Estimating the Jewish property in Hungary at twenty billion pengoes – approximately four billion dollars – the Hungarian newspapers reaching here today from Budapest carry reports of various Hungarian cliques inside and outside the pro-Nazi government in a made scramble among themselves to grab what loot they can before the fall of the present regime.
The Budapest radio today announced that three members of the present Hungarian cabinet had been “relieved of their posts.” The three, responsible in no small part for the laws confiscating Jewish property, are: Bela Imredy, Minister of Economic Affairs; Andor Jaross, Minister of Interior, and Antal Kunder, Minister of Trade and Transport.
One of the Hungarian newspapers writing of the fight among officials pictures the grab for loot thus: “A Jewish fortune is liquidated, and certain elements start a deplorable campaign to grab it. This drive is not started by nameless workers, not by sweating peasants, not by little men in offices. No, it is started by those who always make an easy living and who have always had everything they wanted. They consider the Jewish fortune of twenty billions as free booty, and beat their chests with both hands, boasting that ‘After all, either we have won or we have not. If we have, give us the Jewish villas, the pianos, the summer houses and the great estates.'”
The Hungarian newspaper Pester Lloyd reports that two Hungarians arrested for the murder of two Jewish women who resisted looting at their homes “told the police that they did nothing but enforce the intentions of the anti-Jewish laws in their own way and as a matter of fact deserve a reward.”
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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.
