Yellow-star house

The yellow-star houses were a network of almost 1,950 designated compulsory places of residence for around 220,000 Budapest Jews from 21 June 1944 until late November 1944.

A series of anti-Jewish laws and decrees introduced from 1938 onwards gradually excluded Jews from participation in intellectual professions, banned marriages and sexual relations between Jewish men and non-Jewish women, and designated individuals as ‘Jewish’ on the basis of family lineage, thus defining those who had converted to Christianity as Jews.

Former Hungarian ambassador to Berlin Döme Sztójay was appointed prime minister by Regent Miklós Horthy, and Adolf Eichmann and his commando also arrived in Budapest on the same day.

From 5 April 1944, all individuals defined as Jewish and over the age of six were obliged to wear a 10 x 10 cm yellow Star of David on their outer clothing.

Nick Barlay, Scattered Ghosts: One Family’s Survival Through War, Holocaust and Revolution (London: IB Tauris, 2013) Tim Cole, Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto (London and New York: Routledge, 2003) Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, When the Danube Ran Red (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010) Máté Rigó, 'Ordinary Women and Men: Superintendents and Jews in the Budapest yellow-star houses in 1944-1945’, Urban History, vol.