Between the ear­ly nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies, the pop­u­la­tions of Buda, Pest, and Óbu­da — which merged to form Budapest — grew from 54,000 to near­ly one mil­lion, trans­form­ing the city into one of Europe’s largest.

Strad­dling the Danube, Hungary’s cos­mopoli­tan cap­i­tal was known for its high cul­ture, ornate build­ings, and irre­press­ible nightlife. About one in four res­i­dents were Jew­ish. As sub­jects of the Hab­s­burg Empire, they enjoyed full civ­il rights.

By the win­ter of 1944 – 45, Nazi forces had occu­pied Budapest, the Red Army was clos­ing in, and Allied bomb­ing raids lev­eled city blocks. Most build­ings ​“stood like rows of jagged, bro­ken teeth,” writes Adam LeBor in his sear­ing account of a city at war. Though not mar­ket­ed as a book about Hun­gar­i­an Jew­ry, ​“The Last Days of Budapest” is as much about the destruc­tion of a peo­ple as it is about the fall of a cap­i­tal.

While most Jews liv­ing out­side the city were even­tu­al­ly deport­ed, forced into labor bat­tal­ions, or sent on death march­es, some 120,000 sur­vived the Holo­caust in Budapest after endur­ing ghet­toiza­tion and the ter­ror unleashed by Arrow Cross mili­ti­a­men. By war’s end, they com­prised the largest sur­viv­ing Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion of Nazi-occu­pied Europe.

LeBor, a for­mer Budapest-based cor­re­spon­dent, opens with the end of World War I. A Com­mu­nist regime — led in part by Jew­ish rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies — ruled for just 133 days. Admi­ral Mik­lós Hor­thy and his men seized pow­er and formed an author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment. The asso­ci­a­tion between Jews and Com­mu­nism proved durable. 

In 1920, Hun­gary lost two-thirds of its ter­ri­to­ry through the Treaty of Tri­anon. The country’s psy­che nev­er recov­ered. Para­mil­i­tary groups launched ter­ror cam­paigns against sus­pect­ed Com­mu­nists for past excess­es and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed Jews. As LeBor stress­es, the vio­lence ​“was not state-orga­nized. But it was state-tol­er­at­ed.” Hor­thy par­doned the par­tic­i­pants. In doing so, he allowed the far right to have ​“tast­ed pow­er: phys­i­cal, on the streets and in its tor­ture cham­bers, and polit­cal, in the cor­ri­dors of power.” 

The coun­try would drift toward Ger­many, even­tu­al­ly join­ing its inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union in June 1941. Mean­while, life in the far­away cap­i­tal remained unchanged. Anti-Jew­ish laws inten­si­fied, but Hun­gar­i­an Jews were large­ly pro­tect­ed. 

LeBor’s col­or­ful his­to­ry of ear­ly wartime Budapest— a city full of spies and intrigue — is vivid­ly ren­dered in this bot­tom-up his­to­ry. He draws on voic­es from var­i­ous under­ground move­ments, neu­tral diplo­mats, aris­to­crats, smug­glers, sol­diers, sur­vivors, and more. Among LeBor’s inter­vie­wees is his late father-in-law, Róbert Licht­en­stein, who, at four­teen, nar­row­ly evad­ed the Arrow Cross as the Red Army cap­tured Budapest. 

Despite Hun­gary’s heavy loss­es on the East­ern Front, Hor­thy failed to break with the Axis. As LeBor shows, he was ill-equipped for the moment, hes­i­tat­ing when deci­sive action was need­ed and squan­der­ing pre­cious time. 

The March 1944 Ger­man inva­sion sealed the country’s fate. While pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ing Ger­man demands for large-scale depor­ta­tions, Hor­thy ​“turned his face to the wall” when Hun­gar­i­an gen­darmes and oth­er author­i­ties helped the Nazis send hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews to Auschwitz-Birke­nau. Under grow­ing domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al pres­sure, he suc­ceed­ed in slow­ing the depor­ta­tions. But when nego­ti­at­ing a cease­fire with the Sovi­ets, the Arrow Cross seized con­trol. Its mem­bers shot scores of Jew­ish civil­ians.

The Red Army’s siege reduced near­ly all of Budapest to rub­ble and intro­duced only more hor­rors. In The Last Days of Budapest, LeBor chron­i­cles the destruc­tion of a city under the weight of war, griev­ance, and betrayal.