In some regions of the world the greatest political misjudgment you are likely to make comes from not believing the impossible. A recent posting here was the outgrowth of a confrontation with the perversions of economic and political inequities that prevail in the country of the writer’s origins. The outrageous case to be presented now had its venue in Hungary. “Writing it up” is not to the writer’s taste. Acting is justified by the realization that right and wrong has no nationality. Without intending to attack the country of venue, the fact is that our origins enable us to access what outsiders often cannot. In such instances, silence is not a matter of patriotism but an act of connivance. Therefore, let it be stated here that specific cases can – and do in this instance – serve to illustrate a general problem. It is regrettable that, regardless of the outrage depicted, Hungary’s standards are in most respects better than those prevailing in her part of Europe.

My last piece bypassed two cases. Both involve, as does the topic presented, instances that penetrate the façade of the compensation of the persecuted. Case one is about an old woman. She lived in a hut about six miles from the village from which she was driven away when her property there was grabbed. After the reestablishment of the Republic in 1989, she got coupons equaling a one-digit value of her loss. These chits were to be used at special auctions to pay for (confiscated) land. The woman went to her village to buy a small lot with her certificates. There the old-new local administration told her to get lost. Not being a resident she had no right to purchase (back a fraction her own) land. Shutting her out was illegal but old, alone and helpless in the face of “muscle”, she slipped away as though she would have committed the foul done to her.

Equally absurd is the case of a good friend here in Switzerland who is a PhD and not especially helpless. His family, having survived the Holocaust, tried to build a new life after the war. Soon it became clear that the traits that made them after the 1944 Nazi occupation into victims rendered them undesirable to the new conquerors of the country. Therefore, they tried to escape to the West. They were caught and the entire family, including my pal, then 13, went to jail. Not too long ago my friend remembered a house of which he had been the legal owner. Mainly for the sake of the principle involved, he tried to get the symbolic compensation that was due to him. In pursuing his cause, he was told that he could not receive reimbursement as the house had been sold to the state. Flabbergasted, he asked for proof. It turned out that, indeed, there was a sale on record. It dated from the time he and the family were in jail, and it bore his mother’s falsified signature. No great legal mind is needed to conclude that an incarcerated minor’s house cannot be the object of a valid transaction by his jailed mother who has no title to the building. On this basis, he appealed. The surprising verdict was that there could be no compensation because a contract is a contract and therefore he lost his title to the property.

Comparable cases abound in central Europe. For instance, hundreds of thousands were wronged by the expropriations under the post-war Benesh Decrees effecting ethnic Germans and Hungarians and in general by the persecution and forced labor of “class aliens“ due to ethnicity, religion or political preference. This writer, too, gave as an early teen two-and-a-half years to the “building of Socialism“. In case the reader thought that the previous cases are especially weird and correspondingly unique, he is wrong. The foregoing only served the purpose of a warm-up for a real hum-dinger. It is presented reluctantly. First, there is no intention to smear the country of venue. Regardless of the seeming oddity of the concrete case, the matter is “typical.” Another reason for hesitation was that I had to peruse the material several times to be certain that I did not misunderstand it. What is impossible in theory and by the dictate of reason is hard to believe even when it happens. This being the case I also feared that the reader would dismiss the presentation. Escapees from the Gulag and then Nazi camps were also doubted -till after the fact. To our possible peril, in our own days, the understandable reluctance to accept as true the unimaginable still helps the Ahmadinedjads.

What follows is the abbreviated and translated version of an article (“Are the Nuremberg Laws Still Valid”) with some explanatory remarks added. Since Dr. Peter Kende is a man of the Left, we do not share biases. His presentation might gain in weight in the eyes of some through the fact that he is not Jewish and that he is ultimately chastising Hungary’s governing “Socialists.”

“Immediately after the war the Hungarian government promised that within thirty days of the restoration of civilian rule, the matter of confiscated Jewish property will be settled. This did not happen in thirty days, within 30 years, nor in 60 years. This came about, as it was the state that misappropriated the fortunes that should have been returned. The Supreme Court leads with the good example of how, to this day, the return of the confiscated properties can be sabotaged.”

