City of Terror

City of Terror is the story of one of the longest sieges of World War Two. In Budapest, Hungary 100 thousand German and Hungarian troops held up a force twice as strong comprising two Soviet Fronts, for 108 days between October 1944 and February 1945. Half of this time the defenders fought completely encircled by the mighty Red Army. Budapest was so important politically and strategically for Adolf Hitler that he sent the last reserves of his elite SS panzer divisions to relieve Budapest when the Soviet tanks were just 60 kilometers from the capital of the Third Reich. The battle for Vienna took 6 days. Berlin fell in 14 days. In Stalingrad larger forces clashed but the civilians had been evacuated before the battle. In Budapest 1 million civilians did not have a chance to escape the war. And while the siege was raging, the Hungarian fascists were murdering the city’s Jews. Our film tells the personal stories of two Hungarian soldiers and a Jewish boy. Other witnesses, soldiers and civilians add their own accounts to their stories while experts put these testimonies into context.