As the Hungarian forces were pushed back to Budapest and beyond, many of these weakening units sought a reprieve by joining Waffen SS units being organized specifically for Hungarian nationals, such as the "Hunyadi" and "Hungaria" fighting SS divisions. His name and his photo is the only information I have available on this Hungarian young man.

Istvan Takacs in Waffen SS Uniform, 1944

Named after the legendary medieval Magyar fighter of the Turks, the Hunyadi division was established by German-Hungarian cooperation during late 1944. Circumstances kept the division out of combat until April, 1945, despite the determination of a few of its members shown here.


Hungarian "Hunyadi"  Waffen SS Grenadier Division

In interwar Hungary, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews worshipped in peace, the Jewish population was highly integrated into the life of the country, and occurring interfaith tensions were handled by non-violent means. Later, during the war, hundreds of thousands Jews (and non-Jews) were conscripted into Hungarian military labor battalions serving at the front.

With Hitler's occupation of Hungary in the spring of 1944, the rounding up and expatriation of the Jews commenced and Horthy even employed his gendarmerie in the sordid process. But when the Regent temporarily succeeded in regaining more control in August, 1944, by then apparently aware of what was really taking place, he ordered his gendarmes and military to stop the ghastly shipments, particularly from the city of Budapest.

When Horthy was  deposed in October, the extremist Arrow-Cross government of Szalasi resumed and accelerated the tragic deportations, with the insane exterminations taking place mainly at Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland.

Here we see two well assimilated Hungarian Jewish boys experience the frightening shock of arrival at the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. 
