Gábor Vajna

Who was Gábor Vajna?

Gábor Vajna was a Hungarian politician, who served as Interior Minister between 1944 and 1945.

Vajna was a confidant of Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi, the Hungarian fascist party leader and founder of the extreme right "Party of National Will", which later became Arrow Cross Party. Vajna was discontinued with the coming to power 15 October 1944 as Interior Minister in the government of Szálasi.

On the orders of Adolf Eichmann, demanded the German SS representative in Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer and Otto Winkelmann, 17 October 1944 by the new Hungarian Interior Minister Gábor Vajna the rendition of "Leihjuden" to the German Reich. On 18 October he agreed to provide the new government under Ferenc Szálasi to provide the German Empire until the war 50,000 Jewish men and women as slaves for the armaments industry. Overall, the number of up to 1 December 1944 delivered "Leihjuden" finally 76 209. The majority was either on the death march, in concentration camps or in the entrenchments at the Southeast Wall died.

He made lot of orders against the Jews. After the fall of Budapest he tried to escape into Western Europe but the arrival American troops captured him with other members of the Arrow Cross Party's government. He was tried by the People's Tribunal in Budapest in open sessions and sentenced to death for war crimes and high treason. Vajna was hanged in 1946 in Budapest.