Hitler wanted to kill the grandson of Governor Miklós Horthy, he dreaded returning to Hungary

István (Sharif) Horthy Jr was born in 1941, one and a half years before his father, István Horthy, the eldest son of Governor Miklós Horthy, died at the Eastern Front in a plane crash. He was only three when they were arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to an internment camp in Bavaria. Meanwhile, the youngest son of Miklós Horthy, Miklós Horthy Jr was in the concentration camps of Mauthausen then Dachau.

István Horthy Jr is now 83 years old and donated the family’s private archives to the National Archives of Hungary. Historians will be free to conduct research concerning those 7,500 documents containing 35 thousand pages spanning between 1863 and 2013.

István talked about his memories to 24.hu in an interview. He said he remembered the Buda Castle even though they were taken away by the Gestapo in 1944 when he was only 3 years old.

He said his relationship with Governor Miklós Horthy was exceptional but never political. They remained grandson and grandfather for each other. Moreover, sometimes Miklós Horthy was like a father for István. For example, they regularly went swimming together in Portugal, where they spent the beginning of their emigration.

He said his grandfather was a very kind person. For example, they regularly invited a Polish countess living next to them because she was very lonely. That is because they felt they must take care of her.

Himmler wanted to execute him

He said he learnt only as an adult that Himmler wanted to execute them when the Gestapo arrested and took them to Bavaria. Furthermore, he said his mother believed until her final breath in 2013 that István, Miklós Horthy’s oldest son, was murdered by the Germans in the Eastern Front.

He confessed to 24.hu that he was afraid to return to Hungary because he thought everybody hated him and his family. But when they wanted to move to the USA, they needed his original birth certificate, so they had to go to the Hungarian embassy in Jakarta. The first secretary was very kind, so they travelled to Budapest, which was a good experience.

Interestingly, neither one of his children speaks Hungarian because he thought they would never be able to return to Hungary.

He graduated as a physicist, then became an architect and followed Subud, a multi-faith, international spiritual group having its routes in Sufi Islam. That is why the name Sharif. He lives in the United Kingdom with his Indonesian wife, Tuti.

Concerning a possible Horthy dynasty ruling Hungary, he said his grandfather never wanted to become a king and did not want his family to become monarchs either.

Read also:

• Horthy statue unveiled in the Hungarian Parliament building – Read more HERE
• Half of Hungary admires while the other half hates Governor Horthy – HERE is why