Iván Héjjas

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1950 ○ Died of illness in exile

White Terror commander whose detachment around Kecskemét carried out the Orgovány killings and the Izsák pogrom

Born into a wealthy peasant family in Kecskemét, he was a fighter pilot in the Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops by the end of the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 Horthy’s chief of staff ordered him to “make order” around Kecskemét, and he became the de facto military governor of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve. His men took abducted people to the forest of Orgovány to be tortured and executed and staged a pogrom at Izsák; about a third of their victims were Jewish. Because he did not back King Charles’s return in 1921, Horthy’s amnesty shielded him, and he sat in parliament from 1927 to 1931. After the war he was sentenced to death in absentia, and he died of illness in Vigo, Spain, in 1950.