How It Happened : Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry

A gripping first-hand account of the devastating "last chapter" of the Holocaust, written by a privileged eyewitness, the secretary of the Hungarian Judenrat, and a member of Budapest's Jewish elite, How It Happened is a unique testament to the senseless brutality that, in a matter of months, decimated what was Europe's largest and last-surviving Jewish community. Writing immediately after the war and examining only those critical months of 1944 when Hitler's Germany occupied its ally Hungary, Erno Munkacsi describes the Judenrat's desperation and fear as it attempted to prevent the looming catastrophe, agonized over decisions not made, and struggled to grasp the immensity of a tragedy that would take the lives of 427,000 Hungarian Jews in the very last year of the Second World War. This long-overdue translation makes available Munkacsi's profound and unparalleled insight into the Holocaust in Hungary, revealing the "choiceless choices" that confronted members of the Judenrat forced to execute the Nazis' orders. With an in-depth introduction, a brief biography of Erno Munkacsi, ample annotations by Laszlo Csosz and Ferenc Laczo, two dozen archival photographs, and detailed maps, How It Happened is an essential resource for historians and students of the Holocaust, the Second World War, and Central Europe.