The Building Managers’ Role in Rescue, and Their Ways to Enrichment

Abstract

Generally bystanders are regarded as passive observers, whose passivity limits their responsibility for the genocide happening next to them. Nevertheless, inaction itself is also a form of action, and Ernesto Verdeja calls those who could intervene to stop the persecution but fail to act “moral bystanders”.¹ Verdeja rightly points to the “moral bystander” as someone who—being part of the same community—is actually responsible for the actions of their fellow citizens who are becoming perpetrators in their close proximity. On the basis of this shared responsibility it is easier to comprehend why some of the ghettoized Jewish Hungarians expected protection from the building managers. However, a building manager could not help all the Jewish Hungarians, thus they had to decide whom to help. In order to be able to understand the choices of the házmester in 1944, one has to take into consideration the interwar tradition of tipping. This chapter investigates how this tradition evolved in the critical months of 1944, and it will also describe the ways the building managers managed to provide help for the persecuted residents. While showing the variety of assistance the házmester could offer in 1944, this section argues that these concierges were able to bridge the structural holes of wartime society through their extensive social networks.

This chapter was written during a fellowship at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, and part of the text was first published as an article in the journal of the Institute: S:I.M.O.N.—Shoah: Intervention. Methods, Documentation, vol. 2 (2015) 1, pp. 4–14.