In 1939, the Second Anti-Jewish Law in Hungary was passed, allowing for the confiscation of the estates of Jewish landowners. The brothers appealed against the confiscation of their land – some 310 acres in total – in the court of Pécs in 1941. Their lawyer was Dr. József Greiner, the president of the Neolog Jewish community of Pécs. Nonetheless, the Hungarian State confiscated the Léderers’ land; the final resolution of the confiscation by the Minister of Agriculture was issued on October 1, 1942. Sámuel Léderer and his wife Gizella were murdered in Auschwitz on May 28, 1944.
Information on Sámuel Léderer was discovered during the research phase of this project from two different collections: a card catalogue of the Labor Battalions in Hungary, prepared by the Hungarian Ministry of Defense; and a collection of documents from the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture regarding the confiscation of Jewish-owned land in Hungary.
These facts where discovered only through a thorough search of archives across Hungary, and by the professional use of unique methodology and sophisticated technology connecting them to the vast archival collection of Yad Vashem. Currently, the Yad Vashem Archives house the most comprehensive collection of Holocaust-era documentation in the world, which includes some 201 million pages of documentation. The case of the Léderers demonstrates the range of information one can gather about a Holocaust victim, after the documents have been located, scanned, catalogued and indexed.
The decade-long project of collecting names of Holocaust victims from the Greater Hungary was a result of co-operation between Yad Vashem and the French Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. It was funded by the Foundation and supported by the late Simone Veil, who was appointed as its first President.
80% of the total number of Hungarian Holocaust Victims have now been identified.
(A press release issued by the Yad Vashem Institute was utilised in the preparation of this article)
Donaiska Strada, Hungary, Deportation of the town's Jews, June 1944 (courtesy of Yad Vashem Archives)
Nagy Berezna, Hungary, 1944, A deportation of Jews (courtesy of Yad Vashem Archives)