László Baky

Infobox Person
name = László Baky


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caption = László Baky (left) before his execution. On the right is László Endre
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birth_date = Date of death|1911|9|13
birth_place = Budapest, Austria–Hungary
death_date = Date of death|1946|3|29
death_place = Budapest, Hungary
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nationality = Hungarian
ethnicity = magyar
citizenship = Hungarian
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known_for = Nazi politician
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occupation = Gendarme
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party = Hungarian National Socialist Party
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László Baky (September 13, 1898 in Budapest-March 29,1946) was a leading member of the Hungarian Nazi movement that flourished before and during World War II.

A military academy graduate, he came to prominence in Szeged in 1919 for his violent counterrevolutionary work and rose through the ranks to become one of the leading figures in the Gendarmerie. A member of several far right groups hew finally left the gendarmes in 1938 (as a Major-General) to join the Hungarian National Socialist Party, and passed through a number of incarnations of this fluid movement. He was elected as a deputy in 1939 and sat as a member of a Nazi coalition group. Close to Nazi Germany, he was appointed editor of the German-funded newspaper "Magyarság". He soon became a close ally of Fidél Pálffy and the two united with the followers of General Ruszkay and Ferenc Szálasi to form a wider coalition of pro-Nazi conservatives and military men.

After the Nazi invasion and occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Baky was elevated to state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, under Andor Jaross. Along with his fellow state secretary, László Endre, Baky eagerly accepted responsibility for deporting the country's Jews to the extermination camps. Soon after his ascension, he wrote in a letter to Jaross, "The Royal Hungarian Government will soon have the country purged of Jews. I order the purge to be carried out by regions. As a result of the purge the Jewry - irrespective of sex or age - is to be transported to assigned concentration camps." [letter from László Baky to Minister of the Interior, quoted in Levái, Jenö, "Eichmann in Hungary: Documents", (New York; Howard Fertig, 1987), p. 72]

Baky was removed from his positions during the summer of 1944, although he returned to prominence that October after Szálasi and the Arrow Cross were put in power by the Germans. Under the Arrow Cross he continued his labors in deportation and mass murder. He fled the country in 1945 but was arrested in Austria and returned to Budapest. In 1946 Baky, Endre and Jaross were all tried, found guilty of crimes against the state, and executed.

References

Bibliography

* Philip Rees, "Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890"