Editing Death squad (section)

==== Hungary ====
{{Main|The Holocaust in Hungary}}<!-- [[WP:NFCC]] violation: [[File:Holocaust-ArrowCross-DohanySynagogue.jpg|thumb|Jewish victims of Arrow Cross men in the court of the [[Dohány Street Synagogue]]]] -->
For most of [[World War II]], Hungary was a military ally of [[Nazi Germany]]. After being threatened in late June or early July 1944 by [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], [[Winston Churchill]] and others with post-war retribution on 7 July 1944 Hungary's Regent  Admiral [[Miklós Horthy]] ordered stopping the deportation of [[History of the Jews in Hungary|Hungarian Jews]] to [[Auschwitz]], which until then took daily about 12,000 Jews to their death.

Then, in October 1944, Horthy announced a cease-fire with the [[Allies of World War II|Allied powers]] and ordered the [[Royal Hungarian Army]] to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched [[Operation Panzerfaust]], a covert operation which forced Horthy to abdicate in favour of the Fascist and militantly racist [[Arrow Cross Party]], which was led by [[Ferenc Szálasi]]. This was followed by an Arrow Cross [[coup]] in Budapest on the same day. Szálasi was declared "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of a "[[Government of National Unity (Hungary)|Government of National Unity]]".

Arrow Cross rule, despite lasting only three months, was brutal. Death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarians. Arrow Cross officers helped [[Adolf Eichmann]] re-activate the deportation proceedings from which the Jews of Budapest had previously been spared, sending some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labor details and many more straight to death camps. Many Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labor for the Hungarian Army's [[Labour service (Hungary)|Forced Labor Battalions]]. Most of them died, including many who were murdered outright after the end of the fighting as they were returning home. Quickly formed battalions raided the [[Yellow-star house|Yellow Star Houses]] and combed the streets, hunting down Jews claimed to be partisans and saboteurs since Jews attacked Arrow Cross squads at least six to eight times with gunfire.<ref name="remeny.org">{{cite web| url=http://www.remeny.org/node/36| title=Szita Szabolcs: A budapesti csillagos házak (1944–45)| date=15 February 2006| access-date=18 May 2013| archive-date=13 February 2012| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120213154924/http://www.remeny.org/node/36| url-status=live}}</ref> These approximately 200 Jews were taken to the bridges crossing the [[Danube]], where they were shot and their bodies borne away by the waters of the river because many were attached to weights while they were handcuffed to each other in pairs.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Siege: The Arrow Cross - Persecution of the Jews|publisher=[[Blinken Open Society Archives]]|url=http://w3.osaarchivum.org/galeria/sites/siege/section2.html|access-date=8 September 2021|archive-date=8 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210908102558/http://w3.osaarchivum.org/galeria/sites/siege/section2.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Red Army]] troops on their way to [[Nazi Germany]] reached the outskirts of [[Budapest]] in December 1944, and the intense [[Battle of Budapest]] began. Days before he fled the city, Arrow Cross Interior Minister [[Gábor Vajna]] commanded that streets and squares named after Jews be renamed.<ref>Patai, p. 586</ref>

As control of the city's institutions began to decay, the Arrow Cross trained their guns on the most helpless possible targets: patients in the beds of the city's two Jewish hospitals on Maros Street and Bethlen Square, and residents in the Jewish poorhouse on Alma Road. Arrow Cross members continually sought to raid the ghettos and Jewish concentration buildings; the majority of Budapest's Jews were saved only by a handful of Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats, most famously the Swedish [[Raoul Wallenberg]], the [[Papal Nuncio]] Monsignor [[Angelo Rotta]], Swiss Consul [[Carl Lutz]] and [[Francoist Spain]]'s [[consul general]], [[Giorgio Perlasca]].<ref>Patai, p. 589</ref> Szálasi knew that the documents used by these diplomats to save Jews were invalid according to international law, but ordered that they be respected.<ref name="nepszava.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.nepszava.com/index.php?topic=102&page=4147|title=Szálasi Ferenc és a hungaristák zsidópolitikája volt a jobb|access-date=20 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090202103143/http://www.nepszava.com/index.php?topic=102&page=4147|archive-date=2 February 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The Arrow Cross government effectively fell at the end of January 1945, when the Soviet Army took Pest and their enemies forces retreated across the Danube to Buda. Szálasi had escaped from Budapest on 11 December 1944,<ref name="nepszava.com" /> taking with him the [[Holy Crown of Hungary|Hungarian royal crown]], while Arrow Cross members and German forces continued to fight a rear-guard action in the far west of Hungary until the end of the war in April 1945.

After the war, many of the Arrow Cross leaders were captured and tried for [[war crime]]s. Many were executed, including Ferenc Szálasi. Fr. [[András Kun]], a [[Roman Catholic]] priest who commanded an Arrow Cross death squad while dressed in his [[cassock]], was also convicted and hanged after the war. Fr. Kun's cassock remains on permanent display at the [[House of Terror]] in [[Budapest]].