The army of the Third Reich occupied Hungary, a political and military ally, on March 19, 1944. Embracing far-right ideologies, Minister of the Interior Andor Jaross, along with state secretaries László Endre and László Baky, initiated the first transports from major cities in Carpathian Ruthenia (now Ukraine) to the Auschwitz concentration camp on May 17.

Initially, the Budapest Jewish population was not intended to be enclosed within a continuous ghetto wall. Mayor Ákos Farkas ordered on June 17 that Hungarian children of Abram must move to designated tenement buildings in the capital in 1952, which would be marked with yellow stars of David on their doors.

Most of the men exiled to these types of houses were sentenced to forced labor. They were either employed in digging trenches on the Eastern Front or for the defense of Budapest. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, smuggled 30,000 individuals from the "star-marked" houses to the "international" ghetto established near Szent István Park.

Due to the gendarme coup organized to overthrow Governor Miklós Horthy, the tank division from Esztergom blocked the roads leading to the capital on July 5. Thanks to the armored unit led by Ferenc Koszorús, the Budapest Jews temporarily escaped total physical annihilation, as by this time, 437,000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported to death camps.

After Szálasi Ferenc seized power with German military assistance, the state decided on November 29 to establish the Budapest ghetto. Following Warsaw, Łódź, Lviv, and Vilnius, this 0.3-square-kilometer area became the fifth-largest forced residence in Europe.

The high walls of the zone were constructed not of bricks but of wooden planks. The ghetto was divided into 10 districts, overseen by appointees selected by the Jewish Council. The four main entrances were guarded by armed troops.

As 129 of the 291 tenement buildings within the designated area were owned by Christians, Jewish residents relocated here were obligated to offer their own properties as a matter of exchange. The state crammed 63,000 people into 4513 apartments in Erzsébetváros, averaging 14 individuals per household.

When the Soviet siege closed in around Budapest on December 27, death began to reap not only within the ghetto but also beyond the walls due to chronic shortage of medication, water, and food. Many resorted to suicide due to regular executions, prolonged deprivation, and starvation. During Arrow Cross raids and break-ins, 8,000 individuals were taken to the Danube banks for execution.

Initially, the bodies were buried in cemeteries outside the ghetto, but starting from January 3, 1945, they were piled up one and a half meters high on the streets, shop windows, and Klauzál Square. The outbreak of epidemics was prevented only by severe cold and snow.

Despite religious prohibitions, 2,281 frozen individuals were forcibly buried in 24 mass graves near the Dohány Street Synagogue. The Soviet Red Army liberated the ghetto after its one and a half-month "operation" on January 17.