László Deák

László Deák (born July 1, 1891 in Erlau , † November 5, 1946 in Žabalj , Vojvodina ) was a Hungarian officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army and in the Royal Hungarian Army . At the end of his career he was a colonel .

Life

From 1906 to 1909 Deák attended the infantry school in Ödenburg . In 1912 he completed his training at the Royal Military Academy Ludovika in Budapest as a lieutenant . Deák took part in the Austro -Hungarian Army in World War I and after the war ended, he joined the Royal Hungarian Army, where he achieved the rank of colonel.

During the Second World War , Deák took part in the Novi Sad massacre in the Batschka as a colonel in January 1942 . After protests, he and General Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner were retired in August 1942, but initially went unpunished. In December 1943 a trial was opened against him and 14 other officers, which he escaped by fleeing to Germany.

In February 1944 Deák joined the Waffen SS and was deployed again in the Batschka. As SS-Oberführer he led the Deak combat group in Vojvodina. From November 1944 he served in the 25th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS "Hunyadi" (Hungarian No. 1) and was appointed commander of the 61st Waffen Grenadier Regiment of the SS. The combat group Deak consisted of about 1000 men with three infantry companies, a heavy weapon platoon and a telecommunications platoon and was involved in the defense of the Batschka and the Banat against the advancing Red Army .

From December 27, 1944 to January 23, 1945 Deák commanded the 33rd Waffen-Cavalry Division of the SS (Hungarian No. 3) . From January 23 to January 29, 1945 he was commander of the 26th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (Hungarian No. 2) .

In May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the US and was extradited to Yugoslavia in January 1946 . Here he was sentenced to death on October 31, 1946 for the murder of 5,000 Serbs and Jews and hanged together with Ferenc Szombathelyi and József Grassy on November 5, 1946 in Žabalj .

literature

• Nigel Thomas, László Pál Szábó: The Royal Hungarian Army in World War II. (= Men-at-arms. Vol. 449). Osprey, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-1-84603-324-7 , pp. 14, 37.

Web links

• Carl Savich: Vojvodina and the Batschka Division