Budapest, autumn 1943. Four years into the war, Hungary is allied with Nazi Germany and the Hungarian capital is the Casablanca of central Europe. The city swirls with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But Budapest remains at peace, an oasis amidst war where Allied POWs, and Polish and Jewish refugees find sanctuary. The riverside cafes are crowded, and the city’s renowned cultural scene still thrives.
All of this comes to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invade. By summer, Allied bombers are pounding its grand boulevards and historic squares. Budapest’s remaining Jewish population has been forcibly relocated to cramped, overcrowded Yellow Star houses. By late December, the city is surrounded and under siege by the Red Army. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians die in the brutal siege as Budapest descends into chaos. Hungarian death squads roam the streets as the city’s Jews are forced into ghettos. Russian artillery bombards the city into smoking ruins, while starving residents carve chunks of meat from dead, frozen horses.
Using newly uncovered diaries, documents, archival materials, and interviews with the last survivors, Adam LeBor vividly recreates life and death in the wartime city, the tragic fate of half of its Jewish population, and the destruction caused by the siege.
Told through the lives of a cast of vivid, gripping characters, including glamorous aristocrats, spies, smugglers, and SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish schoolboy, Hungary's most popular actress and her spy chief lover, a Jewish businesswoman who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a Christian doctor hiding her Jewish neighbors, and a teenage Hungarian soldier, the story of how Budapest gradually dies as the war destroys the city is utterly compelling.
Pages: 512, Year of Publication: 0303, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm
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