WW2-factoid that needs explaining: the fate of the Hungarian-jewish armament manufacturers

[Whodunnit?]

Hello,

when researching non-holocaust related ww2-topics, I sometimes come across oddities that need extra explaining. This is just a tit-bit, but it is one of these many little things that leave you woindering how that fits to the official narrative. It's about the "Holocaust in Hungary".

So for context: I guess everybody here knows this already, but in WW2 Hungary was pretty much Germany's third most important ally in Europe, after Italy and Romania. They were one of only three countries that had their own armament industry. But guess who owned it? Take a look at this:


Manfréd Weiss Steel and Metal Works

The Weiss Manfréd Acél- és Fémművek ("Manfréd Weiss Steel and Metal Works"), or colloquially Csepel Művek ("Csepel Works") was one of the largest machine factories in Hungary, located on Csepel island in the southern part of Budapest, founded in 1897 [...]

By the outbreak of World War II, the company had become a modern industrial conglomerate, with over 40,000 employees;[2] its management remained largely composed of Hungarian Jews.[2] When Nazi Germany overran Hungary in 1944, the majority were arrested by the Gestapo.[3] The Weiss family was allowed to emigrate to Portugal and escape the horrors of the Holocaust, but their large art collection, along with the entire industrial complex bearing their name, was taken over by Germany.[3][4] However, as Germany insisted Hungary was still a sovereign nation, the owners of the company received large compensation and remained official owners, with the German-imposed management merely a trusteeship for a period of 25 years.[2] Eventually, control over the company was given to the Nazi SS, with a completely new holding company's management, with officers including Erhard Milch, Kurt Baron von Schröder, and Hans Jüttner.[2]

So Hungary only had three producers of heavy military hardware, the Manfred Weiss-factory, Rába Automotive Holding, and MAVAG. They produced several hundred tanks and aircraft that Hungary used to fight against the "Liberators". MAVAG was pretty much state owned and run by Istvan Horthy. Manfred Weiss, was, as you have read, owned and run by jews, and these jews weren't just "murdered" or "sent to the death camps", they made a generous business deal with them and send them to Portugal.

The third factory, Rába, was owned by Dezső Winkler. I wasn't able to find an article which confirms that he was jewish, but I found this:

https://jewishgyor.org/en/2022/08/24/th ... o-winkler/

Who was Dezső Winkler?

He was born in Tét near Győr on 11 July 1901 and died in Budapest on 7 October 1985. He was a mechanical engineer [...] His most famous creation was the four-wheel drive off-road vehicle Botond, which proved to be more reliable than other German vehicles of similar function. [...] He was lucky to be able to create something like that, because it made him indispensable. Imre Pattantyús-Ábrahám, director of the Rába wagon and machine factory in Győr, tried to save the factory’s technical intellectuals of Jewish origin, including many of his closest colleagues, after the German occupation. Winkler and his wife as well as their infant son were already being herded into the wagons when the partial escape came. Dezső Winkler continued to work at the factory until February 1945, during which time he was deported by the Arrow Cross in 1944 to Sopronkőhida, where he escaped and was later arrested again. He managed to escape again in the vicinity of Munich.

This article is confusing, and you often find articles with inconvenient facts written in a confusing style. I feel like this is intentional to muddy the waters. It doesn't mention that Winkler was jewish, but all of the sudden he and his family are in a cattle car, and they have to escape. The article doesn't tell you why. The only explanation is: he was jewish. He was "saved" by Imre Pattantyús-Ábrahám, here the name is a dead give away, and they were able to pretty much keep their factory and continue to produce military hardware, among them the famous Bf 109. I also couldn't find an explanation how someone with the name of Imre Pattantyús-Ábrahám was able to save the jews who were already in cattle cars, when he was himself one. He got a Yad Vashem-award from it. here's his wikipedia article:

https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattanty% ... 3%A1m_Imre

It tells the reader that he "rescue" his jewish collegues from the cattle cars, but doesn't explain why he wasn't in a cattle car himself.

Now let's look at the Hungarian fire arms production. The most important factory was Danuvia. Here two people stand out: Pál Király and his friend and colleque, József Kucher. The Hungarian small arms industry was not very creative, they mainly kept producing WW1-rifles and pistols, with the exception of submachine guns: the Danuvia M39 and M43, designed by Király, and the Danuvia 44.M, designed by Kucher, which after the war was sold as the Kucher K1.

