Forever Guilty:: Unforgiven

By Adalbert Lallier

Living since the mid-eighteenth century for several generations in the southeastern part of Austria-Hungary, surrounded by neighbors whose family names were Hungarian, Slavic, or, in increasing numbers, German, my French family name was a rarity, if not a curio, that was most often badly pronounced, especially by my teasing friends in high school. Before the war, I asked my father to explain, but he always refused, declaring, Since we had been kicked out from France, we shall never return. However, having found each other after the war, in 1948, refugees from the communist takeover our properties. And upon learning that my brother, Andr, had perished, he relented. Bit by bit, he revealed to me the following story, which his father had passed on to him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543415629

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Adalbert Lallier.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017905706

ISBN:                 Hardcover                   978-1-5434-1560-5

                           Softcover                    978-1-5434-1561-2

                           eBook                         978-1-5434-1562-9

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Rev. date: 07/10/2017

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Contents

Introduction: The Story of the Austro-Hungarian Huguenot

Lallier Family

Chapter One: The Author’s Forced, Illegal Recruitment into

Hitler’s Waffen-SS

Chapter Two: Hitler’s Occupation of the Balkans: The War

(1941–1945)

Chapter Three: Waffen-SS Officer School and the Murder

of Seven Jewish Prisoners

Chapter Four: The Murder Postmortem: Reflections on

Nazi Motives and War Crimes

Chapter Five: The End of the War: Free at Last

Chapter Six: The United Nations Refugee Organization

and the Holocaust Survivors

Chapter Seven: Canada, My Destiny: Conscience and

Redemption

Chapter Eight: The Eye for an Eye…: Revenge versus

Retribution

Chapter Nine: The Trial of Julius Viel: Anticipation versus

Reality

Chapter Ten: Insights into Hitler’s Nazism versus the Ethics

of Natural Justice

Conclusion: Specific Experiences and Concerns

Appendix 1: The Massive Postwar Amnesia of the

Waffen-SS about the Holocaust: Did They Know?

Quo Vadis, the Jewish People of Israel and in the Diaspora?

Appendix 2: Additional Postwar Data on Top-Level Nazis

To my beloved brother André,

who even though member of the Hungarian community was forced by into the Waffen-SS by the Nazi-Germans in April 1942 and was murdered before the end of the war, one of the millions of innocent victims of Hitler’s totalitarian Third Reich mania.

Introduction

The Story of the Austro-Hungarian

Huguenot Lallier Family

Living since the mid-eighteenth century for several generations in the southeastern part of Austria-Hungary, surrounded by neighbors whose family names were Hungarian, Slavic, or in increasing numbers, German, my French family name was a rarity if not a curio that was most often badly pronounced, especially by my teasing friends in high school. Before the war, I asked my father to explain, but he always refused, declaring that since we had been kicked out from France, we shall never return. However, having found each other after the war, in 1948, refugees from the communist takeover of our properties and learning that my brother André had perished, he relented. Bit by bit, he revealed to me the following story, which his father had passed on to him:

It all started in 1572 century France, when Le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy wiped out thousands of Huguenot families and decimated further thousands of others. One of the latter was the family of Robert de Lalieux, which had resided in St. Pourçain sur Sioulle, owning vast tracts of land along the river. His registry showed that he had three sons and two daughters, of whom only two sons were able to save themselves by escaping to the Wallons—part of the then Dutch Republic. Even though in the ensuing years many Huguenot refugees were welcomed back to France, the two brothers, Charles and Joseph, remained settled down in the township of Ghent, married French women, and succeeded as businessmen in the Wallons community while retaining their lower-level French aristocratic titles. Old traditions in France had always followed the custom of primogeniture—the first sons would always inherit all of the family properties, while the younger sons were expected to serve in the military or to reveal an adventurous spirit (similar to that of the first group of French voyageurs in New France). Around the year of 1720, one of the grandsons of Charles Louis de Lalieux, footloose and dreaming of heroic deeds, decided to volunteer to join in Austria’s attempt to throw the Ottomans out of southeastern Europe. Because of his family ties, he got accepted as adjutant to Prince Eugene of Savoy, fought with him in each of the major battles, and was rewarded with large landholdings after it was annexed to Austria-Hungary, a vast farmable area to the east of the Danube river (presently split between three countries: Romania, Hungary, and Serbia). From the mid-1750s on, massive inflows of peasants mainly from Germany were allowed in, mainly for agriculture as well as a bulwark against Ottoman attempts to reconquer what they had lost. New villages were emerging (e.g., Bukovec, in present-day Romania), while already existing towns (e.g., Temesvár, also in present-day Romania) were expanded into centers of trade and commerce. Their inhabitants were ruled by the old nobility and other officials appointed by Vienna, while the defense of the territory was entrusted to veterans who had served as officers of the prince and had absolute authority over their soldiers (mainly of peasant stock). The de Lalieux family had settled down in the vicinity of Temesvár, eventually intermarrying with resident Hungarians and Austrians and, according to custom in rural areas, begetting many children. However, even though still speaking mainly French and hanging on to their memories, they would never again wish to return to France. With land being the source of their increasing wealth, starting at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they expanded into business, trade, and commerce. Eventually they acquired properties in Vienna, Budapest, on Lake Balaton, and on the Adria. Having learned Hungarian and Austrian-German but still speaking mainly French, they were feeling much closer to Budapest than Vienna, slowly but steadily being absorbed into the cultural milieu of Hungary’s ruling class.

But the streak of restlessness and adventurism kept on breaking out in several of their sons, especially in one Joseph de Lalieux, who, by that time politically completely "Magyaronized," became members of the arch-Hungarian Jacobin Club, which comprised mainly very young ranking real [Érc-magyar] Hungarians who had become radicalized and were seeking not only independence from Vienna but the replacement of the outmoded, feudal, aristocratic reign by the (faraway) kaiser, with a democratic form of government composed entirely of Hungarians, and having full sovereignty over their land. They rose in revolt in 1848 but were crushed by troops from imperial Russia.

After having the most prominent Hungarian rebels strung up and many of their supporters imprisoned, the kaiser eventually relented and granted full amnesty if they renounced their ambitions and returned to the Catholic faith. Joseph de Lalieux, by then forty years old and with a large family, converted, an official act that permitted him to retain his family’s vast holdings. However, with the French spirit of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité firmly embedded, he decided to democratize his family name while retaining its French origin and linkage to the river Allier—from de Lalieux to, simply, Lallier, one of the rather frequent names in modern France. Also, with French blood still pulsating in his veins, he decided that forthwith, the first names of his children and of their heirs would remain French. In this manner, the de Lalieux, who had spread all over Austria-Hungary during the first century following the arrival of Charles Louis, became Lallier all the way through to World War I, the subsequent splitting up of Austria-Hungary into its successor states.

What had been family property involving, by the late nineteenth century, the vast landholdings, business buildings in Vienna, Budapest, Temesvár, Szabadka, Nagy-Becskerek, two factories, and a huge stable for pure Arabs, Lipizzaners, and horses for the imperial guard in Vienna, was suddenly split up after the death of my father, Joseph Charles Lallier, in 1914. He had sired four children with his first wife ̶ one son and three daughters ̶ spending most of his time with his beloved horses in Bukovec, but also traveling a lot in order to keep together the family and its properties. Five years after the death of his first wife, he married a second time, Dame Constantine Eugenie Tilger, of traditional Austrian stock, sired me [dear reader, please remember that it is the author’s father who’s telling his story], his second son, Cornel Marie Lallier. My mother, the widow Constantine Eugenie Tilger, and her five children inherited the huge mixed property in 1914, but the war had already begun, with travel restrictions and an increasing inability to control the goings-on over the entire distant area. In 1920, as consequence of the Treaty of Trianon, the whole family property was totally split into three parts, located in three different new nations, each with its own citizenship[and rule of law concerning its sizeable minorities: Hungary, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but each hating the other two. Before the war, traveling to take care of the properties within the empire had been easy: no passports were needed.

