Metadata: Records of the Government Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews, 1944-1945
Collection
- Country:
- Hungary
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of Hungary, National Archives
- Holding institution (official language):
- Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára
- Postal address:
- Budapest, Bécsi Kapu tér 2-4., 1014
- Phone number:
- +36 1 225 2843
- Web address:
- http://mnl.gov.hu/
- Email:
- info@mnl.gov.hu
- Reference number:
- K 498
- Title:
- Records of the Government Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews, 1944-1945
- Title (official language):
- Zsidók anyagi és vagyonjogi ügyeinek megoldására kinevezett kormánybiztosság iratai, 1944-1945
- Creator/accumulator:
- Government Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews
- Date(s):
- 1944/1945
- Extent:
- 20 fascicles, 2.93 linear metres
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains the fragments of the records of the Government Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews. The material is divided into the following major parts: a) files concerning the organisational and financial matters of the Commissioner’s Office and fragments of its decrees (fascicle 1); b) records of departments I-X. (fascicles 2-3); c-d) fragments and non-registered files (fascicle 3); e)
- Archival history:
- The papers of the Ministry of Finances from 1944 were transported to Sopron (Western Hungary) at the end of 1944, where most of them got lost. A part of the records of the Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews, however, was accidentally found among the papers of the Eszterházy family in their palace in Sopron. The bulk of the collection (fascicles 1-16) was handed over to the National Archives in 1961, the remaining part (fascicles 17-20) were transferred from Department no. III of the National Archives in 1964. The material was rearranged in 1965.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Ministry of Finances played a crucial role in the state-directed and state-controlled campaign systematically to seize the assets of Hungarian Jews between 1938 and 1944. In June 1944, a special organ, the Government Commissioner’s Office for Solving the Material and Financial Affairs of the Jews was established to deal with the matters of confiscation, handling and redistribution of Jewish assets. On 23 July 1944, Albert Turvölgyi, who until then had served as Head of Department at the Ministry of Finances and was an expert in “Aryanisation” measures (he had been responsible for the “Aryanisation” of the liquor industry in particular), was promoted to direct the newly established Office, which had eleven departments. Its sphere of jurisdiction was regulated by Prime Minister’s Decree no. 2650/1944. Amidst rivalry from various other ministries, local administrative offices and party organisations, the authority of the Commissioner’s Office did not match the encompassing plans for a supraministry of redistribution. The activities of the Office were launched with some months of delay towards the end of the summer 1944. Turvölgyi was dismissed after the Arrow Cross takeover and the Commission was eventually incorporated into Department XI of the Arrow Cross Ministry of the Interior headed by Árpád Toldy, a former gendarmerie officer and prefect of Székesfehérvár and Fejér County. He later became the commander of the so-called Gold Train that carried a large part of the confiscated Jewish valuables to Germany.
- Subject terms:
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Collaboration
- Plunder
- Plunder--Aryanisation
- Real estate
- Finding aids:
- A detailed inventory (in Hungarian) as well as contemporaneous finding aids are available for the collection, including fragmented registries, indexes and registration cards.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives
