Since the beginning of the war, the Jews of Carpatho-Rus were exposed to a great deal of information about what was going on in Poland, due to the influx of refugees from Poland to Hungary, for many of whom Carpatho-Rus was the first stop. When Slovakian Jews also began to flee into Hungary, in early 1942, the Jews of Carpatho-Rus were also exposed to much information. There is hardly any evidence, in which this phenomenon is not mentioned and described. One of the testimonies tells of a meeting with a refugee, and the response to her stories. “And it seemed exaggerated and imaginative, even though more and more told … They told and did not believe it was possible and it could be.” They have mistrusted foreign radio stations, which reported atrocities against Jews in Eastern Europe, and even perceived them as “… a dirty propaganda … who thought that it really was happening …”.
One of the witnesses, who was involved in assisting the refugees in the city, remembers that he and others like him tried to disseminate the information that was told to them by the refugees about the murder of Jews in Poland. However, “we talked and talked, and no one believed.” One of the witnesses, who met with her classmate that was deported in the 1941 deportations, was rescued and returned, said “It was hard to believe that it could happen.”
Another witness says that only when her uncle managed to escape back to the city after the deportations of 1941, “then we learned, in fact, what we did not want to believe …” And yet, she adds, “… we did not imagine how such a thing could ever be.”
One witness, who himself arrived as a refugee to the city, also attests to this phenomenon. After a long and arduous journey of wandering through Galicia, she managed to return to the city, noting that people treated her like crazy.
They didn’t even believe to the emissaries of the various Zionist movements from Budapest, who arrived in the city from the end of 1943 and were trying to disseminate information about potential dangers and ways of responce in the event of German occupation in Hungary.
This phenomenon is known from many other places in Nazi Europe during the Second World War. It seems strange only to those who have never experienced the fear of death on a daily basis, in the full sense of the word. The daily routine of many people in the West, today, may astonish them in the face of these testimonies, and may even arouse criticism in them. However, it should be remembered that even today, in an era of visual, mass, advanced and sophisticated media, many reports of mass murders in the world are at best greeted with an indifferent shrug and, in many cases, when the event takes place in a remote place, indifference or disbelief is quickly replaced by the safe routine of everyday life or by the next news item. On the other hand, for the intended victim – distrust or apathy are the commandments of consciousness, they are the safe and daily routine aimed at keeping life as usual. Coping with the possibility of death is unbearable, and therefore we must suppress it and hold onto every possible hope.
In the book “Personal Memory” by a survivor from the town of Huszt, the words are actually phrased as follows: “We knew about the mass grave in Kolomiya, but what could we do? If we knew clearly that all hope is gone, how could we continue to live?” The double use of the actual sentence ‘we know’ explains the gap between knowledge, being informed, and full awareness, or a desire to deal with the information. At a time when there was almost no media available at all, it was very easy and even necessary not to believe what could easily have been perceived as exaggerated horror stories or baseless rumors.
From the above description it is clear that the Jewish population of Carpatho-Rus was in a very difficult situation on the eve of the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944. A persecuted and wounded Jewish community without functioning official leadership, with a divided, unfounded and unsupported Zionist activity – they were surrounded by an often indifferent and sometimes hostile and violent local population, lacking any physical or psychological ability to respond or deal with the coming disaster.