Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Institute in Jerusalem, hosted Wednesday a march of remembrance with dozens of Holocaust survivors to mark 70 years since the beginning of the mass murder of Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust.
After the march a memorial ceremony took place in the Hall of Remembrance followed by lectures in the Yad Vashem Auditorium and a a symposium commemorating 70 years of the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
On April 3, Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research will hold a special symposium focusing on Jewish Hungarians during the Holocaust. The symposium will consist of two sessions: the first one launching the new publication, Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, and the second focusing on special aspects of the Holocaust concerning Hungarian Jewry.
The vast majority of the Hungarian Jewry was deported during the last year of the war following the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944 and continuing until the end of the war in Europe.
The Jews of Hungary were deported under German command mostly by Hungarian police and officials. In addition, beginning in 1942, tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews died after being conscripted by the Hungarian military as forced laborers, and thousands of others were handed over to the Germans where they were murdered in the first major shooting action in 1941.
Some 568,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.