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Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants Andrea Petö Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants Andrea Petö To cite this version: Andrea Petö. Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants. Baltic Worlds, 2009, pp.49-52. hal- 03226368 HAL Id: hal-03226368 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03226368 Submitted on 22 May 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 48 essay feature interview reviews 49 “The Arrow Cross did not bother with cal climate hardened due to the Cold War, new legisla- of the role of law. Women were encouraged to study women. Women were not partners for tion was introduced in order to regulate the function law because they were seen as reliable. They began to them. During the interrogations, I did not of people’s tribunals more strictly. Act VII of 1946 was graduate from the university and receive important meet a single Arrow Cross woman. And you followed by Act XXXIV of 1947, which regulated the positions in the newly transformed state apparatus. are saying this only now [that 10 percent of proceedings.1 Arrow Cross party members were women]. Critics of the work of the People’s Tribunals in Hun- ARROW CROSS Why didn’t you tell me this thirty-five years gary have used both legal and political arguments to WOMEN ActIVISTS ago, when I could have swooped down on define the tribunals’ shortcomings.2 The legal critique According to membership records, estimated 15,000 them?” focuses on these courts’ failure to function in a “legal” women were members of the Arrow Cross Party in manner. They were, in fact, political tribunals, for they Hungary. After the war, these women were interned or This was the answer I received from a former officer of introduced retrospective justice. The first questions imprisoned because they had supported the occupy- the State Protection Authority, Hungary’s secret police raised about the legal basis of the Tribunals pointed to ing German forces, or been collaborators. German and (Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH), when I asked him, dur- the fact that international pressure had led to the intro- Austrian historians are alone in having studied women ing a 2007 interview, about Arrow Cross women. From duction of retrospective justice. This was not in con- who were active in right-wing political parties.5 A per- 1949 to 1973, this man had investigated domestic reac- formity with the Hungarian legal tradition. Meanwhile, tinent question is: why did these women join a radical tionary forces (that is, war criminals and Arrow Cross political critiques bring up the fact that the country and marginal party with an obviously anti-woman members). The quote illustrates the dilemma that was under Soviet occupation. They both condemn the program, a party that wished to keep women in the researchers face when they inquire into phenomena courts (as promoters of the Communist takeover) for home?”6 the very existence of which many deny. At the Central their excessive rigor, and fault the Communists for be- My research, which is carried out in cooperation European University, quantitative researchers have ing too lenient in their treatment of minor Arrow Cross with Ildikó Barna (ELTE, Budapest), has shown that, begun work on documents stemming from the Buda- figures and war criminals who had played a minor “his- in Budapest, women accounted for 10 percent of those pest People’s Tribunal — documents that have been torical role”. indicted for war crimes.7 This percentage corresponds preserved in the Budapest City Archives. This research It is possible to escape from this discourse by con- roughly to today’s female-to-male ratio in Hungarian represents the first systematic inquiry into the opera- ducting a gender-based analysis that shifts the focus of public life, that is, Hungary’s political parties and par- tion of the People’s Tribunals. In light of the initial find- the investigation. Here, we move from the examination liament. In the pre-1945 period, however, women par- ings, we may reassess the views that experts and the of major representative or emblematic aspects to a ticipated only sporadically in public life, so a ratio of 10 broader public have held on transitional justice and focus on less momentous issues, while integrating the percent is relatively high. In the 20th century, women draw attention to previously neglected gender aspects gender approach. Until now, historians have generally made up a steadily increasing proportion of the total of right-wing radicalism. focused on emblematic “big cases” while ignoring the number of war crime offenders — from 3 percent at the gender factor — as we see in the statement made by the turn of the century to 10 percent in 1990. Today, their THE DEBATE ON member of the secret police at the beginning of this share is 16 percent. In Hungary, during World War II, a THE PEOPLE’s TRIBUNALS article.3 large number of armed and uniformed women made In recent years, the analysis of World War II history has their appearance on the public stage. once again taken political center stage in the former THE COURTS As far as its potential field of mobilization was con- Eastern Bloc countries. In Hungary, the debate about What are the attractions of this new form of analysis? In cerned, the Arrow Cross Party resembled the Com- criminalizing Holocaust denial was resumed, partly in line with the traditions of women’s history, it provides, munist party. It is important to note that the party was response to the advance of far-right political organi- first and foremost, the opportunity simply to search formed under the regime of Miklós Horthy, in a political zations whose internal group cohesion is confirmed out women and make them visible within the institu- environment that was hostile to women. After World through Holocaust denial. In Hungary, the debate over tions that produced the documentation which is now War I, public discourse portrayed women in general, who was responsible for the losses in World War II and available. In other words, historians can do research and especially “the new kind of women”, as unreliable for the murder of 600,000 Hungarian Jews — or rather on the documentation that institutions produced in the and dangerous actors who threatened male hegem- the absence of such a debate — has caused a split in the course of their work. ony in the economic, political and cultural spheres. A gender analysis of nation’s collective memory. After World War II, at the Such institutions include the People’s Tribunals, in This was the argument underlying the restriction of very outset of the democratic transition, the Hungarian which lawyers, judges, and public prosecutors were women’s right to higher education.8 The improved the Hungarian People’s People’s Tribunals were to draw a distinction among active. But this traditional, historical, descriptive ap- political position and greater significance of women prewar, wartime, and postwar values. The courts that proach is apparently far from simple, even as far as jeopardized the authority of the pre-1918 political elite. Tribunals in the investigated war crimes in Europe, and later in Japan, the courts are concerned, for the obvious reason that After women had been granted limited voting rights in served the function of defining, in legal terms, such the legal profession was a male profession. Moreover, 1920, the National Association of Hungarian Women aftermath of World War II crimes and of punishing offenders. In Hungary, the when it comes to their experience of the country’s (MANSZ), which had been established in 1918 by Cecil courts were only half-successful in this endeavor. An liberation, Hungary’s lawyers were divided right down Tormay (1875–1937), became an umbrella organization inquiry into why this was so may help us re-evaluate the middle. Prior to 1914, law was not only a respect- that mobilized middle-class and upper-middle-class various elements of the nation’s collective memory. able livelihood for the middle classes; it also offered women. In doing so, it served to prevent the progress In Hungary, the post-Holocaust jurisdiction — the men upward mobility in society. There was only one of both left-wing and right-wing radicalism. During the 1945 Act on People’s Tribunals — was established semester, after the 1918 revolution and while Mihály debate on the electoral law in 1938, it became clear that ARROW CROSS haphazardly. For this reason, the 1945 Act became Károlyi was prime minister, during which female law far-right groups — who, like the left-wing groups, fought controversial. It was criticized on legal as well as po- students could apply for admission to law school. The for expanded voting rights — were gaining strength. It litical grounds. The 1945 Act on People’s Tribunals women who were accepted were allowed to complete became increasingly difficult to argue that voting rights was a rough sketch; the newly appointed judges, who their studies, though various special permits were should be extended to select individuals on the basis of WOMEN AND FEMALE lacked experience, had to interpret it. Court cases were required.4 It is interesting to follow the careers of the merit and service, especially if one takes into conside- undertaken quickly, sometimes without thorough pre- women lawyers who, complying with the gender-based ration that Hungary was the only European country liminary investigation, for it was virtually impossible division of the legal profession, dealt with social mat- in which the number of people entitled to vote actu- to carry through such investigations in the immediate ters or worked as people’s public prosecutors (since ally fell during the interwar period.
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