Tibor Baranski (June 11, 1922 – January 20, 2019) was a Hungarian-American man credited with saving more than 3,000 Hungarian Jewish women, men and children from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
When he was 22, he was forced by the advancing Soviets to leave his seminary studies and return to Budapest. He talked his way into the residence of Papal Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta, the Vatican's representative in Budapest. He persuaded Rotta to give him papersMandate paper of Baránszky issued by Papal Nuncio (November 20, 1944) In: that would allow a Jewish family, friends of his aunt, to escape Hungary. Rotta was so impressed by his boldness, he recruited Baranski to help save other Jews. Over nine weeks, before the Soviets surrounded Budapest, Baranski orchestrated the rescue of over 3,000 Jews.
Baranski was arrested by the Soviets on December 30, 1944, and sent on a 16-day, forced march towards a Soviet prison, during which he ate only four times. He was saved by a sympathetic guard and made his way back to Budapest. After he was hospitalized and released, he was arrested again in 1948 for "clerical reaction" and in a show trial was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was released after Stalin's death in 1953. He left Hungary during the 1956 revolution and settled with his wife in upstate New York, where both became US citizens and educators, and raised a family.
On January 11, 1979, Baranski was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. He was a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
Early life
Baranski was the son of Reszl Baranski and Maria Schelnader. His grandfather was born in Poland and after serving in the Polish army in Budapest, decided to stay. His father married Maria Schelnader and Tibor was raised in Budapest. His father's family had roots in Hungary dating back 700 years. He was educated in Hungarian Gymnasia and became aware of rising antisemitism by 1938. He studied for the priesthood in Veszprém in 1940 and in Kassa (Košice) in 1943. He learned of the Nazi government's extermination camps through church channels. As the Soviet army drew near Košice, Baránszki was forced to leave for Budapest, sometimes only a few miles from the front lines, and arrived there on October 20, 1944.
World War II
Baranski's aunt Margit Sterneder had become very close friends over several years with the Jewish family of Dr. Hedvig Szekeres through her work at the Chinoin pharmaceutical factory, in Újpest, a Budapest suburb.
Background
Starting in 1938, Regent Miklós Horthy led the government to pass a series of anti-Jewish measures, emulating Germany's Nuremberg Laws. The First Jewish Law passed on May 29, 1938, defined as Jewish anyone who had converted or were born to Jewish parents after 1919. It restricted the number of Jews in many professions to twenty percent. About 5,000 Jews converted to Christianity after the passing of the First Jewish Law. The second anti-Jewish law passed a year later on May 5, 1939, defined Jews for the first time by their race and not their faith. Individuals with two, three or four Jewish-born grandparents were declared Jewish. Jews were forbidden to work in government, as editors for newspapers, and the number of Jews among theater and movie actors, physicians, lawyers and engineers was capped at six percent. All private companies were forbidden to employ more than 12% Jews. Cumulatively, 250,000 Hungarian Jews were put out of work. Virtually all Jews lost their right to vote. At the next elections held in June, only 38 Jews could vote.
As a result of the laws and cultural oppression, the Sterneder and Szekeres families became even closer. The Third Jewish Law passed in 1941 prohibited sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews and classified another 58,320 people as Jewish who did not profess Judaism. The census question about Jewish grandparents was added late in 1941 after some census forms had already been printed, contributing to an inaccurate count. In addition, many Christians of Jewish ancestry did not answer the question truthfully. So while about 62,000 Christians admitted some Jewish ancestry (including 38,000 in Budapest), the actual number of Christians of Jewish origin by mid-1941 may have exceeded 85,000 and up to 100,000.Statisztikai szemle 1944 4-5, p. 96
A census beginning on January 31, 1941, counted a Hungarian population of 13,643,621. Based on the second anti-Jewish law, 6.2% (846,000) were considered Jewish. In April 1941, Hungary annexed the Bácska, Muraköz, and Muravidék regions from occupied Yugoslavia. The total population of its annexed territories in 1941 was 1,025,508, including 15,000 Jews. As of May 1941, 5.87% (861,000) of the entire Hungarian population of 14,669,129 were under Hungarian law considered Jewish. According to Jewish religious law, 4.94% (725,000) were Jewish.Volume 3, p. 979, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Budapest, 1982
Germans occupy Hungary
In early 1944, Hungarian prime minister Miklós Kállay was secretly attempting to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. To prevent Hungary from leaving the Axis, on March 19, 1944, launched Operation Margarethe, ordering German troops into the country. The far-right fascistPayne, Stanley. "Fascism." Comparison and Definition, Madison (1980): 7. Arrow Cross Party was legalized and assumed power on 15 October 1944. Led by Ferenc Szálasi, they formed the Government of National Unity.
