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JewishHistoryעברית

Arrow Cross killings in Budapest

Date
15 October 1944 – 13 February 1945Hebrew date: 28th of Tishrei, 5705 – 30th of Sh’vat, 5705
Location
Budapest, HungaryHungary
Then part of
Government of National Unity (Arrow Cross Hungary)
Perpetrators
  • Arrow Cross Party militias (Nyilas) (Militia / auxiliaries)
  • Arrow Cross government of Ferenc Szálasi (State)
Killed (estimate)
20,000[1]USHMM and Yad Vashem both write that between December 1944 and the end of January 1945 the Arrow Cross took as many as 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto, shot them on the banks of the Danube and threw the bodies into the river. Additional deaths in this period are not given as a single total: USHMM records hundreds shot after the October coup, thousands shot or dead from starvation and exposure on the November march of more than 70,000 Jews from the Újlaki brickyards toward Austria, and about 3,000 dead in the closed Pest ghetto.
Locality

10% of the Jewish population of Budapest, Hungary[3]

Country

2.4% – 2.8% of the Jewish population of Government of National Unity (Arrow Cross Hungary) (c. 1944)[45]

Worldwide

0.18% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1945)[4]

Expelled (estimate)
No reliable estimate
Category
Massacre, Expulsion
Confidence
Medium

Summary

After Germany installed an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi on 15 October 1944, Arrow Cross militias shot Jews in Budapest and drafted others for forced labor. On 8 November the authorities concentrated more than 70,000 Jews at the Újlaki brickyards in Óbuda and forced them to march toward Austria; thousands were shot or died of starvation and cold. Remaining Jews without protective papers were ordered into a closed ghetto. Between December 1944 and January 1945, Arrow Cross men took Jews from the ghetto, shot them on the Danube and threw the bodies into the river. Soviet forces liberated Budapest on 13 February 1945.

Sources

  1. Budapest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  2. Budapest: Historical Background during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem
  3. The Holocaust in Hungary. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,000,000[4]c. 1945DellaPergola's core estimate for 1 May 1945, matching the 11 million figure he and the 1948–49 Year Book use for the immediate postwar world total.
  • Government of National Unity (Arrow Cross Hungary): 725,007 – 825,007[45]c. 1944Same Greater Hungary 1941 census / racial-law range as kingdom-of-hungary (arrow-cross-hungary has no populationOf link). Applies to the Jewish population under Hungarian control at the March 1944 German occupation, before the mass deportations of spring–summer 1944. The Arrow Cross (Government of National Unity) took power only in October 1944, after most provincial Jews had already been deported; no opened source gave a separate October 1944 remnant figure for Arrow Cross territory.
  • Budapest, Hungary: 200,000[3]Jews in Budapest in July 1944, three months before the Arrow Cross coup of 15 October 1944 and after the deportation of Jews from the provinces. USHMM's Budapest article gives the same approximate figure, 200,000, for the city before the war. More than 100,000 were still in the city at liberation in February 1945, after these killings.

Sources for population estimates

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  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
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  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
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  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
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