Again I could not find info about whether they were jewish or not. The name Kucher is very jewish. See ancestry.com:

https://www.ancestry.com.au/name-origin?surname=kucher

Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Kutscher .


Király isn't. But here's something from his hungarian wikipedia-article (auto-translated):

"He was born in Budapest in 1880 as the child of Pál Király and Etelke Tóth of Dadada [...] he moved back to Hungary in 1929 to Danuvia and designed weapons [...], He left the country in 1944 and then emigrated to Switzerland, from there to the Dominican Republic"

So this top weapons designer emigrated in 1944. There is only one reason why he would emigrate in 1944.

Now people like History Speaks will probably claim that the Germans just needed all these smart jewish engineers and factory managers. Well, these factories were either producing licensed German or Italian aircraft or tanks, so they could have send some of their own, or they produced stuff that was inferior. But ok. For some reason they didn't just declare them "slave laborers" like all the others. The next excuse will be that they bribed the Nazis. But here it also collides with what you usually read about the "fate of the hungarian jews": that they had all their property - except their shoes - confiscated. Next the explanation for fact that the Nazis either kept these jews at the center of the Hungarian armament industry or send them to Portugal with a large pay off, is that the Germans just did it to pretend they haven't just occupied Hungary. This again is part of the subplot that the Nazis did stuff that made no sense because they were just insane and unpredictable.


So here the thing: one one side you have the narrative of the Nazis that hated all jews and wanted them all gone, then when Barbarossa started they wanted to kill them all. On the other side half of the armament industry of Germany's third most important European ally was run by jews, and even after the "Holocaust in Hungary", they either kept them working or made generous business deals with them. It is hard explaining to people that both things happened in the same world.


---

Another thing to close off: one of my links is jewishgyor.org. It's about the jewish community in the city Győr. There's a very harrowing, stunning and brave, Holocaust survivor story. One of the very few people that survived Auschwitz and still lives to tell the tale says (auto-translated):

https://jewishgyor.org/2023/05/22/a-visszateres/

On June 9, 1944, we were wagoned, persecuted in Győr. An SS officer announced: let's apply for labor. The train stopped in Auschwitz.

The horrors of the journey have already been written by many. All the horror was true. We stepped in Auschwitz In front of Dr.Mengele's magic wand. This wand – at the time we did not yet know – meant life or death. I was lucky: my mother and I were pushed to the side of life. We were kept in a toilet barracks for two days, after which we soaked and got cold for another six weeks, hungry. [...] We saw the chimneys and by then we already knew why they smoked day and night. We saw piled crutches, we saw women kneeling half-conscious who could have done something against the SS commando. We were afraid of rubber sticks, wolf dogs, women in uniform and men. All our shame, our female vanity, has disappeared.

[...]

We worked at the AEG factory in Trautenau. First, we had to clean a freshly painted hangar with a toothbrush, carry two buckets of water for 12 hours without a bite of food. At four in the morning we got the hot water called coffee and bread, in the evening the so-called Eintopf ( one serving ), which was soup made from potato peel.

[...]

We dreamed of good food. We decided that once we got home and ate cream in Gerbeaud, we would sit at a table next to the toilet, remembering the two days we spent in the Auschwitz toilet and feeding us the wash from a bucket.
[...]

Ugh. Well, besides the disgusting stuff it a wonderful piece of undemanding literary prose. If you ever did a creative writing course, you see what was done here.

[curioussoul]

Interesting find. And yes, I've noticed a similar trend in researching obscure WWII topics and finding minor detail that demolish the official Holocaust narrative in small ways.

[Merlin300]

Very interesting facts. Thank you.
And yes, facts inconvenient to Holocaust Belief are stated in an oblique way or surrounded by tales of cruelty. Being forced to clean
large areas with a toothbrush is a common theme.

[Hektor]

Very interesting facts. Thank you.
And yes, facts inconvenient to Holocaust Belief are stated in an oblique way or surrounded by tales of cruelty. Being forced to clean
large areas with a toothbrush is a common theme.

I recall cleaning the toilets with a toothbrush from the army...

Me thinks they owe us compensation for the draft, now.