Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner

Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner (born as Franz Zeidner ; born November 22, 1890 in Piski , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary ; †  November 5, 1946 in Žabalj , Vojvodina , People's Republic of Yugoslavia ) was a Hungarian officer of Hungarian German descent in the Austro-Hungarian Army and in of the Royal Hungarian Army . At the end of his career he was Colonel General as well as SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS .

Life

After attending the Artillery Cadet School in Traiskirchen and the Theresian Military Academy , Zeidner came to the Field Haubitz Regiment No. 12 as a lieutenant in 1910. During the First World War he served as an artillery and general staff officer and achieved the rank of captain . After the end of the war he joined the newly founded Royal Hungarian Army, where from 1921 he served as a general staff officer in the 7th mixed brigade in Miskolc . In addition, he was a teacher at the Hungarian War School. In the interwar period he changed his German surname to Feketehalmy-Czeydner . In 1928 he was transferred to the Honvéd Ministry and in 1929 promoted to lieutenant colonel. From November 1934 he was deputy head of the Aviation Office, from March 1938 head of the air force section in the Honvéd Ministry.

In November 1938 he took over as commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade and was promoted to major general the following year . From March 1940 he was Chief of the General Staff of the 1st Army before he became Commanding General of the V Army Corps stationed in Szeged in August 1941 . In November of the same year he was promoted to lieutenant field marshal .

In January 1942, troops under his command carried out a large-scale retaliatory action in the Batschka, which had been annexed by Hungary since April 1941 . The action was ordered after the murder of several Hungarian gendarmes and soldiers and acts of sabotage by Yugoslav partisans by the chief of staff, Ferenc Szombathelyi . Three battalions under Colonel László Deák were deployed to the area, where they received support from local police, gendarmerie and home guard units. In the village of Žabalj , in the vicinity of which the partisans had been observed, the entire population was massacred on the orders of Feketehalmys. A pogrom took place in Novi Sad from January 21 to 23, killing almost 800 people, including 550 Jews and 292 Serbs . In total, up to 4,000 people had been murdered by the end of the campaign on January 31.

The Novi Sad massacre sparked protests in Hungary led, among others, by the chairman of the opposition party of small farmers , Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky . As a result, Feketehalmy was retired but went unpunished. It was not until September 1943, when Hungary was already negotiating a separate peace with the Western powers, that proceedings were initiated against the officers responsible. On December 14, 1943 the trial of three Honved and twelve gendarmerie officers was opened. Feketehalmy-Czeydner was sentenced to 15 years in prison, seven co-defendants received sentences of over ten years each. On January 15, Feketehalmy-Czeydner fled to Vienna with three other convicts, where they sought political asylum. Adolf Hitler did not comply with an extradition request by the Hungarian government .

In March 1944, Feketehalmy joined the Waffen-SS and subsequently served in the II SS Panzer Corps . After the coup of hitler loyal Arrow Cross Party under Ferenc Szálasi he returned to Hungary in October 1944 and became deputy minister of war. Towards the end of the war he was commissioned to set up a Hungarian SS corps, which, however, practically only existed on paper.

In May 1945 he became an American prisoner of war, from which he was first extradited to Hungary. The Hungarian authorities extradited him to Yugoslavia in January 1946, along with four other Hungarian soldiers . Here he was sentenced to death for war crimes and hanged on November 5, 1946 in Žabalj .

Movie

The events surrounding the massacre of 1942 were processed by András Kovács in the 1966 film Cold Days (Hungarian. Original title Hideg napok ) based on the novel by Tibor Cseres.

literature

• Christian Gerlach , Götz Aly : The last chapter. Realpolitik, ideology and the murder of the Hungarian Jews in 1944/1945. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart et al. 2002, ISBN 3-421-05505-X .
• Dermot Bradley (ed.), Andreas Schulz , Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen-SS and the police. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 1: Abraham – Gutenberger. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2003. ISBN 3-7648-2373-9 . Pp. 188-190.

Web links

• Olokaustos: Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner (Italian)
• The Generals of WWII: Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner (English)