András Kun

Father András Kun, O.F.M. (9 November 1911 – 19 September 1945 in Budapest, Hungary) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order. During The Holocaust in Hungary, Fr. Kun was also the commander of an Anti-Semitic death squad for the Arrow Cross Party. After the Second World War, Father Kun was prosecuted for war crimes by the Communist People's Republic of Hungary. He was convicted and hanged.

Life

Father Kun was born 8 November 1911 in Nyírbátor, Kingdom of Hungary. He attended seminary in Rome. He then served as a priest in a Franciscan monastery. In 1943, Fr. Kun was, according to journalist Rezső Szirmai, expelled from the monastery and moved to Budapest.

Although it is uncertain whether he ever had valid faculties, Fr. Kun sometimes gave sermons and offered Nuptial Masses at Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Városmajor.

In early 1944, Kun enrolled in Hungary's Pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. During the lead-up to the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, Kun participated in the Arrow Cross' seizure of power by distributing weapons.

Fr. Kun later recalled, "The propaganda drilled into us the belief that the Jews lurk behind the Bolsheviks. Amidst the wildest battles, I stood with this conviction and as Jews came before me, I beat them.”

Soon after, the Arrow Cross and the Schutzstaffel began The Holocaust in Hungary. Meanwhile, Fr. Kun took command of an Arrow Cross death squad which massacred Jews. During these activities, he continued to dress in his cassock and Roman collar along with a holstered pistol and an Arrow Cross armband. His orders usually ran, "In the name of Christ - fire!"

In a later interview with journalist Rezső Szirmai, Fr. Kun recalled, "I always wanted to reduce human misery and suffering. This is why I fought against the Jews. They are the lords of capital. The Jews were always the ones to walk on the sunny side of the street."

In January 1945, Fr. Kun ordered the arrest of Jewish author Ernő Ligeti and his family. Fr. Kun and his death squad brutally tortured Ligeti’s son and his wife. The Ligetis were then taken to Arrow Cross headquarters at Andrássy út 60, interrogated, stripped naked and tied together. Then, around midnight, they faced a firing squad. Ernő Ligeti and his wife were killed on the spot, but their son Károly, survived four bullets, recovered from his wounds, and later emigrated from Hungary.

On 12 January 1945, Kun's squad broke into the Jewish hospital in Maros street (Hospital of the Buda Chevra Kadisha), where 149 Jewish patients and doctors were summarily shot. On another occasion, the St. John's Hospital was invaded by Kun's unit and between 80 and 100 people were murdered. His squad also invaded sheltered housing and abducted some 500 Jews and their protectors. All were lined up and shot into the Danube River. On another occasion, men under Fr. Kun's command broke into a sanatorium, where 100 Jewish patients were shot to death.

Father Kun did not flee the city before the Siege of Budapest, but remained behind while continuing operations. His squad routinely subjected Gentiles who were hiding Jews to torture and execution. Once, when regular gendarmes arrested and beat him, Kun spent 20 days in prison.

Soon after his release, the Soviet Army completed their capture of Budapest. Kun was arrested and tried for 500 murders by a Hungarian People's Tribunal. On the day of his execution, he gave an interview to journalist Reszső Szirmai. In the interview, Fr. Kun admitted to beating Jews, but denied killing anyone and claimed to have been falsely convicted. In a display of the bottomless self-pity typical of psychopaths, Fr. Kun told Szirmai that he considered himself to be even more of a victim than any of the Jews who died in the Holocaust.

When Szirmai commented that the manner in which Fr. Kun had treated his victims displayed signs of sadism, Fr. Kun replied, "This perversion exists, in a dormant state, in every soul.” When asked if it existed in his soul as well, Fr. Kun responded: “If it did, then it was dormant. I was not conscious of it.”

Fr. András Kun was executed by hanging in Budapest on September 19, 1945.

Legacy

Rezső Szirmai went on to interview 20 other Arrow Cross war criminals and published a book-length collection of his interviews, Fasisza lelkek ("Fascist Souls"), in 1946. Some of his other interview subjects included Ferenc Szálasi, Andor Jaross, and Béla Imrédy. After the fall of Communism in Hungary, a second edition was published in 1993.

Father Kun's cassock is currently on display at the House of Terror in Budapest. In his bestselling history of the Siege of Budapest, Hungarian historian Krisztián Ungváry describes Fr. Kun's crimes in detail. In the process, however, he also comments on the irony that, while Fr. Kun and his unit were massacring Jews, the Papal Nuncio to Hungary, Mgr. Angelo Rotta, was working closely with Raoul Wallenberg and other neutral diplomats and helped to save tens of thousands of Jewish lives.