On this day in 1944, the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews began.Shortly after the Nazis rose to power, the Hungarian government was interested in an alliance due to their similar authoritarian ideologies. By 1941, Hungary was working with Germany in the invasion and splicing up of Yugoslavia. At the same time, Jews escaping mass persecution in German-occupied territories were fleeing to Hungary, hoping that the Holocaust would not take shape there, despite anti-Jewish legislation being passed in 1939.Though the anti-Jewish laws caused hardships, including having their participation in the economy and professions cut by 80%, life was relatively safe for Jews in Hungary. However, this relative safety was continuously tested. In the summer of 1941, 18,000 Jews were randomly selected to be Jewish foreign nationals by the Hungarian authorities and were deported to Kamenets-Podolsk in Ukraine, where the majority were murdered. A few months later, Hungary officially joined the Axis Powers.In 1943 and 1944, when the Germans started losing, Hungarian Regent Miklos Horthy began to back out of the alliance. This led to Hitler taking action to ensure Hungary would be loyal. On March 19, 1944, German forces entered Hungary. For the next month, authorities ordered the 500,000 Hungarian Jews living outside of Budapest into ghettos. While none of these ghettos existed for more than a few weeks, they were overpopulated and living in poor conditions.On May 15, nearly two months after the German occupation, the Nazis began deporting Hungarian Jews. This was led by SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, who worked with the Hungarian authorities as well as the Sicherheitspolizei, or the German Security Police. During this time, the Hungarian police were responsible for rounding up Jews and forcing them on the trains. Within two months, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary on over 145 trains. The majority went to Auschwitz and were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. Those who weren’t sent to Auschwitz were deported to the border in Austria, where they were forced to dig fortification trenches. On July 7, 1944, Horthy ordered a halt to the deportations fearing the threats from the Allies that they would face war crimes. It was too late to save the Jewish community, who had, for the most part, already been deported. By this time, the only Jewish community left was in Budapest. By the time Hungary was liberated by the Soviets in April 1945, 568,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered.