Recently, a document from 1942 was uncovered in the Hungarian War Archive (Hadtörténelmi Levéltár),¹³⁰ which has added to the still very scarce historical evidence showing that during the Second World War homosexuals were also targets of life‐threatening state control in [the Kingdom of] Hungary. A list of 993 alleged homosexuals was part of the correspondence between the State Security Centre and the Minister of Defence, contemplating whether or not to use them as forced labourers within the wartime labour service system.

The wartime labour service system was a special phenomenon of the Horthy régime, a period of Hungarian history named after Miklós Horthy, regent of the Hungarian Kingdom between 1920 and 1944 (this period of Hungarian history is often described as a kingdom without a king, ruled by an admiral without a fleet, in a country without a coastline). The obligation of home defence‐related labour service (honvédelmi munkakötelezettség) was originally introduced by Act No. II of 1939 on Home Defence.

According to Randolph Braham, who has done extensive research on this topic:

the Hungarian labor service system was conceived as part of the anti‐Semitic policies pursued by Hungarian governments in tandem with the Third Reich. The system was established in 1939 when [the Kingdom of] Hungary’s political, diplomatic, and economic relations with [the Third Reich] bore the first fruits of its revisionist ambitions. By that time the Jews of [the Kingdom of] Hungary were defined along racial lines and deprived of many of their basic civil, economic, and human rights.

Even during the first phase of its operation (July 1939–April 1941), the labor service system was discriminatory. Although labor servicemen were allowed to wear army uniforms at work, they were identified as unreliable and forbidden to bear arms (2004: 59).¹³¹

The 69059/1942 Decree of the Minister of Defence extended the scope of the law to all Jewish men aged 18 to 48:

[By] early 1942 Jewish officers were deprived of their rank and labor servicemen were not only compelled to wear their own clothes and footwear, but also a yellow or white armband that identified them as easy targets for abuse. The treatment of labor servicemen varied from company to company depending on the attitude of the commanding officers.

In general, however, Jewish labor servicemen were treated as pariahs and abused by the Christian officers and guards […] Their daily life was not fundamentally different from that of the Jews who lingered in [the Third Reich’s] concentration camps. Like the victims in those camps, labor servicemen were often subjected to punitive treatment by officers and guards, deprived of their possessions and basic needs (including adequate shelter, nutrition, and sanitary care), and subjected to unimaginable tortures.

Countless thousands were executed on order or on the whim of sadistic [Axis] soldiers. Moreover, many labor servicemen ended up in [the Third Reich’s] concentration camps after being discharged from the service or as a consequence of their withdrawal from the frontlines (ibid.: 59–60).

The aim of the wartime labour service system was to keep the politically unreliable elements of society — primarily Jews, but also communists and members of non‐Hungarian ethnic groups — away from armed military service and at the same time force them to take part in the war effort. This is how the unarmed home defence labour service came into being, leading to the death of thousands of forced labourers who were sent to the front lines without sufficient equipment and supplies.

The correspondence between the State Security Centre and the Minister of Defence, consisting of four letters and two attached lists, began on 7 November 1942 with a proposal on behalf of the former (within the Ministry of Home Affairs)¹³² addressing the latter as follows:

Please, call up into the home defence labour service the homosexual individuals, being unreliable regarding public morality, located within the territory of the capital, Budapest, listed in the attached register. Please, inform us about your Honour’s decision.¹³³

On the same day the request of the State Security Centre was sent out for internal discussion on behalf of the Minister of Defence “pro domo” within the Ministry of Defence. This letter stated that the “Ministry of Home Affairs, (more precisely: the State Security Centre) requests that officially registered homosexuals, being residents of Budapest, should be called up into the home defence labour service”.

Regarding this request the Department of Military Organisation and Mobilisation submitted the following arguments:

According to Act No. II of 1939 suitable individuals on the basis of their occupation or education can be employed for home defence labour. Everyone should be employed in the best possible way to serve the interest of home defence. [Thus] there is no legal possibility to mobilize these [homosexual] people for home defence labour service.

The department also considered the possibility of mobilizing them for military service [by taking into consideration that] previously socially harmful individuals (prisoners, internees) were divided into two groups: those who are reliable and those who are unreliable regarding (their) national loyalties.

Those in the first group were assigned to active service, while the others were used in special labour companies… [however] in the view of the department these people cannot be categorized as unreliable regarding their national loyalties, therefore they should be assigned to active military service, which is by no means a desirable solution. Regardless, those listed in the (attached) register should be divided into the following groups:
a) Jews:
b) non‐Jews;
c) those who completed military service;
d) those who have been enlisted;
e) those who have not completed military service;
f) those exempted from conscription because of their age;
and we should follow a different procedure in each case — but the attached register does not include the necessary data [on the basis of which these category memberships could be established. In summary, on the basis of the above] it would not be desirable to look for solutions in the military line: this issue requires an explicit policing (administrative) solution as there is no hope of changing the character of these degenerated neurotic individuals.¹³⁴

It was also added that there was “an increasing tendency to offer the scum of the population for military use, while these procedures would hurt the feelings of those other impeccable individuals who participate in the war, when they see that the [military] service gains a primarily punitive character”.

Additionally, one officer made the following note in handwriting: “It is undoubtedly useful, if mainly the nationally useless elements decay…”

Another lieutenant referred in a handwritten comment to the possibility of collecting homosexuals into special labour force companies and employing them outside the country’s borders; however, “in this case they would get into the same category with those being unreliable regarding (their) national loyalties”, thus the question emerges: “would it be useful to make all these men meet and get to know each other more closely? I certainly wouldn’t advise that.”¹³⁵

Nevertheless, on 11 November 1942, another short letter arrived from the State Security Centre, addressed again to the Minister of Defence, requesting similar treatment for an additional 184 men to those 810 alleged homosexuals whose data had already been sent on 7 November. The two lists consisted of data on 993 men, including their name, place and date of birth, religious denomination, family status, occupation, first name of father (or an indication of being an illegitimate child), their mother’s name and (possibly the last‐known) address.

Data on two further individuals are missing because the paper part of their records was cut out with scissors “on the basis of a conversation with the Chief Commissioner”, as handwritten margin notes testify.

Alleged homosexuals

Most of these “listed” allegedly homosexual men were in their late 20s (with an average age of 29, in an age range of between 16 and 48), and worked as manual labourers (about 160 of them as farmhands and about 80 in commerce): there were only a few intellectuals and artists among them (for example, 3 actors, 8 musicians and only 1 journalist). Some 29 of the 993 men were married, 46 had been illegitimate children and 37 had their address given as “prison”.

Regarding religious affiliation, there were 629 Roman Catholics, 167 Jews, 127 Calvinists, 24 Evangelicals and 19 Greek Catholics — these numbers are in line with the division of denominations in the population of Budapest in the early 1940s.¹³⁶

It is a matter of concern that the origin of these lists cannot be established, but it can be supposed that they came from police files. The phrase “officially registered homosexuals” used in the correspondence can support this supposition.

The final item of the correspondence that has come to light is a (possibly draft) reply of 3 December 1942 from the Minister of Defence addressed to the Minister of Home Affairs, stating that: “I have no means to follow your Honour’s recommendation to take these homosexual individuals into military service”.

So far these are the only known documents that can provide a link between the history of homosexuality in [the Kingdom of] Hungary and the Holocaust, and this link is not a very strong one, as at present, besides archive documents on criminal court cases, there are no historical data available to explain what happened in Hungary during the 1940s to alleged homosexuals in general, and to these 993 listed men from Budapest in particular.

Unfortunately, the content of most of the wartime court cases cannot be accessed any longer; for example, for the period between 1938 and 1951 only five “unnatural fornication” court case files remained accessible in the Budapest City Archives, while according to the archive’s index books there used to be many more case files from the late 1930s and the 1940s, most of which must have been destroyed after the war.

Additionally, at the National Archives of Hungary, there are also a few criminal case reports, where the race defilement law (Act XV of 1941) that enforced racial segregation at the level of intimate relationships, including sexual acts between Jews and non‐Jews, was applied to “unnatural fornication” cases. From one of these reports we can learn about a case from 1943 when a 39‐year‐old Jewish man who paid a 17‐year‐old boy to conduct oral sex with him was charged with “unnatural fornication” and sentenced to internment.¹³⁷

Compiling “homosexual inventories”, which listed potential blackmail victims who could be convinced or coerced into becoming police informers, was part of regular police work in urban areas and especially in Budapest from at least the 1920s onwards (Takács 2014). These practices are also reflected in archive documents of the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára — ÁBTL), where one of the alleged homosexuals from the 1942 “homosexual lists” was also traced.

(Emphasis added.)

Despite common knowledge of both the Shoah and the Third Reich’s persecution of gay men, you would be surprised at how infrequent it is for anybody to focus on the subject of gay Jews under Fascism. This is a gap in our knowledge that I would like to try addressing this month.