During the winter of 1944–45, nearly 70 children's homes in Budapest provided shelter for thousands of Jewish children and teenagers. These institutions were frequent targets of violent raids by armed members of the Arrow Cross militia.

At the end of 1944, many thousands of Jewish children and teenagers remained without supervision in Budapest. Their parents and adult relatives had been taken to forced labor service, deported, or executed. Many had been separated from their families; others had been given by parents condemned to death into the care of Christian relatives or friends—hoping the child might have a better chance of survival with them. In Budapest, which had sunk into one of the most destructive urban battles of the Second World War, many of the Christian caretakers were also killed, while others had to flee, becoming separated from the children entrusted to them.

The Red Cross rescue operation

The International Red Cross, which passively looked on as the rural Jewish population was deported, carried out significant rescue activities during the Arrow Cross period. Under the leadership of delegate Friedrich Born, a substantial institutional network was established to protect the persecuted. The “A” and “B” sections were led by the Zionist Ottó Komoly and the Lutheran pastor Gábor Sztehlo, respectively. In nearly 70 homes, several thousand Jewish children were housed.

“They brought them in in massive numbers, or in many cases simply left them at the doorstep—these children who had to be placed somewhere,” recalled István Kiss, one of the department heads of Section A, a few months after the liberation. “Reports came in one after another, even from Christians, that in this or that abandoned apartment there were children left completely without supervision, whose relatives had been taken away by the Arrow Cross. … We gathered up these orphaned Jewish children from all over the city—from the outskirts, from Angyalföld.”

Not only children from the capital ended up in orphanages. The former director of the Hungarian Theatre of Kolozsvár (today’s Cluj), Imre Kádár, was arrested in the very first days following the German occupation in March 1944. His daughter, 15-year-old Anna, was in class when she was called to the principal’s office: “He told me I couldn’t go home because my parents had been taken by the Germans, and our apartment was sealed off—I couldn’t enter.” Christian acquaintances took Anna in, “just as I was coming from school, in a single set of clothes, with a schoolbag, and nothing else.” Later, Anna ended up in the capital and survived the next nine months in the children's home on Ribáry Street. On 13 February 1945, the long-awaited Soviet soldiers finally arrived—and immediately began demanding women, despite the home’s staff explaining that these were children. In the end, one woman sacrificed herself and left with the Soviets.

The orphanage and children's home network, established in just a few weeks, became a constant target of Arrow Cross raids. Teenagers over the age of 14 were taken away for forced labor service, while the younger children were to be transported to the large ghetto. The aim of the armed men was often simply robbery and murder.

Roundup in Munkácsy Mihály Street

On the morning of 24 December 1944, a group of 15–20 Arrow Cross members appeared at the Jewish orphanage located at 5–7 Munkácsy Mihály Street. The children, their caretakers, and the patients in the institution were ordered into the courtyard. There, they were robbed, and then some Arrow Cross members searched the building, where they found a three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old child, a caregiver in her thirties, and two elderly patients. All five were executed on the spot. Afterwards, the group assembled in the courtyard was forced to march away. A 15-year-old boy with a limp couldn’t keep up with the group and was shot dead.

In nearby Benczúr Street, a unit of the XIII/1st auxiliary military company, led by First Lieutenant Lajos Gidófalvy, was stationed. Upon hearing of the attack on the orphanage, they rushed to the scene but were unable to prevent the deportation of the Jews. Shortly after the march had begun, Hans Weyermann, a senior official of the International Red Cross, and István Kiss also arrived. According to Kiss’s recollection, “a horrific sight unfolded before our eyes. In one of the armchairs, for example, two children were sitting, holding each other even in death. We found a walled-in room that had been barricaded with all kinds of furniture. After the attack, we managed to rescue the people who had hidden there, unharmed.” Kiss could not have known that the murdered children had not been holding one another; the reality was even more brutal. After the Arrow Cross men killed three-year-old Endre Tibor Lőhr, they shot one-and-a-half-year-old Iván Vámos as well and hurled the bleeding little boy’s body onto Endre’s corpse.

The children taken from the orphanage were first brought to the Radetzky Barracks (3 Bem Square), then to the large ghetto. The Jewish Council housed them at 10 Kazinczy Street. From there, members of the auxiliary military force and representatives of the Red Cross, using forged documents, managed to return most of them to the orphanage.

Assault on Vilma Királynő Avenue

At the same time as the attack on the orphanage on Munkácsy Mihály Street, on the morning of 24 December, Arrow Cross members also raided the Jewish children's home at 25–27 Vilma Királynő Avenue. The children rounded up there were also driven to the Radetzky Barracks, where they were ordered to be taken to the center of the main ghetto, on Síp Street. However, they misunderstood the instruction and took the Jews to Szív Street instead. There, they went door to door until finally placing the children in buildings 33 and 46.

The small children crammed into building number 33 were successfully returned to Vilma Királynő Avenue by representatives of the Red Cross. The fate of the orphans placed in building 46, however, turned out to be more tragic. The next day, 25 December, the building supervisor, Imre Szakács (in some sources: Vince), went to the Arrow Cross party headquarters at 60 Andrássy Avenue and reported the children, claiming they had attempted to escape. Armed men soon arrived on Szív Street. After shooting a nine-year-old girl and a young teenage boy, they marched the others to the banks of the Danube. Along the way, an air raid alarm scattered the Arrow Cross members. In the confusion, 30 children managed to escape. The rest were taken to the river, where four of them (three pupils and one teacher) were shot into the water. One student, Gábor Révész, survived the execution and swam to shore. The diminished group was eventually escorted back to Vilma Királynő Avenue. According to some sources, it was Lajos Gidófalvy’s men who persuaded the Arrow Cross to relent; others claim the armed men changed their minds on their own; yet others attribute the children’s survival to Wallenberg.

Most of the children who escaped during the air raid returned to the orphanage, but three of them—Izsák Katz, Lajos Mermelstein, and László Neumann—fled to a residential building at 44 Petneházy Street. Soon, at the request of the building's supervisor, Arrow Cross members appeared and took the three young boys to the banks of the Danube. Izsák threw himself into the water before the shots were fired and survived the execution, but eight-year-old Lajos and eleven-year-old László were murdered.

Following the attacks on the Munkácsy Street and Fasor orphanages, many teenagers over the age of 14 had to flee from other shelters as well, fearing they would be targeted next. Sixteen-year-old István Glasner, for example, was hiding in the home at 6 Zoltán Street when “the building supervisor kindly warned me about the impending raid.” Glasner ended up on the street and was soon captured by Arrow Cross members. He was beaten at the party headquarters on Andrássy Avenue, then shot in a side street in Angyalföld. A police officer found the dying boy and took him to the ghetto hospital on Wesselényi Street, where he underwent surgery and ultimately survived the war.