Time now to present plaintiff of the story. Little Irene survived the 1944 occupation of Hungary by Germany and then the taking of power by the Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian Nazis). Due to her clever father – who masqueraded as an Arrow Cross trooper – she got unmasked and sent to Bergen-Belsen only late in the game. After the war, Irene lived with her grandmother’s sister until 1976. After her death, Irene gathered her relative’s papers and put them aside. Only recently did she muster the strength to examine the documents. Among the papers unearthed, there was a savings account. “The Hungarian General Credit Bank” certified that, on May 1 1944, Maurice Grósz – the dead lady’s brother – had deposited 1,500 Pengős (about $350.00). On it there is a stamp stating that the account is blocked according to Law 1.600/1944. This directive ordered that by April 30 (the date of occupation was March 19) all Jewish property – including cash, stocks, gold, jewelry – had to be reported and deposited.

Her finding made Irene inquire about the fate of “uncle” Maurice. She was told that he had expired in January ’45 due to “heart trouble“. Thereafter Irene approached the Ministry of Finance to find out what happened to the Credit Bank. The response stated that in 1996 the bank had been de-listed. Thereby the institution was dissolved. According to the ministry, the bank had no legal heir.

Dr. Kende injects that the response ignored a critical issue. Did the 1944 Arrow Cross state whose ordinance 3.840 decreed: ‘the entire fortune of Jews shall, constituting part the wealth of the nation, become the property of the state’ have a legal heir?

About eight attorneys refused to represent Irene. Finally, she got to Dr. Péter Gál who took the case – free, as he wanted to serve justice.

In itself, it is iniquitous that those wronged have to sue. Additionally, the heirs of holocaust survivors asking for the restitution of stolen goods encounter the “stiffest resistance.” This takes the form of camouflaging facts by classifying documents as secret and denying the existence of information – making it thereby inaccessible. One trick is withholding the fact that some private banks have been liquidated only in the 1990s or later. Until then, albeit secretly, these banks continued to exist. Whenever someone inquired at the Ministry of Finance or the National Bank, he was sent from office to office, received no answer to written inquires – and finally gave up.

What was the purpose of the haze created by the bureaus? It was to hide the fact that the country’s post-1945 governments embezzled most of what was left of the Jewish fortunes confiscated in 1944-45 by the Nazi Sztójay and Szálasi governments. Furthermore, Szálasi auto-financed its genocide with Jewish holdings. Jewish wealth was used to pay local governments for the operation of ghettoes and for the expenses of deportations. 200 million Pengőes paid Germany for the occupation costs while the loot also financed the Arrow Cross Party.

That provision of the peace treaty that demanded the restitution of commandeered wealth was incorporated into national law. Reacting in 1997 to a court decision, Parliament voted 4 billion HUF to be paid out in coupons. In 1999, the NB estimated the value of Jewish holdings to have been the equivalent of 560 billion HUF.

Irene’s problem roots not in the promised restitution of confiscated goods but in another law. It is 300/1946, which reaffirms the policy of restitution. However, the ordinance also stipulates that the deadline for challenging exploitative arrangements is 1950. Unfortunately, another decree of 1945 declared a moratorium on the initiation of legal action of this type. (Just in case you naively suspect a typo, the point is that compensation was due to those victimized. However, court action to assert claims could no be brought as such suits were subject to a suspension. Meanwhile the deadline stood and ignored the freeze.)

The depicted policy makes Dr. Kende conclude that Hungary’s governments have sabotaged the implementation of their own law. In secret, the NB and the Ministry of Finance made the robbed funds flow into the budget wile the jewelry and art objects were sold. Meanwhile, the names of the owners of these items were known. Therefore, these did not qualify as abandoned goods. Thus, the State and its organs have something to hide. Accordingly, everything is undertaken to prevent the truth regarding the knavery from emerging. For months, claims Dr. Kende, he is corresponding with the NB demanding that they hand out the finings of a study “The NB’s participation in the gathering and storage of fortunes confiscated from people of Jewish origins, 1940-50.” By definition, Dr. Kende asserts, the insights of an investigation by a public institute cannot be subject to an official secrets act. Even so, access is denied.

