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Abstract
A self-selected group of refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe returned overseas to fight the Nazis as US citizens in Military Intelligence. The author's father, a refugee from Hungary, kept a diary of his service as an aerial photo interpreter and Counter Intelligence Corps special agent in the US army. His diary offers a vivid example of Richard Weisberg's exhortation to remain true to “our best and deepest values” during times of crisis – a code of conduct that applies to military service as well as the practice of law.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I wish to thank Richard Weisberg, my former University of Chicago graduate school professor, who encouraged my early interest in Nietzsche and Novel Theory and introduced me to many of the themes in his groundbreaking book Failure of the Word. My thanks include Richard's wife Cheryl and the Weisberg family. For reading drafts of my work and offering helpful comments, I am also indebted to Peter Hayes, expert historian of WWII Germany and the Holocaust; to Frank Baron, a Hungarian Holocaust scholar; and to comparatist Louise Vasvári, editor of Hungarian Cultural Studies. Special thanks are due to Paul A. Shapiro and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the USHMM for a travel grant that enabled me not only to share my father's diary but also to work in its archives and ask questions of its expert staff.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Richard H. Weisberg, In Praise of Intransigence: The Perils of Flexibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 17.
2. “The Ritchie Boys” is an award-winning documentary by director Christian Bauer. In the film, former Jewish refugees recall their experiences in the US Army Military Intelligence Corps and the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). Camp Ritchie, Maryland, was a training center for many foreign-born US CIC agents, including William I. DeHuszar.
3. For naturalization policies during WWII, see “The Second War Powers Act of 1942 [56 Stat. 182, 186]”; and https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/our-history/agency-history/military-naturalization-during-wwii.
4. Henry A. Turner, Jr., “Two Dubious Third Reich Diaries,” Central European History 33, no. 3 (2000): 415.
5. Ib Melchior describes the job and training of photo interpreters as well as the point system in Case by Case: A US Counterintelligence Agent in World War II (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993), 61–7, 225–6; for a description of the CIC, see “CIC Records: A Valuable Tool for Researchers,” Center for the Study of Intelligence, Bulletin 11 (Summer 2000), 11–15.
6. Marguerite DeHuszar Allen, “The Wartime History of the National Bank of Hungary through Hungarian-American Eyes,” Hungarian Studies Review 33. nos. 1–2 (2006): 169–90.
7. Philippe Lejeune, On Diary, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin and Julie Rak, trans. Katherine Durnin (n.p.: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009), 209, 223, 226.
8. Ibid., 214–15, 223.
9. The point system, determining when a soldier had fulfilled his service requirements, is explained in “Adjusted Service Rating Card,” Stars & Stripes, May 11, 1945, as well as Melchior's Case by Case, 225–6.
10. “Asylum of Death,” Newsweek, July 14, 1945. For more on this topic, see Patricia Heberer, Children during the Holocaust: Documenting Life and Destruction (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2011), 218.
11. Weisberg, In Praise of Intransigence, 8.
12. Michael Hirsch, The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 2010), 100–101.
13. Seth A. Givens describes what he found to be the most common justifications for looting: “wartime necessity, opportunities for profit or trade, keepsakes, and revenge for Nazi atrocities,” in “Liberating the Germans: The US Army and Looting in Germany during the Second World War,” War in History 21, no. 1 (2013): 33–54. Kenneth D. Alford's The Spoils of World War II: The American Military's Role in Stealing Europe's Treasures (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994) played a crucial role in advancing this line of historical research.
14. Allen, “The Wartime History.” See note 3.
15. Col. Ralph E. Pearson, Enroute to the Redoubt: A Soldier's Report as a Regiment Goes to War (Chicago: Adam's Printing Service, 1958), vol. III, 212. On May 21, 1945, the Hungarian National Bank story hit the front page of the Chicago Daily News in dramatic form: “Chicagoan Finds Hungary Gold in Alps Crag.”
16. Gábor Kadár and Vági Zoltán, Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, the Becher Case and the Wealth of Hungarian Jews (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004), 221; Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kadár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2013), lxii–lxv.
17. Kadár and Vági, Self-Financing Genocide, 283. See also Alford's The Spoils of World War II.
18. Gavriel Bar-Shaked, Julia Bock, and Yosef Stern, “Index of Names,” in Miscarriage of Justice, http://www.mis-justice.com/main.html. William's cousin László (Laci) Szepesi, for example, was forced to relinquish his law practice to a Gentile. Laci died in the Shoah.
19. Kadár and Vági, Self-Financing Genocide, 67.
20. Eugene (Jenő) Lévai, “The War Crimes Trials Relating to Hungary,” in Hungarian-Jewish Studies II, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: World Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1966), 275; László Karsai, “The People's Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary, 1945–46,” in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: WWII and Its Aftermath, ed. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 235, 244.
21. Randolph L. Braham, The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013), 1: xxx.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Marguerite DeHuszar Allen
Marguerite DeHuszar Allen is an independent scholar and affiliate of the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern University.