PLEASE NOTE: This book contains graphic description ... - HUNSOR

a consequence, when Szalasi's Fascist agitators (called Arrow Cross Men) arrived at Mohol andlearned about the pain and the disillusionment of the local poor, they promised them landprovided they join the Arrow Cross Party which they called the Hungarian Movement. Thesedestitute people did nothing more than sign up and they thought this was about the same as theformer conversion of their countrymen to Orthodoxy.Were they ever wrong! What in 1944 they were given was not land but death. It was child'splay for the local Serbs to get hold of the list of the members of the Arrow Cross Party.Supported by the rage of the returning Dobrovoljacs, they made these ignorant men and theirfamilies victims of the revenge for land.The extermination of Hungarians proceeded in an organized way in October and November1944. A Brain Trust was formed to search for documents and causes for vengeance. They hadmeetings and made decisions. There was an executive team of younger and more energeticintellectual and craftsmen organizers, whose hands were not stained with blood. The basic workof collecting, beating and torturing people was left to greedy Serbian looters with base and cruelinclinations. More than eight hundred men were gathered.The Summary Court worked in the barracks of the fire brigade. The victims were cited, draggedto court and accused of fictitious or real crimes. Those who had a match broken over their head,in imitation of the ancient custom of the breaking of a staff, were sentenced to death. they weretaken to School No. 3 which served as a kind of death row before execution. Seven hundred andsixty matches were snapped over the head of the poor in the Fire Hall.It was not only Arrow Cross men who were sentenced to death, but everybody who had anadversary or enemy or whose possessions were coveted by one of the "judges".The captives had to undergo a long torment before the execution. In the course of the severalweek long torture, the warders could find time to cut straps from their enemies' backs. JoskaHambalgo witnessed this bloody, inhumane method of torture. The death102sentence was not confined to men. Young girls 16-20 received the death sentence if their nameswere found on the lists. Only the sickest, sexual male deviate could invent the horrors of whatthese girls were subjected to in their last hours.A curious, almost incomprehensible decision was born in the head of the judges on one of thedays of mass execution. the people under sentence had to be shaved. What was this? Inducementof vain hope in the condemned or a gesture of hygiene for the next world? They gathered all sixlocal barbers with their apprentices, if they still had any, and their tools. These men werelathering and shaving the week old beards all day. Sometimes, in the rush, they cut and causedpain to their free customers before death. While shaving that day, the barbers of Mohol countedmore than six hundred men .These newly shaved men were then driven to the Tisza at twilightand were shot into the river. A part of the firing squad felt annihilation was more secure on firmground. The sand pit of Osztrova seemed appropriate for this.Burying the corpse also promised less work in the sandy soil. The fact that the river often floodsthe lower part of the sand pit was not given much attention. Those who were undressed in thedeadly procession did not have much chance to escape, but there were two or three young menwho, freeing themselves from their bondage, were able to run away nude in the darkness of thenight. One of these brave and lucky runaways was Jozsef Hambalgo, from whose back threestraps were cut. He managed to escape and had someone photograph his slashed back.