Giorgio Perlasca and the banality of decency

Among the things we need to remember about the Holocaust is the role of redemption. It is something I think about whenever I look out our window, which faces an apartment building that had been one of the city's safe-houses for Jews set up by Giorgio Perlasca. Like Raoul Wallenberg and Carl Lutz, he used diplomatic cover to help save thousands of Budapest's Jews. Unlike them, he doesn't get nearly as much recognition. I've wondered if part of the reason is that he was a fascist.

There are no simple stories, and every one is bent to make some sort of argument. You'll hear a lot about Wallenberg this year, and rightly so. This Swedish diplomat saved many, at great personal risk, and as long as there are people around we should remember that we are capable of such bravery. But there is another dimension to his legacy. His mysterious disappearance — at the hands of the invading Soviets — creates a neat narrative that right-wingers and neo-cons cherish: a direct connection between the evil of fascism with the evil of communism. And it is a convenient way to downplay the fact that Nazism was defeated only by the incredible sacrifice of the Red Army, and little else.

Perlasca's story is complicated. He was a full-throated fascist, although of the more melodramatic Italian model. He willingly fought in Mussolini's absurd neo-colonial adventures in Africa, and went as a volunteer to fight for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He later said that he became disillusioned in the late 1930s, when Mussolini adopted Germany's anti-Semitic tones.

During the war, Perlasca was in Budapest working as a supplier for the Italian military, and was here when Italy collapsed and dropped out of the war. The avoid going home, he took up an offer of Spanish citizenship for his service during the civil war.

The Holocaust came to Hungary soon after. The events here have a particular horror, because the Horthy regime, an eager ally of the axis powers, was certainly anti-Semitic but not quite exterminationist. They dragged their feet for years, but by 1944, as the war grew more and more desperate, pressure grew, and through the summer and fall deportations began. Eventually, Horthy was ousted in favor of Hungary's own homegrown fascist goons, who took the savagery to a new level.

It was those very dark years when people like Wallenburg, and Lutz, and Perlasca realized what was happening and could not stand aside. Perlasca, with the Spanish consul Angel Sanz Briz, began arranging dubious protection papers for Jewish families. When Sanz was sent to Switzerland, Perlasca stayed behind and cunningly pretended to represent the Spanish government in Sanz's absence. All told, over 5,000 Jews were protected. 

This building, on the north end of
Szent Istvan Park, was
one of Perlasca's houses

There was something desperate about their work, especially as all they could do was buy time. There was one famous anecdote about when Perlasca personally took two Jewish children off a deportation train, sparking a confrontation with an armed SS officer. According to the story, Adolph Eichmann himself, who was overseeing the work, appeared and let him go, advising the SS man that "we'll get them eventually." Only the capture of the city by the Soviets in January 1945 stopped the horror.

Perlasca (and especially Sanz, who had a long diplomatic career for Franco after the war) would not speak about what they did, and remained completely unacknowledged for forty years. It wasn't a simple story, and the only true thing, perhaps is the title of the 1993 book about Perlasca written by Enrico Deaglio, entitled, The Banality of Good.