ABSTRACT
As the German forces arrived in Budapest, Adolf Eichmann's henchmen Hermann Krumey and Dieter Wisliceny entered the Jewish headquarters and ordered the Jewish leadership to assemble within twenty-four hours. The next day's meeting consisted of the standard Nazi deception tactics. The Hungarian Jewish leaders had neither foreseen nor planned for the occupation, but the same anti-Zionist personalities who had spent their lives preaching the virtue of blind loyalty to the Magyar nation—men like Samu Stern and Erno Peto—now organized the central Judenrat in Budapest and demanded blind obedience to the Nazis from the Jewish community. The Nazis expertly manipulated the negotiations to entrap the Jewish side. In this way they could proceed with their genocidal plans without fear of an underground rescue campaign or mass panic resulting in cross-border flight, passive disobedience, and active resistance. The Nazis were shrewd enough to understand that they could not sustain the charade without appearing to make concessions.
