Ferenc vitéz Feketehalmy-Czeydner

Born as Ferenc Zeidner on November 22, 1890, in Piski, Hungary, from a Hungarian Volksdeutsche family, he changed his name to the more Hungarian-sounding Feketehalmy-Czeydner between the two World Wars. Joined with Austro-Hungarian army in 1904, he served as an artillery and General Staff officer in the Royal Hungarian Army during World War I. When the Habsburg dissolved, he entered the newly-reformed Royal Hungarian Army and rise to Lieutenant-General rank.

A vocal Germanophile and a rabid anti-Semite, Feketehalmy-Czeydner responsible for killing thousands civilians during his time as a corps commander in Yugoslavia’s Novi Sad region which annexed by Hungary during World War II. As a result, he was brought before a special court of the Hungarian General Staff to answer charges of excesses committed by his command. He was sentenced to death and dismissed from the Army. However, he later escaped to Germany and entered Waffen-SS at the request of Heinrich Himmler.

Served for a short period with II.SS-Panzer-Korps, Feketehalmy-Czeydner returned to his homeland after Hitler occupied Hungary and was officially reactivated in Hungarian Army by the new National Leader, Count Ferenc Szalasi. Before the war ended, he returned to Waffen-SS service and assigned to command the XVII.(ungarisch) SS-Korps (which existed only on paper).

Surrendered to US army in Austria, Feketehalmy-Czeydner was extradited to Hungary. Sentenced to death by Budapest court on March 1946, he was extradited to Yugoslavia and tried by a “Partisan Court” in Novi Sad. for ordering the roundup and massacre of an estimated 2,000 Yugoslav citizens by Hungarian troops in 1942. His death sentence reconfirmed and Feketehalmy-Czeydner was executed by hanged on November 5, 1946, in Zsabyla/South Batchka, Yugoslavia.

Copyright © 2010 by Nino Oktorino