Labour service in Hungary during World War II – Abda, Radnoti-Memorial

Fact of the Hungarian figure „Brick Factory in Obuda – The Holocaust in Hungary”

Part of the „The Holocaust” topic

Forced labor service is a special phenomenon of the Holocaust in Hungary. The Hungarian Army did not want to keep Jews in armed service, therefore Jews were collectively excluded from armed military service as of 1940. The conscripts, classified as Jews according to anti-Jewish laws were divided into labor service battalions. About 120000-150000 people enlisted in such battalions during World War II. At the front lines, labor servicemen often performed life-threatening tasks like demining. Tens of thousands of labor service conscripts perished due to the inhumane conditions and the cruelty of the supervising crew. From November 1944, the far-right and anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party brigades fleeing the Soviets drove tens of thousands of Jewish labor servicemen westward in hard freeze. Thousands of these servicemen lost their lives in these death marches even in the last months of the war.