Szabó Károly

Szabó, Károly Károly Szabó was born in 1916. During WWII he served in the Hungarian army, but was released from service in 1942 after being wounded at the front. Szabó returned to his work as office equipment technician but, impacted by what he had seen on the eastern front, convinced his childhood friend Szalai Pal* to distance himself from the Arrow Cross Fascist movement. During 1944, the two friends worked closely together to rescue Jews in Budapest. Working as a typewriter technician at the Swedish embassy brought Szabó into contact with Raoul Wallenberg’s office, and he became an operative of Wallenberg’s humanitarian network. His friend Pal, who in 1944 was recruited by the Arrow Cross as a police officer but who used his position to help Jews, provided Szabó with papers identifying him as a state security detective, enabling him to move about freely throughout Budapest. In December 1944, the Red Army began encircling the Hungarian capital. Arrow Cross government and officials, who had been in power since October, fled to western Hungary, leaving the city in a state of anarchy. Isolated groups of Arrow Cross militia were left without central leadership, inflicting a reign of terror on the city’s Jews. In January 1945, militiamen began to burst into buildings protected by foreign embassies, dragged the Jews out and, disregarding all protective documents issued by the neutral countries, robbed and murdered many of the protected buildings’ residents. On January 11 and 14, two Jewish hospitals outside the ghetto boundaries were also raided, resulting in the deaths of both medical staff and patients. On the evening of January 8, 1945, a group of armed Arrow Cross men entered the Swedish Embassy building at 2-4 Üllői Street. A large group of Jews was dragged out of the building and taken to the local Arrow Cross command post at 41 Ferenc Körút Street. Some of them were apparently led to the banks of the Danube to be shot into the river, whileothers were held in the command post, where they were lined up against the wall to be shot. Otto Fleischmann, a member of Wallenberg's staff, managed to alert Szalai Pal at his police station. Károly Szabó had followed the Jews and their Arrow Cross guards, and informed Pal about the group’s whereabouts. The two men, accompanied by police forces, arrived at the command post and, under enormous personal risk, confronted the militia and liberated the Jews – Szabó acting on behalf of the Swedish Embassy and Pal as an Arrow Cross police officer. The 166 Jews (according to Szalai Pal’s postwar acount) were returned to the Swedish Embassy. Among the group were people who knew both Pal and Szabó, including Lajos Stöckler, head of the local Judenrat who had been hiding with his eight-member family at the Swedish Embassy for three days. Shortly after liberation, on 26 Februray 1945, Stöckler wrote a letter thanking Károly Szabó for rushing with Szalai Pal to save the group "that was condemned to death." In 1953 preparations began for a show trial in Budapest, which claimed that Raoul Wallenberg had never been in the Soviet Union and that his disappearance was "the result of a Zionist plot." Three leaders of the Jewish community of Budapest, including Lajos Stöckler, were arrested together with Szalai Pal and Károly Szabó, interrogated and tortured. Szabó was sent to prison, and his family heard nothing from him for six months. After Stalin's death, the trial was abandoned and the prisoners released. Károly Szabó died in Budapest in 1964. On October 29, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Károly Szabó as Righteous Among the Nations.