Pál Szalai

Infobox Person
name = Pál Szalai


image_size = 200px
caption = Szalai circa 1940-1950
birth_date = birth date|1915|9|3|mf=y
birth_place = Budapest
death_date = death date and age|1994|1|16|1915|9|3|mf=y
death_place = Los Angeles
occupation = Police
spouse =
parents =
children =

Pál Szalai (September 3, 1915 – January 16, 1994) also spelled Pál Szalay and anglicized as Paul Sterling was a high ranking member of the Budapest police force and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party during World War II.

Biography

He was born in Budapest on September 3, 1915.

The Wallenberg-Szalai connection

In the Hungarian Boy Scouts in 1929 he became friends with Károly Szabó. This friendship continued in the critical months 1944 - 1945 while Pál Szalai, high ranking member of the police force supported Raoul Wallenberg.

Szalai was from 1939 to 1942 an idealistic member of the Arrow Cross Party. He left the party in 1942 disillusioned, and returned to a high ranking police force position in October 1944 to help people in mortal danger from the Holocaust. Szalai's friend Károly Szabó was employee of the Swedish Embassy. Dr. Ottó Fleischmann Doctor of Medicine and psychologist of the Swedish Embassy motivated Károly Szabó to play active role in the rescue actions of Raoul Wallenberg. Pál Szalai supported his friend with important personal documents, signed from the German command in the Battle of Budapest. [József Szekeres: Saving the Ghettos of Budapest in January 1945, Pál Szalai "the Hungarian Schindler" ISBN 9637323147X, Budapest 1997, Publisher: Budapest Archives, Page 41] Szalai agreed to meet Raoul Wallenberg at the Swedish Embassy in the night of January 26, 1944.

The ghetto in Budapest

Szalai provided Raoul Wallenberg with special favors and government information. In the second week of January 1945, Raoul found out that Adolph Eichmann planned a massacre of the largest Jewish ghetto in Budapest. The only one who could stop it was the man given the responsibility to carry the massacre out, the commander of the German troops in Hungary, General August Schmidthuber. Through Szalai, Wallenberg sent Schmidthuber a note promising that he, Raoul Wallenberg, would make sure the general was held personally responsible for the massacre and that he would be hanged as a war criminal when the war was over. The general knew that the war would be over soon and that the Germans were losing. The massacre was stopped at the last minute thanks to the courage and daring action of Wallenberg. [ [http://www.incrediblepeople.com/people(1999-08-07).htm Incredible People: Wallenberg] ]

After the war

After the war, Szalay was one of few high ranking members of the Arrow Cross Party not executed. He was set free in recognition of his cooperation with Wallenberg.

Show trial preparations 1953 in Hungary

Preparations for a show trial started 1953 in Budapest to "prove" that Wallenberg had never been in the Soviet Union, nobody had dragged off Wallenberg in 1945, least of all the Soviet Army. Everything was ready for a trial designed to prove that Wallenberg had been the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists. Three leaders of the Jewish community of Budapest Dr. László Benedek, Lajos Stöckler, and Miksa Domonkos, as well as two additional "eyewitnesses" Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó were arrested and tortured. The preparations for the show trial were initiated in Moscow, following Stalin's anti-Zionist campaign. After Stalin's death and as Lavrentiy Beria was killed, the trial was aborted and the arrestees released. Miksa Domonkos died short after the tortures in hospital. [Book: Mária Ember, They Wanted to Blame Us, 1992 [http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no143/p129.html] )]

Emigration and death

He emigrated 1956 to the United States and lived in New Jersey then moved to California. He died on January 16, 1994 in Los Angeles, California under the name "Paul Sterling". [Social Security Death Index; 141-32-9949 some biographies incorrectly list January 18, 1994]

ee also

*Károly Szabó
*popular Hungarian actor Kálmán Rózsahegyi

References

External links

*Wallenberg: More Twists to the Tale, Mária Ember, They Wanted to Blame Us [http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no143/p129.html]
*Interview with István Domonkos, son of Miksa Domonkos who died after the show trial preparations (Hungarian) [http://www.szombat.org/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=200]

Books

*A Man for All Connections, The Wallenberg-Szalai connection, Andrew Handler, Praeger/Greenwood, 30 January, 1996; ISBN 0275952142 Handler focuses on explaining the Hungarian political context that made the rescue possible.... Less well known is the fact that Wallenbergs mission was supported by various representatives of the Hungarian state apparatus.
*József Szekeres: Saving the Ghettos of Budapest in January 1945, Pál Szalai "the Hungarian Schindler" ISBN 9637323147X, Budapest 1997, Publisher: Budapest Archives