Tibor Baranski

In 1980, Baránszki was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council where he helped guide the formation of the memorial. Hungarian Ambassador to the United States Dán Károly, presented Baránszki with the Hungarian Honorary Cross of the Order of Merit at his home in Snyder, New York on October 7, 2013. His son Tibor Baránszki Jr., an international lawyer in China, initiated contact with Swedish diplomats in China. This led to five years of negotiation that resulted in contact with the Raoul Wallenberg family. In August 2017, Baránszki Sr. was invited by relatives of Wallenberg to be an honored guest for the annual Raoul Wallenberg Day events in Stockholm. The two men knew each other and met or spoke by telephone many times. The Israeli Postal Authority issued a stamp to honor Baránszki in April, 2017.

Katalin had been attending school to become a medical doctor in Hungary, but was kicked out of the university during the Communist-Stalinist period. Based on her education in biochemical pharmacology and biochemistry, she was given a United States visa that stated, “Very important person. Urgently needed by the United States government to do research in biochemical pharmacology, i.e. biochemistry.” After arriving in Buffalo, she became a professor of biochemistry and cancer researcher at the University of Buffalo. She died in 2011. Baránszki adopted Katalin's son Peter Forgach, who became an eye surgeon, from her prior marriage. Their son Tibor Baranski Jr. learned Chinese as a teenager and became an international lawyer in Beijing, and their daughter Kati is as of 2019 Director of Communications at the Diocese of Buffalo.

On January 11, 1979, Baránszki was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. He was a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Wallenberg vanished while in the custody of Soviet forces. Before he died, Baránszki was one of the last witnesses to the efforts to protect the Jews from the Nazis in Budapest. On January 11, 1979, he was named by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Baránszki's aunt Margit Sterneder was also recognized as Righteous Among the Nations on January 11, 1979, and on July 16, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Monsignor Angelo Rotta as Righteous Among the Nations.

He remained in Italy where he married Katalin Kőrösy on 8 July 1957. They started a school and camp for refugees, living in a refugee camp near Rome, Italy, for close to a year. In 1958 they obtained visas to Canada. They lived in Toronto before moving in 1961 to Buffalo, New York, where they raised their family.

Baránszki was hospitalized and after the war ended, eventually made his way back to Budapest. He finished his studies and became a vicar in Drégelypalánk in Northern Hungary. When the Soviets took control of the government, Baránszki liked them no more than the Nazis. He was arrested in 1948 for anti-Communist "clerical reaction," and in a show trial, was sentenced to nine years in prison. After Joseph Stalin died and Imre Nagy became Chairman on 4 July 1953, Baránszki was granted amnesty, after 57 months in prison.

Freed from prison in 1953 after five years, Baránszki became a freedom fighter during the Hungarian revolution, helping to organize assistance. He went to Rome in 1956 to seek Western support for the revolution. When the rebellion was crushed by the Soviets, Baránszki did not want to return home. He liked Communists as much as he liked Nazis. "If you want to think like a cartoonist, Hitler and Stalin would be two cherries on the same tree," Baránszki said. "There was no difference." He was sent back to Hungary, but he was able to slip out again among many other refugees.

Baranski was arrested by the Soviets on December 30, 1944 and sent on a 16-day, 160-mile (260 km) forced march towards a Soviet prison, during which he ate only four times. He was saved by a sympathetic guard and made his way back to Budapest. After he was hospitalized and released, he was arrested again in 1948 for "clerical reaction" and in a show trial was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was released after Stalin's death in 1953. He left Hungary during the 1956 revolution and settled with his wife in New York, where both became U.S. citizens and educators and raised a family.

Baránszki was the son of Reszl Baránszki and Maria Schelnader. His grandfather was born in Poland and after serving in the Polish army in Budapest, decided to stay. His father married Maria Schelnader and Tibor was raised in Budapest. His father's family had roots in Hungary dating back 700 years. He was educated in Hungarian Gymnasia and became aware of rising antisemitism by 1938. He studied for the priesthood in Vesprem in 1940 and in Kassa (Košice) in 1943. He learned of the Nazi government's extermination camps through church channels. As the Soviet army drew near Košice, Baránszki was forced to leave for Budapest, sometimes only a few miles from the front lines, and arrived there on October 20, 1944.

In early 1944, Hungarian prime minister Miklós Kállay was secretly attempting to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. To prevent Hungary from leaving the Axis, on March 19, 1944 launched Operation Margarethe, ordering German troops into the country. The far-right fascist Arrow Cross Party was legalized and assumed power on 15 October 1944. Led by Ferenc Szálasi, they formed the Government of National Unity.

