Missions to country town communities prior to the German occupation on March 19, 1944
Even before the German takeover, the youth movements began sending emissaries to warn the Jews of the impending danger.
In the months prior to March 19, 1944, nine emissaries visited 34 towns and villages.
In their testimonies, the emissaries note the event that prompted their missions to the Jewish communities in the country towns, to bring them the bitter news of the establishment of the ghettos, the concentration camps and the ongoing extermination of the Jews throughout Europe. The emissaries’ goal was to inform the communities of what was coming. An inter-movement meeting was held in Csillebérc, a hilly suburb of Budapest, in the summer of 1943. The members heard lectures on the condition of the Jews in the neighboring countries, on the beginning of the extermination of the Jews. Hanoar Hatzioni members were spurred to action by their experience at the movement’s winter camp in Balatonboglár in December 1943. There they met with groups of Hanoar Hatzioni members who had managed to escape the clutches of the Germans in Silesia. The group from Silesia talked at length with the camp participants, explaining what happened to the Jews in the ghettos, the systematic persecution, the extermination process against the Jews in other parts of Poland. They also spoke about the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and in other towns in Poland. At that camp, the Hungarian youth group members also learned how to use handguns.
The youth group members were shaken to their core by what they heard, and were eager to do whatever they could to save Hungarian Jewry. They volunteered to tell what they had heard to Jewish communities, driven by the belief that others must be informed of what was happening. The responses at their meetings with community leaders and with public figures were quite varied: polite listening, understanding and agreement, expressions of disbelief, denial and even outrage at the “irresponsible youths” who were inciting and disrupting the peace of the communities and their good neighborly relations with the non-Jewish population and the local authorities. There were even instances of immediate demands to leave, accompanied by threats to inform the authorities of the youths’ activities.
When reading these descriptions and testimonies today, it is impossible not to be amazed by the volunteerism; the dedication of the youth movement members and alumni; and by their thankless attempts to bring the bitter news to the complacent Jewish communities of the country towns. Despite the chilly and hostile reception, most of the emissaries did not stop trying.
