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17 July 2026 - Erlenbach

The first half of this book was cool. British Spies. Hungarian intrigue. Polish refugees organizing resistance. Yugoslavia as a refuge. The Hungarian leader Horthy trying and failing to stay out of the war. The increasingly harsh anti-Jewish laws. Hungary entering the war. Still, even at war, Budapest resists Nazism. And Eichmann. And then comes 1944. The Nazis invade. Jews are rounded up and put on trains to Auschwitz. The Jewish council of Budapest thinks they are negotiating with Eichmann. "Don't resist" they council their co-religionists. To save themselves? Or because they were fooled? Foreign diplomats from neutral countries risk it all to save as many Jews as they can. Many times more are killed than saved. The city descends into violent anarchy under Russian shelling and American bombing as the Arrow Cross take over, just shooting people on bridges over the Danube for easy disposal.

I had to put the book down multiple times in tears. I have visited Auschwitz which imparts a reality that unfortunately cinema cannot capture. I don't want to believe that such things could occur, much less did. Nazis aren't any more real than the storm troopers in Star Wars, right? The war in Ukraine imparts the same desire to ignore reality in me. Because it's just too terrible. And the modern wave of anti-semitism that has somehow become mainstream even in America is troubling. From the river to the sea, let's eliminate jewry? I regularly run through the Jewish neighborhood here in Zürich. Men have yarmulkes and both men and women a more formal dress than most. Most European cities once had such quarters. Nationalism is a 20th century mental illness that somehow Switzerland has managed to avoid with four national languages plus the English that everyone speaks and a quarter of the population foreign born.

Being American, I unfortunately underwent the genital mutilation that is circumcision as a baby, so I've to repeatedly had to argue to European women that I'm not Jewish. As an atheist of many years I find that strange. I can't imagine Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to do that for the genital multilation that she also experienced. I saved my own son from that - if he wants to mutilate his own genitals that'll be his choice. Maybe wanting to do so should be considered mental illness like a sex change operation once was, but these days I am out of step with the popular culture on this opinion on both counts.

Some of my heros were also of Jewish descent, like Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein. Theirs is, in my mind, a culture to be emulated. Semper interrogat omnia. How many streets have I walked here in Zürich that Einstein trod? He worked as patent clerk roughly the same number of years I did translating patents. And Feynman married his brilliant young love as I did only to lose her to death, while I got to keep mine and have children together (at least for a couple decades until she tired of me).

Of course, in the end Budapest was "liberated" by the Russian army, replacing mass murder with mass rape. And then decades of subjugation behind the Iron Curtain. But that is beyond the scope of LeBor's book. Budapest today is beautiful city that I greatly enjoyed visiting last year and definitely plan to visit again. Adam Lebor's book about WWII there is difficult reading, but worth it to face the reality we wish didn't exist in the past and can prevent in the future.