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György Beifeld (later George Byfield) (ca. 1902–1982) was a Hungarian Jew best known for writing a richly illustrated memoir while spending more than a year at the eastern front in 1942–1943 as a member of a forced-labor battalion. György Beifeld was a 40-year-old Hungarian Jew in 1942. He lived in Budapest, where he was trained as a lawyer, but earned his living as a stockbroker. He was also a talented artist who loved to draw and paint in his spare time. In the spring of 1942, Beifeld was one of 50,000 Jewish men who were deployed in the Hungarian Labor Service (Munkaszolgálat) in the Soviet Union to support Hungarian troops sent to the eastern front to help the Axis to conquer the Soviet Union. ==In the labor service== Living conditions were abysmal in the labor service, and the Jewish conscripts were often brutally mistreated by their officers and guards. The abuses against them included withholding or stealing their meager rations, denying them adequate clothing or footwear to perform their duties, quartering them for long periods outside without shelter, and dousing them with water and leaving them to freeze in the bitter cold of the Russian winter. During the retreat of the Hungarian army and its auxiliary labor units in the winter of 1943 after their defeat by the Soviets, Hungarian soldiers often plundered and even killed many of the Jewish labor servicemen. In all, more than 40,000 Jewish labor servicemen lost their lives. Beifeld was inducted into the 109/13 labor company in April 1942. The Jewish conscript took with him an ample supply of paper, paint, and pencils to keep him occupied in whatever spare time he could find. As it turned out, not only did these art supplies give him something to do in that spare time, they actually helped to spare his life during his year in the Soviet Union. Beifeld began painting immediately after his induction, creating watercolors of the base camp in Hungary where the company was initially stationed. On 20 April 1942, Beifeld's company departed by train for the Russian front. Just before their departure the members of the company received a superficial medical checkup and readiness review. As Beifeld writes in his memoir,
Beifeld's company arrived at Orel in Russia on 26 April. He describes the countryside as seen from the train, noting not only the absence of young men, but also the absence of dogs, which increasingly had been used as a source of food in this time of privation. From Orel members of the company marched on foot for several days to their first destination, a construction site on the Orel-Kursk highway. Their task was to do maintenance work on the roadway. Beifeld describes the work as arduous and unproductive, and no sooner had they completed one task, they would receive another order to do just the opposite. Fortunately for Beifeld, after only 4–5 days of this hard labor his commander issued an order for the creation of a company diary, and Beifeld was asked to provide the illustrations. As a result, he was exempt for a time from construction work. Drawing and painting turned out to be a lucrative business for Beifeld. His portraits, landscapes, and caricatures became sought-after commodities, and many of the soldiers were ready to barter food or cigarettes for his pictures. During the summer of 1942, the company was sent on long marches that took them close to the front line. Their duties included building fortifications, transporting ammunition, constructing bridges and roads, laying mines, burying the dead, and carrying away the wounded. As the summer progressed the heat intensified, their rations were cut back, and their treatment deteriorated. The company was repeatedly the target of raids by the military police, who confiscated their meager personal belongings, including soap and cigarettes, which left them with nothing to barter for extra food. The conscripts hung on in the hopes of being demobilized at the end of the summer. Instead, they were sent back to the front line in September. In the course of their work many labor servicemen, including Beifeld, suffered shrapnel wounds. When his wound became seriously infected Beifeld was sent to a field hospital in Plotawa, 15–20 km behind the front line. There, he became friendly with the chief physician, Dr. Bela Balta. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「György Beifeld」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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