After 1920, three different passports were required even for short visits. Before World War I, the entire family had been equally multilingual ̶ Hungarian, Austrian-German, and French. Following the war, the children of each family were exposed to pressure to adapt to the national languages and cultures of their respective new countries, inducing a gradual disintegration of the Lallier family. Following the Treaty of Trianon, two daughters got married in Budapest, one in Temesvár and having to learn Romanian; the first son, József, with his law degree, remained in Budapest; I, the other son, Cornel Marie, graduate of the imperial and royal military academy and k.u.k. lieutenant during World War I, stayed with my mother, taking over the various properties in the Bánát and the Bácska, having no choice but to add Serbian to my three traditional languages, even though I was eventually allowed to educate my two sons in Hungarian schools.

Overall, the interwar years were turning more and more catastrophic, triggered by Béla Kun’s attempt at a communist coup-d’état, followed by the monarchic autocracy under Nicolas von Horthy, and ending in Hitler’s occupation of the whole area including Hungary, and equally unfortunately, the destruction by bombing of our property in Vienna.

The author’s father’s account of the family history ends with the occupation of the Bánát by the Nazi-Germans, the return of the Bácska to Hungary [délvidék visszatért], the onslaught and ensuing blood-bath by the Red Army and Tito’s communist partisans, from which my father and his mother were able to escape, leaving behind everything except for a handful of photographs. My father died in 1975. As you will learn below, I never returned to Hungary but have maintained links with the surviving daughter of my father’s half-brother, who had perished during the postwar years of communist terror in Hungary.

I, the author, second son of Cornel Marie Lallier, was born on May 7th, 1925, on our estate in the village of Bótos in the Bácska region, in what had been part of Austria-Hungary until the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, in 1920. As was the blood of my dead brother, mine is a mix of one-quarter French, one-quarter Austrian (my father’s mother), and one-half Hungarian (my mother, an érc-magyar from Szabadka, Hungary). I was educated in a Hungarian high-school in Nagy-Becskerek, obtaining my graduation diploma in 1942. Because of my excellent academic standing I was allowed to jump a whole year, graduating at the age of seventeen. I must mention here that because my mother had died in 1930, my paternal grandmother had taken control of my education and upbringing. In 1922, she had remarried, a highly reputable Jewish-Hungarian physician, Dr. Klein. I often think smilingly of the many hours that I had been allowed to sit on his lap and listen to his great stories of the exploits of King David. I still remember crying a lot after died in 1934.

In my teens, I took up fencing, taught by Dr. Christian, Hungary’s saber champion at the 1932 Olympics. Upon graduation, I had been destined to study law in Budapest and then to proceed to Vienna’s highly renowned graduate school in diplomacy, for my second doctorate. Early in December 1941 I was allowed to travel to Budapest to announce my candidacy for admission to the law faculty of the university. My brother, André, had already graduated from high school and was being trained as manager at one of Austria-Hungary’s most popular retail stores: Meindl. Just before Christmas 1941, he had even gotten engaged to a Jewish-Hungarian young-lady, daughter of a prominent businessman, unaware that the Nazi-Germans would soon draft him into the Waffen-SS against his will.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression caused my grandmother to lose her two factories, even though she was able to save her large business building and her private residence, Each branch of the Lallier-family had been subjected to living as a minority in countries that, just having acquired their sovereignty, were disinclined to grant the equal rights as citizens, thus forcing them to organize their own members into tightly knit ethnic associations that were dreaming of the renaissance of Austria-Hungary. My brother and I were speaking mainly Hungarian, were taking French courses in school. While my father continued considering himself as forever loyal to the Kaiser, my brother and I had almost exclusively only Hungarian friends but never Germans (Volksdeutsche) or Serbs. I should add here that my family had never had any desire to associate with members of the