Concierges of Budapest as Ordinary Profiteers of the Holocaust in Hungary
6 June 2017 - 5 PM
Istvan Pal Adam (CEFRES, Prague)
During the Second World War, Budapest concierges (in Hungarian, házmester, in Czech, domovník) were a link between the authorities and most Jewish citizens living in the city. This role grew in importance, especially in summer 1944, when a dispersed Budapest ghetto was formed from some 2,000 individual apartment buildings. In my paper I seek to explain the circumstances in which these concierges could acquire a good deal of assets by trying to help the persecuted Jews to survive.
