow Cross regime immediately embarked on the "final solution of the Jewish question." By this time the only Hungarian Jews not deported to German concentration camps were those in the capital and in the forced labor service.” KU 284-285
By the first week of January 1945, the city was finally cut off from the world. The Russians closed it off from every direction. The Germans and the Arrow Cross were trapped inside their tightening hole. Their order still was: “Fight to the last man!“ [KM 137]
The weary residents of Budapest waited in their cellars and air shelters for the end to their own misery. They learned that a bomb preceded by a sharp, whistle-like noise was harmless; it was not about to fall on your head. It was when you did not hear anything beforehand that you were in trouble. Then there wasn’t much you could do, anyway.
Six weeks of confinement in dark, airless underground holes had left their mark on the people. In the claustrophobic life of the cellar, women often preferred to sleep with their pot of reheated bean soup under their pillows rather than have to share it with the others in the shelter. The men bickered over whose turn it was to face the treacherous task of fetching the daily bucket of water from the Danube. Meat had become a dim memory. When a Russian shell hit a horse from the German Garrison, several hundred starving residents ignored the bombs overhead and carved its carcass clean in minutes. No one understood why it was taking the Russian so long. The hours passed with unbelievable languor, broken only by the staccato rhythm of the falling bombs. It was bread most people dreamed about, the rich, still warm, brown bread of another lifetime, only six weeks before. [KM 138]
13 January
….waves of attacks with maximum artillery, fighter aircraft, and tank support. ….By day, traffic is paralyzed by continuous air raids concentrating on the Danube bridges.” U p 141
14 January
The whole day was marked by enemy terror bombing. Squadrons of enemy aircraft dropped bombs, and fighter planes strafed the streets.” U p. 142 photo p 144
16 January
When Soviet troops had reached the great Boulevard near the ghetto, the Arrow Cross decided to mount the program. The plan was betrayed by a police officer …” u 302
17 -18 January
Soviet troops reached the edge of the ghetto on West Street. … the next day, after a short street battle, the ghetto was liberated.” U 303
“On 17 January 1945, Hitler agreed to withdraw the remaining troops from Pest to try to defend Buda. All five bridges spanning the Danube were clogged with traffic, evacuating troops and civilians. Wiki
The Danube beneath them reflected the smoking carnage of the ghost town. The Russians have blown up all the grand old hotels along the Korso [sic]. All the symbols of the bourgeois good life were gone: the Ritz, the Duna and the Royal, and the Vigado, the garish music hall, where Budapest used to see reproductions of the latest burlesque shows from Paris and Vienna. Only the beautiful bridges that spent the two banks of the city and made her one, had not yet been blasted by the retreat in Germans. They too, were soon to be slumped into the gray river, like the carcasses of prehistoric creatures. [KM 147]
The defenders destroyed all the bridges over the Danube, and because the fighting had gone from house to house, at the end of the siege the city was in ruins. Eighty percent of the apartment houses were damaged, and 36,000 families were homeless, including 40,000 children. [PK 37]
The citiy’s nearly 2 months long siege was shuddering to an end. Hidden loudspeakers, installed by the Russians, played the current popular song [KM 150]
The Soviet Army was exhausted from the extended siege, frustrated that it had taken so much longer than anticipated. They blamed the population for sympathizing with and harboring the Nazis. Hungary had been Hitler’s last ally. The residents of Budapest were regarded as suspect by the Red Army.“Partisan,“ they kept calling the mystified people.
“There was a great deal of work to be done. The beautiful bridges that spanned the two banks of the city had been blasted by the retreating Germans. The city had no water or electricity. But that was an even greater need for manpower in the Russians’ own ruined country. [KM 150-151]
The first wave of Russians were primarily interested in gold watches. Some of them walked around with four or five crawling up the arm of their uniforms. Alcohol, any kind, even rubbing alcohol, was their second passion. [KM 151]
The second wave of “liberators” went wild. The appetite for women became part of the city’s legend. Nearly every female, young and old, had a horror story to tell. [KM 151]
Rape committed by the soldiers of the Red Army remained an absolute taboo as long as the Communist regime existed. Although everyone talked about it, at the time, nothing ever appeared in print concerning this issue until the collapse of the Soviet regime. Naturally given the nature of the problem, it is impossible to give exact figures, but the estimate run between 50,000 to 200,000 rapes. These rough estimates are based on reports of abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, and hospital records. [PK 44 reference Andrea.peto]
Nobody was more grateful for the presence of the long way to Soviet liberators than the Jews of Budapest. Soviet troops crawled through air shelters, which, in Pest, interconnect through cellars, to reach the International Ghetto on January 16. The next morning, a division reached the Central Ghetto.
The terror inside the two ghettos did not subside until the Russians were actually inside. A handful of Arrow Cross and Nazis tried to shoot their way out, using Jews as shields. And 3,000 more Jews were killed during the painfully slow “liberation.“ The Russians found another 246 bodies in an advanced state of decomposition. But nearly 100,000 Jews had survived.
Now they staggered toward the six-foot-plank walls that had trapped them inside for nearly 3 months. With hatchets, boots and fist, they destroyed their prison. Moaning and weeping, the pale, stooped figures streamed out on the streets, forbidden them for so long. They were stunned by what they saw. Across the river there were only four recognizable buildings left of what was Buda. Nearly 800 other buildings were smoking piles of stone and ash. The search for children, husbands and wives began. The shock of returning to homes which were no longer there or had been requisitioned as Soviet barracks was blurred by the realization that they were alive, that they had survived. [KM 152–153]