Dr. Ferenc Katonah began his talk, he started off by saying.

“When you have a Hungarian friend, you don’t need an enemy.”

This is because the Hungarian government while wanting to help, continues to follow privacy laws that make everything impossible, forcing anyone to collect records to publish notices in the newspaper asking for objections to publication of the records, which takes time and money. These objections never materialize.

“When we are talking about the Hungarian matter, you are always fighting against a threat that never happens.”

Then, Katonah Feri gave us a very sad account of the misdeeds of the Hungarian gendarmerie are captured on microfilm in the records of Gendarmerie District VII, Kassa, 1944-1945 which he refers to as Z-936.

The Munkach records, the ones are on reel 2, going on to reel 4.

According to the Hungarian laws on data protection, you can use personal data only 30 years after the death of the individual, or 90 years after the date of birth, or 60 years after the creation of the records.

These are on the lists of microfilms which still need to be indexed.

Then Feri discussed records of victims of Nazi scientific experimentation that are in the National Archives of Hungary, which needs to be microfilmed and paginated.

There was one archivist paginating the records, and he died.

If you sit down at the microfilm reader, you will find out that they printed forms for the looting. and you are reading a very sad novel.

Folklander Camera is a symbol that the owner was a well to do .

During first phase of deportation, they did everything by the book. Then they did not do paperwork.

Then he talked about the name lists. From the east they have property records but no name lists. From the west they have name lists but no property records. It all depends on what was going on where.

Northern Transylvania, Record book 25, Kolosvar, Romania, Kluj.

Brandor Braham collection

In 2009, the Hungarian national archives published a book of more than 300 pages called the Hungarian Archival Records of the Beregovo district, up until 1919, and from 1939 to 1944. It is a list of materials that are not readily available.

RG 52.001M–microfilm collection prepared in late 50s early 60s.

RG 39.013N

2004 Prime minister of Hungary wanted to know where the Jaros Lists were. Gechenyi commission. Seems to stop in midair.

“I” series. ghetto lists, not deportation lists.

Hungarian Department of Losses Card are in Hungarian Archives of Military History. Microfilmed by Yad Vashem in early 1990s, and published in Nevek. Clear list of those who went missing. “Vestse deevek” Sheets of Losses Military units filed these every day. Forced laborers were on same pieces of paper as military. Those would be the most precise. Yad Vashem only copied the records with “Z” on them.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, there was an independent commission investigating Nazi crimes, whose records, also called the Ossobyi archives, are in the Museum.

8/16/11