According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia (HE), between December of 1944 and January of 1945 the Arrow Cross shot as many as 20,000 Jews and threw their bodies into the river. According to Wikipedia, the Arrow Cross party “was a far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National Unity. They were in power from 15 October 1944 to 28 March 1945. During its short rule, ten to fifteen thousand civilians were murdered outright, including many Jews and Romani…[15][16]“ It is interesting that Wikipedia’s source says that 10 to 15 thousand civilians in total were murdered outright, but HE says that as many as 20,000 were shot by the Danube in just two months. However, this discrepancy is not the point of this series.
This series will be addressing the following sequence of events:
Before we get to that we need to go over some backstory, starting with the discovery of the remains of 15 people found in the Danube river during repairs made in 2011 to the Margaret Bridge in Budapest. According to the Haaretz article below a student from ELTE University concluded the bones were Jewish after examining them using methods associated with classical anthropology and “molecular genealogy”. Because of the alleged Jewish lineage of the remains and the fact that some of the bones had bullet holes the author of the Haaretz article says that this is definitive proof that these were Jews that had been shot by the Arrow Cross and thrown into the river.
During the time when the Arrow Cross was allegedly shooting Jews and throwing them into the river the Siege of Budapest was taking place. The Margaret Bridge is in Budapest. Couldn’t it be possible that the remains found in 2011 were killed during the siege? Why do we have to assume that they were murdered by the Arrow Cross?
Let’s go back even further. What evidence is there for the shootings on the Danube in the first place? I asked Bill, my robot assistant, and he gave a lengthy reply. First we have witness testimony, which isn’t enough on its own. Then we have ‘historical documentation’, which I will get back to. Next we have photographs. The photographs from HE present are what looks like executed people, however, there were nowhere near 20,000 and there is nothing to indicate that they were innocent civilians. A war was going on afterall, and during a war people are killed. Photographs can also be faked. Finally we have memorial and commemorations. Really, Bill? A memorial to something is evidence that it happened? I don’t think so.
Concerning the ‘historical documentation’ I asked Bill about the Red Cross reports which he said documented the mass killings. To which he replied, “I apologize for the incorrect information in my previous response. The International Red Cross did not document the mass killings and include them in their official reports during World War II. I regret any confusion caused by this error.”
So, the evidence we have of the alleged Danube shootings is witness testimony and orthodox Holocaust historians telling us what photographs are.
Just for fun, let’s take a look at some of the witness testimony. In the aforementioned Wikipedia article entry on ‘Arrow Cross’ we have this claim: “The Arrow Cross repeatedly organized mass murders next to the Danube, shooting people in the head, with the bodies falling into the river. To save bullets, their favorite method was to tie the waists of three people together with wire and shoot only the middle person, who would fall forward into the river drowning the other two as the weight of the copse dragged them to the bottom of the Danube.[24]“ Are we really supposed to believe that two people couldn’t manage swimming with the weight on one body? I don’t believe it. Also, it is interesting how here the story is the Jews were shot in the head and their bodies just fell into the river instead of being thrown. I wonder if the remains that were found in 2011 only had bullet holes in skulls.
One would be hard pressed to find much more in the way of eyewitness testimony about the alleged Danube shootings through simple internet searching. Perhaps this is because the other claims made are even stupider than the one above. Because of the lack of physical evidence and reliance on witness testimony the discovery of Jewish bones must have been a ray of hope for some Holocaust affirmers. Perhaps a more thorough search of the river would yield more remains. In January of 2019, ZAKA, Israel’s dominant non-governmental rescue and recovery organization, used divers and a sonar device to attempt to find remains and give them a proper burial. However, not all Jewish organization were in agreement with ZAKA’s search efforts. Continue to part two.