Have you ever heard about the Hungarian Gold Train that was captured by the USA?

There are many action movies in which heroes rescue the world on a train which carries something valuable from jewellery to nuclear weapons. In the Hungarian History, there were at least two so-called “gold trains”, and the one operating in WWII has a fascinating story.

About the “first Hungarian gold train” that carried Saint Stephen’s Holy Right Hand in 1938, the year of the Eucharistic World Congress hosted by Hungary, we reported in THIS article that a civil organisation tries to rebuild it.

However, this article is about another “gold train” that was meant to accomplish a very different task. It started from Fertődoboz on January 23, 1945. It carried, for example, the gold stock of the National Bank of Hungary, a large amount of foreign currency, valuable documents like the Corvina books of King Matthias, the platinum master bar of the meter. Moreover, there were gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, about 200 paintings, Persian and Oriental rugs, silverware, chinaware, furniture, fine clothing, linens, porcelains, cameras, and stamp-collections on the train, many of which were taken from the Jewish families in Hungary. According to contemporary estimates,

the “cargo” of the train containing 77 cars would be worth 4 billion US dollars today.

The reason why the Szálasi-government decided to take those out of the country was the swift advance of the Soviet troops. Furthermore, they wanted to finance their counterattack by using those valuables.

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The freight train had a crew of 213 people on board and was lead by Árpád Toldy. As it meandered through Hungary, it stopped at a few locations to collect other looted and confiscated items that had been stored elsewhere. On reaching a considered safe area close to the Hungarian-Austrian border, Toldy halted the train for 92 days to carefully document everything he carried on the train.

In January, they started their journey to Austria but arrived near Salzburg in months because of the massive bombings. Before the surrender of Germany, Toldy and his family left the train with a large amount of gold and

successfully got into Switzerland.

Later he was interrogated by Allied authorities; however, they shortly released him.

The train was captured by US forces 100 km away from Salzburg after the German capitulation. In the post-war era, it was almost impossible to preserve all the goods. Many officers took from the valuable items, and even the United States regarded it as compensation for the losses they suffered during the war.

Thanks to the efforts of the Hungarian government, most of the belongings of the National Bank of Hungary were given back by 1947. However, that did not include, for example, the works of art, the jewellery, the porcelains etc. – mostly confiscated from Jews – that

the United States sold at an auction in 1948 in New York. 

Moreover, Austria received many paintings as compensation for the nationalisations in Communist Hungary during which many Austrian citizens lost their assets in Hungary. Therefore, it is understandable why many Jewish families still try to get back their belongings. For example, in 2001, Hungarian Holocaust survivors filed a lawsuit in a Florida district court against the United States government for the government’s mishandling of the assets on the Hungarian Gold Train. In 2005, the government decided to create a fund worth $25.5 million. The money was allocated for distribution to various Jewish social service agencies for the benefit of Holocaust survivors which they do even today.

Our featured image is just an illustration, but both gold trains could look like it. Still, this photo was taken in Ukraine, in 1943, after Hungarian soldiers rebuilt a bridge.