Jews sent to death camps
Mass deportations of Jews to German death camps in occupied Poland began. SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee the large-scale deportations. Between 15 May and 9 July, Hungarian authorities deported 437,402 Jews. All but 15,000 of these Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 90% of those were murdered upon arrival. One in three of all Jews murdered at Auschwitz were Hungarian citizens.Holocaust in Hungary Holocaust Memorial Centre
By June the Germans had organized a program to force Hungarian Jews into mini-ghettos. On June 15, 1944, they were ordered to move into Yellow Star Houses, approximately 2,000 single-building mini-ghettos identified by a yellow Star of David over the entrance. Sterneder became active in an underground movement that helped Jews find hiding places and obtain false emigration documents. The Szekeres family fled into hiding, leaving their sick infant son Gabor Szekeres with the Sterneder family.
Moderates regain power
In early July 1944, Regent Miklós Horthy replaced Döme Sztójay, an avid supporter of the National Socialists, with the anti-Fascist General Géza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting Interior Minister Béla Horváth ordered Hungarian gendarmes to prevent any Hungarian citizens from being deported. As the summer progressed, and the Allied and Soviet armies closed in on central Europe, the ability of the Nazis to devote themselves to Hungary's "Jewish Solution" waned. The Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations. Horthy's actions bought the Jews of Budapest a few months of time.
Fascists take over
In October 1944, Horthy attempted to secretly negotiate a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched Operation Panzerfaust. Troops led by Otto Skorzeny kidnapped Horthy's son and sent him to the Mauthausen concentration camp. The Germans forced Horthy to abdicate in favour of Szálasi, after which Horthy was taken into "protective custody" in Germany. Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross Party, was declared "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of a "Government of National Unity". Szálasi organised the International Ghetto and over the next few months Arrow Cross members conducted frequent raids during which groups of Jews were taken to the banks of the Danube and executed.
Baranski leaves seminary
In 1944, Baranski was studying at a Catholic seminary near Kassa, Košice (present-day Slovakia) to become a priest. He learned of Nazi extermination plans through church channels. He was forced to return to Budapest at age 22 on October 20, 1944, as the Russian army drew near. By then the city was under tight control of German forces. Baranski lived with his aunt, who requested his help contacting Catholic church officials to ask them to intervene on behalf of the Szekeres family.
Gains Catholic church support
Baranski found a long line of people waiting for passes at Papal Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta's embassy residence, the Vatican's representative in Budapest. It was one of five neutral country's embassies issuing "letters of protection", and the Swiss, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Vatican embassies were swamped by long lines of people requesting help. Dressed in his priest's cassock, he later said, "I was not discouraged. Nonchalantly I pushed my way through the line and said that I was on official business." Germans and Hungarians believed that a "family could not be divided. So, if there was one Catholic spouse, for example, only one baptismal certificate was necessary. However, to cover the entire family, individual protection passes were needed, stipulating that the family was under papal protection."
Baranski wandered through the embassy until he found Rotta's office. No one questioned him wearing a priest's cassock. He persuaded Rotta to give him nine letters of protection, one for each member of the Szekeres family. Encouraged by his success, Baranski returned to Rotta a few days later to ask for another set of letters, this time for another Jewish family.
Rotta was impressed that Baranski spoke excellent German and had bluffed his way to the front of the line and into his presence. He recruited Baranski to help protect Jews at risk of being sent to the death camps. Rotta provided Baránszki with letters of protection, baptismal, and immigration certificates, and over the next 70 days Baránszki used them to save thousands of Jews in imminent danger of being murdered.
Two weeks later, Rotta appointed Baránszki as the executive secretary of the Vatican's Jewish Protection Movement in Hungary, serving as a direct emissary of the Papal Nuncio. As head of the Jewish Protection Movement, he soon met other neutral legations at Gresham Palace near the Chain Bridge. The group included Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat later credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps. Baranski collaborated with Wallenberg and arranged private, unofficial meetings between the Swedish diplomat and Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta. Baránszki often led secretive meetings with diplomats including Wallenberg, Swiss Consul Carl Lutz, Spanish Consul Ángel Sanz Briz and Italian cattle trader Giorgio Perlasca to save Jewish lives in Budapest.
During his work with the Papal Nuncio, he saw two handwritten letters from Pope Pius XII encouraging the work to save the Jews. Baranski personally escorted individuals and families to hiding places, sometimes in secret rooms hidden within factories, and in the homes of other Catholics.
Baranski described Wallenberg's motivation as "divinely human love." "We knew in a second we shared the same opinion … the same recklessness, the same determination, all through," said Baránszki.
Bluffs guards
Rotta asked Baranski to go the next day to a factory where nearly 50 Jews who had been baptized as Catholic were being held captive before deportation to Germany and almost certain death. Rotta offered to loan Baranski a small Opel. Baránszki said he didn't want to go the next day, he wanted to go immediately. And he brazenly insisted on borrowing Rotta's diplomatic automobile, a Rolls-Royce limousine flying the Vatican flag. "I told his excellency, 'The Nazis are primitive people. A little shoehorn car would not show any representation of power. The Nazis would be impressed by a Rolls-Royce.'"