us-005578-irn47434-irn50265
type: RecordSet
archival history: The sculpture was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012 by Peter Dallos.
biographical history: Peter Deutsch (later Dallos) was born on November 26, 1934, in Budapest, Hungary, to Erno and Maria Klein Deutsch. Erno was born in 1903 to an Orthodox Jewish family and had three younger brothers, Otto, Miklos, and Sanyi, and a sister Ella, born circa 1920. Marie, born in January 1906, had a younger brother Endre, born in 1917, and a sister Klari. The couple married in 1932. Erno was an accountant for Karitex and Marie was a comptroller for Andrea Cementworks. Miklos and Sanyi left Hungary in the 1930s; Miklos for France and Sanyi for Palestine. The Hungarian government had radical fascist elements and was closely allied with Germany. Antisemitic measures based upon the Nuremberg racial laws in Germany were passed in the 1930s. Jews lost their citizenship and were barred from many professions. By 1940, Erno was released from his job, but was employed as an accountant by several Jewish owned factories. Forced labor service was required of all able-bodied male Jews. Marie’s brother Endre was drafted as a soldier in 1940, but a new ordinance mandated that Jews could serve only as conscripted laborers, not soldiers. Hungary joined the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany in November and participated in the military invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941. The labor brigades were placed under the command of the military and deployed on war-related construction work. In 1941, Erno and his brother Otto were mustered into a forced labor brigade. Erno was released after several months, but Otto was sent to Levocne in the Ukraine. In 1943, Erno was assigned to a forced labor camp, but again released after several months. The family received a Red Cross notice in February 1943 that Endre and his battalion had disappeared during the retreat from Russia following the battle of the Don. Peter’s paternal grandfather died of natural causes that year leaving Peter and his maternal grandfather as the only male relatives still in Budapest. There were frequent bombings and air…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Welded steel sculpture, partially painted black, with a thin, flat, irregularly shaped base with a set of tall, wide, rectangular building like structures on the right and left sides, separated by a flat pathway. The seven rectangular towers are of different heights with differently shaped tops, resembling roofs; some are peaked, some flat, and one is flat but titled at a sharp angle. Several of the buildings have small, inset squares near the top, resembling windows, and etched arches for doorways at the bottom. In one corner of the base is a square, fenced courtyard; inserted within the enclosure is a single, small, brass peg. Across the pathway are two pegs, inserted into a narrow, raised sidewalk lining the pathway next to one set of buildings. Inserted along the center of pathway are several dozen brass pegs arranged in a tight group. The base underside is scratched with the artist's name.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
has beginning date: 2001-01-01
has end date: 2001-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn50265
is or was included in: us-005578-irn47434
record resource extent: overall: Height: 10.250 inches (26.035 cm) | Width: 16.000 inches (40.64 cm) | Depth: 13.000 inches (33.02 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Forced March No. 2. is a welded sculpture created by Peter Dallos in 2001. It depicts Jews being herded along a narrow Budapest street, a scene he witnessed as a 10 year old. It is one of nine works in The War Series, created from 1988-2012. Each work has small, thin brass rods carefully positioned in the forbidding sculptural environment that often represent Peter and his parents, as well as all those victimized by the war and the Holocaust. Hungary was a close German ally, and had enacted anti-Jewish laws since the 1930s. In 1940, Peter's father and uncles were deported to forced labor camps. But after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hungary sought a separate truce with the western Allies. To thwart these efforts, Germany occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, when Peter was ten years old. They immediately began to systematically deport all Jews to concentration camps. Peter's father Erno was deported to a labor camp in Serbia. Peter and his mother Marie had to wear Star of David badges and move into a Jews only building. In August, Marie acquired two protective passes issued by the Swedish Red Cross which exempted them from deportation. By October, the Jews in Budapest were the last remaining Jews in Hungary. On October 15, a German orchestrated coup brought the antisemitic, fascist Arrow Cross Party to power and deportations increased. In November, Peter and Marie moved into a Swedish protected house. In December, during the siege of Budapest, there was no electricity, gas, or water, and no glass in building windows. People feared starvation. The city was continuously bombed and they stayed in the standing room only cellar most of the time. In mid-January 1945, their section of the city, Pest, was liberated by the Soviet Army; Buda was freed on February 13. Peter's father did not return and they later learned that he had been killed during a death march. Nearly all of Peter's relatives in Hungary when the war began perished.
title: Forced March No. 2, an allegorical steel sculpture representing a childhood memory of a roundup of Jews for deportation