By June the Germans had organized a program to force Hungarian Jews into mini-ghettos. On June 15, 1944, they were ordered to move into Yellow Star Houses, approximately 2,000 single-building mini-ghettos identified by a yellow Star of David over the entrance. Sterneder became active in an underground movement that helped Jews find hiding places and obtain false emigration documents. The Szekeres family fled into hiding, leaving their sick infant son Gabor Szekeres with the Sterneder family.

In early July 1944, Regent Miklós Horthy replaced Döme Sztójay, an avid supporter of the National Socialists, with the anti-Fascist General Géza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting Interior Minister Béla Horváth ordered Hungarian gendarmes to prevent any Hungarian citizens from being deported. As the summer progressed, and the Allied and Soviet armies closed in on central Europe, the ability of the Nazis to devote themselves to Hungary's "Jewish Solution" waned. The Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations. Horthy's actions bought the Jews of Budapest a few months of time.

In October 1944, Horthy attempted to secretly negotiate a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched Operation Panzerfaust. Troops led by Otto Skorzeny kidnapped Horthy's son and sent him to the Mauthausen concentration camp. The Germans forced Horthy to abdicate in favour of Szálasi, after which Horthy was taken into "protective custody" in Germany. Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross Party, was declared "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of a "Government of National Unity". Szálasi organised the International Ghetto and over the next few months Arrow Cross members conducted frequent raids during which groups of Jews were taken to the banks of the Danube and executed.

In 1944, Baránszki was studying at a Catholic seminary near Košice (present-day Slovakia) to become a priest. He learned of Nazi extermination plans through church channels. He was forced to return to Budapest at age 22 on October 20, 1944 as the Russian army drew near. By then the city was under tight control of German forces. Baránszki lived with his aunt, who requested his help contacting Catholic church officials to ask them to intervene on behalf of the Szekeres family.

In October and November, Eichmann accelerated the program to annihilate the remaining Jews of Hungary before the Soviet Army captured Budapest. About 50,000 Jews were forced to march from Budapest to Hegyeshalom on the Austrian-Hungarian border in November 1944, where they would be transferred to German custody. From 6,000 to 10,000 Jews died of hunger, cold and disease en route.

The Soviets began the Siege of Budapest during the last week of December. They arrested Baránszki on 30 December 1944 as they believed he supported the Nazis. He was sent on a forced march to a prison in Russia. He ate only four times in 16 days during the 160-mile (260 km) march. He believed he would have died if a religious Soviet guard had not taken mercy on him, preventing another guard from shooting him, and then moving him to a line of prisoners who received medical help.

As a result of the laws and cultural oppression, the Sterneder and Szekeres families became even closer. The Third Jewish Law passed in 1941 prohibited sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews and classified another 58,320 people as Jewish who did not profess Judaism. The census question about Jewish grandparents was added late in 1941 after some census forms had already been printed, contributing to an inaccurate count. In addition, many Christians of Jewish ancestry did not answer the question truthfully. So while about 62,000 Christians admitted some Jewish ancestry (including 38,000 in Budapest), the actual number of Christians of Jewish origin by mid-1941 may have exceeded 85,000 and up to 100,000.

A census beginning on January 31, 1941 counted a Hungarian population of 13,643,621. Based on the second anti-Jewish law, 6.2% (846,000) were considered Jewish. In April 1941, Hungary annexed the Bácska, Muraköz, and Muravidék regions from occupied Yugoslavia. The total population of its annexed territories in 1941 was 1,025,508, including 15,000 Jews. As of May 1941, 5.87% (861,000) of the entire Hungarian population of 14,669,129 were under Hungarian law considered Jewish. According to Jewish religious law, 4.94% (725,000) were Jewish.

Starting in 1938, Regent Miklós Horthy led the government to pass a series of anti-Jewish measures, emulating Germany's Nuremberg Laws. The First Jewish Law passed on May 29, 1938 defined as Jewish anyone who had converted or were born to Jewish parents after 1919. It restricted the number of Jews in many professions to twenty percent. About 5,000 Jews converted to Christianity after the passing of the First Jewish Law. The second anti-Jewish law passed a year later on May 5, 1939 defined Jews for the first time by their race and not their faith. Individuals with two, three or four Jewish-born grandparents were declared Jewish. Jews were forbidden to work in government, as editors for newspapers, and the number of Jews among theater and movie actors, physicians, lawyers and engineers was capped at six percent. All private companies were forbidden to employ more than 12% Jews. Cumulatively, 250,000 Hungarian Jews were put out of work. Virtually all Jews lost their right to vote. At the next elections held in June, only 38 Jews could vote.

Tibor Baranski (Hungarian: Baránszki Tibor; June 11, 1922 – January 20, 2019) was a Hungarian-American man credited with saving more than 3,000 Hungarian Jewish women, men and children from the Nazis during the Holocaust.