Jews serving in Hungarian forced labor battalions on the Russian front – it is estimated that there are about 250,000 of them – are forbidden to receive any mail from home, it is disclosed in confidential orders to Hungarian officers seized when the Red Army crushed an Hungarian infantry division on the Southern front.
The ban on mail to the Jewish laborers has never been announced in Hungary and consequently the families of the Jews send them letters. The secret orders, however, instruct the officers to destroy all such mail in the presence of the addressee after first making sure that he is informed that the letter being burned is from his family. The order also provides that if the addressee receives another letter from his family he is to be punished.
Reports from captured Hungarian soldiers and Jewish laborers also reveal that the families of mobilized Jews are usually denied any government allotments although the law provides for such assistance. In the case of Jewish families, the authorities insist that they prove that the mobilization of their son or father has caused them material hardship before they are eligible for aid. Almost always the officials decide that they have suffered no hardships.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