There is a case that has a bearing on Irene’s claim. In a process brought against the state to achieve the return of property, two judges found that the State has no obligation to assume responsibility for a (confiscated) savings deposit. Nor is the financial institution that had been liquidated in 2002 and was the original depository, liable for the repayment of the 1944 account. The court acknowledged the validity of the law that made, earlier, the state guarantee deposits to be also relevant in cases that predate the legislation of 1944. Nevertheless, it found that “given the absence of a legal relationship between the depositor and the state, the liability of the state cannot be determined to have existed because a legal obligation existed only between the depositor and the financial institution”. This is an “absurd” claim as the state had declared itself the owner of such involuntary deposits. Moreover, it had entered the relationship of contracting parties when it insured deposits in 1932.

In another comparable case, the highest court of the land refused to order the refunding of a deposit. The claimant pleaded that the contract between the Jewish depositor and the bank is invalid. First, the account was opened under the duress of an illegal government and, second, the “contract” violated the dictate of ethics. In response three judges argued “The claimant has been obligated by law to enter a contract of deposit, therefore it has no legal significance that his will to contract had been absent, as even without this intent, a binding contract has come about.” (In fact, if you get a speeding ticket, while you may disagree with the speed limit and the ticket, you are forced to pay even if you question the law and the fine.) Dr. Kende points out here that a law of 1932 -not repealed in 1944- affirms that a contract that exploits a dependency to the disadvantage of another party is void. (N.B.: This logic is applicable to claims beyond the Nazi era‘s. Numerous confiscations by the Communists – see the case of my friend – are legalized by the same logic.) A dangerous precedent comes about if this argument is accepted. It makes the measures of governments that might act in violation of every expressed or implied principle of the laws of humanity, become binding even after their demise.

An astonished Dr. Kende duplicates selected statements from the attorneys of the NB and the State in the matter of Irene. The plea is that the plaintiff bases his complaint on the laws of 1945 and 1946. The demand based on the persecution of Jews is untenable as even the ordinances cited by the plaintiffs demonstrate that the state has settled precisely these torts -in case there were such torts- by creating relevant laws. Another plea of the defense was that proof is lacking that the account cited in the suit was opened because of laws to (disadvantage) Jews. To Dr. Kende, such statements ignore that forced deposits –such as that of M. Grósz – carry a stamp indicating their involuntary nature. Another attorney admitted that the money was deposited involuntarily. However, this duress “constituted a proper expression of economic rationality.”

Having heard this made Irene ask Dr. Gál whether she understood correctly what was said. Dr. Gál rose and demanded that the attorney apologize to the plaintiff who, unlike her exterminated family, survived the measures implemented in the name of this “economic rationality.” He also called the statement a “racist” argument that bases a party’s position on the “principles of Fascism” so as to support its opposition to compensation.

No apology came. However, a few days later the NB gave Dr. Gál an ultimatum to withdraw his statement. In his irritated response, Dr. Gàl claimed that the NB has a hidden list of the original Jewish depositors. Therefore, the NB should “open those closets” even if “one cannot know what kind of skeletons might fall out of them”. Therefore, “I withdraw nothing” and “I refuse to apologize.” Thereafter the NB sued Dr. Péter Gál for “damaging its reputation”. The suit is still pending.

Dr. Kende deals with the allegation that the depository agreement violated the “principles of decency and morality”. To that, the NB responded as follows: the law’s proscription of indecent/immoral contracts “could not nullify the legal effects of a legal ordinance and, furthermore, it cannot invalidate a private contract concluded in conformity with a regulation.” The thusly-emerging contract can be judged to be in contradiction with good morals only in cases when conditions, that are independent of obligatory legal stipulations, support this qualification. Therefore, so the defense, the financial institution’s acceptance of the deposit cannot be classed as immoral. After all, had the bank not accepted the deposit, the depositor would have “suffered further legal disadvantages.” Plainly put by Dr. Kende, Mr. Grósz seems to have reasons to be thankful to those who took his money. Had he not been gassed after the transaction, and had he failed to make the deposit, Mr. Grósz would have been punished for breaking the law.

Dr. Kende concludes with the observation that through its decision the court has refused to recognize the principles established in the Process of Nürnberg, namely that that a right exists that transcends legislated law.

The remarkable legal action against attorney Gál is at the time this is being written, still running. This writer agrees that legal action is in order: such as before the European Court of Human Rights.