ABSTRACT
On the day that ghettoization on a national scale was first being discussed by Hungarian and German officials—Tuesday, 4 April 1944—a form of “ghettoization” was already being ordered and implemented in Budapest. Coming, as it did, prior to the issuing of the confidential ghettoization order (7 April) and the official ministerial decree sanctioning ghettoization (28 April), this was clearly a case of initiative being taken in the locality and a form of ghettoization being implemented apart from plans issued from the top down. The precise events are not easily reconstructed, given some discrepancies between sources and the rather problematic nature of the sources themselves, 1 but it is possible to sketch out what in effect was the first act of ghettoization in Budapest. Certainly Bernard Klein saw the appropriateness of speaking of this as “actually the beginning of the ghetto, since the Jews were evicted from certain sections of the town.” 2
