The Role of Public Administration in the Hungarian Holocaust

The role of public administration in the Holocaust has become an intensely debated issue recently. A large number of researchers have been dealing with the legal frameworks and the means of the administrative apparatus but only a few take up the issue of the moral responsibility of the public servants themselves. This specific aspect is highlighted in the present study, which seeks to answer the question on both theoretical and historical level. Of the theories concerning this topic, the most significant is that of the noted sociologist, late Zygmunt Bauman. The now-classic Polish-born sociologist holds that the major reason triggering the Holocaust is to be found in the characteristics of the bureaucratic machinery but he underestimates the role of anti-Semitism. This study makes an attempt to refute his thesis by highlighting, on the one hand, the activity of the bureaucratic apparatus and the "official anti-Semitism" in original documents, and, on the other hand, the role of anti-Semitic prejudices in a local community. The study uses Mezőberény, a small town in Békés County, Hungary, as an example of how the right-wing ideologies set foot in it from the 1930s, and how the extreme right-wing anti-Semitic movements prepared the ground for the Holocaust in 1944.