EHRI - Kormányzó félhivatalos iratai

Extent and Medium

9 fasc., 1 vols., 1,29 linear metres

Creator(s)

Miklós Horthy

Biographical History

Horthy, Miklós (1868–1957) was an Austro-Hungarian admiral and conservative Hungarian politician. After leading the 1919 counterrevolution, from March 1, 1920, to October 16, 1944 (in the so-called Horthy era), he was appointed head of state of the Hungarian Kingdom, holding the title of regent. The leitmotif of his foreign policy was the revision of the Trianon Peace Treaty. Following the German occupation (March 19, 1944), Horthy, under pressure from Berlin, appointed the collaborator government of Döme Sztójay and waived his right to ratify laws, thereby “washing his hands”: he was neither going to help nor hinder the flood of anti-Jewish regulations and measures. For this reason, he too bears considerable responsibility for the deportation of the Jews from the provinces. In early July 1944, he became active again and stopped the deportations, thereby saving Budapest Jews slated for transportation to Auschwitz. However, he later approved resumption of deportations, which were ultimately thwarted by Romania switching sides in the war in late August 1944. In the radically new military and political situation that arose, Horthy did not want to hand over any more Jews to Germany. He began preparing Hungary’s defection from the war, but the Germans forced him to cede power to Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi on October 15–16, 1944. Horthy testified as a witness during the Nuremberg Trials. He died in Portugal and was reburied in Hungary in 1993.

Archival History

The records in this collection were collected in the Cabinet Office of the Regent between 1920 and 1944. The collection was taken to Germany at the end of 1944, where it was captured by the Red Army along with other Hungarian archival documents. The Directorate of the Archives of the Soviet Union handed over the collection to Hungary in 1959. In 1960, the collection was placed in the Hungarian National Archives. The diary of the Regent and the collection of records selected for the purposes of the Regent’s planned memoir were purchased by the Hungarian National Archives (date unknown). The collection was rearranged by thematic units and by item numbers. There are three main thematic groups: Records related to Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs (I-II.) and Records pertaining to Miklós Horthy and the Horthy family (III.)

Scope and Content

The collection holds the semi-official diplomatic records as well as private and family documents of Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary between 1919 and 1944. The collection is divided into two main thematic groups: Records related to Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs (I-II.) Files with relevance to the history of Hungarian Jews and the Holocaust include the letters of Prime Ministers Bethlen, Gömbös, Teleki and Bárdossy to Horthy (I.B), memorandum of the policy of the Imrédy government (I.C), various pro memoriae and letters on political parties and problems (I.D) and letters and proposals concerning the anti-Jewish land reform in 1942 (I.H), records concerning Hungarian-German relations, including letters and drafts of letters by Horthy to Hitler (II.C.) and miscellaneous correspondence with various Axis politicians (II.K-L) as well as Records pertaining to Miklós Horthy and the Horthy family (III.). The most relevant part of the collection is I.F (on the Jewish question), which includes reports and statistics pertaining to the Hungarian Jews, lists of officials of Jewish origin, text of the anti-Jewish laws in Slovakia, petitions against the Jewish laws, pro memoria on the economic implications of the planned Jewish law in 1939, Horthy’s letter to Prime Minister Sztójay on the “Jewish question” in May 1944, pro memoria on the ghettoization and deportation date May 25, 1944, memorandum on the Jewish laws and letter of Ferenc Chorin on handing over the Manfred Weiss Works to the SS in 1944.