Delegation of Hungarian Jews Arrives in Bucharest to Secure Aid for Survivors

A delegation of the Jewish community of Debreczen, seat of the Hungarian Provisional Government, arrived here today to confer with Rumanian Jewish leaders on measures to rebuild Jewish life in Hungary and to secure immediate assistance for the surviving Jews of Budapest. The Debreczen Jews have constituted themselves a temporary central body of Hungarian Jewry.

The delegation is headed by Prof. Mannheim, author of a well-known Hebrew-Hungarian dictionary, who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that there are about 100,000 Jews left in Budapest. Prof. Mannheim said that information received from 27 liberated villages and towns indicate that another 10,000 Jews remain there. Included. in the 27 are the city of Debreczen and its surrounding villages, where 2,000 Jews survive; Nagy-Varad with 1,200; Kaposvar with 500; and Satu-Mare with 400. Of these only about ten percent are women.

Prof. Mannheim also stated that the Hungarian Provisional Government is preparing a law abolishing the anti-Jewish legislation introduced by the pro-Nazi regime and that it will soon be promulgated. A special secretariat for Jewish affairs will be established by the Provisional Government, he said. In the meantime, Dr. Leitnor, the president of the Debreczen Jewish Community, has been appointed a member of the Hungarian National Assembly, he reported.

The delegation appealed, through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, to the Jews of the world to send immediate relief, including medicaments, clothing, shoes and underwear. “The Germans robbed the Jewish population of everything, and the majority of the surviving Jews in Hungary are now barefooted and without clothing,” Prof. Mannheim declared. He added that it is possible to buy food for the starving Budapest Jews from peasants in neighboring villages, but the Jewish population is penniless and cannot, therefore, secure any food unless relief funds are sent from abroad.

Dr. Mannheim revealed how young Jews secured false identification documents and joined the Arrow Cross storm troops. In this way they were able to smuggle food to the starving Jews in the Budapest ghetto and to help some escape from the ghetto. In October of last year, he said, all Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 48, and women between the ages of 16 and 40, totaling about 70,000 in all, were rounded-up and sent to forced labor. Meanwhile, 200 Jews were killed daily and their bodies flung into the Danube. This continued for several weeks.