Istvan Pal Adam, *Budapest Building Managers and the Holocaust in Hungary*. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Send us Fan MailThis is the first book, at least within the Hungarian context, that narrates the experiences of a larger group of ordinary individuals during the Holocaust. There were approximately 20,000 building managers, or as we might refer to them using the French term, concierges (in the current US context, the closest equivalent might be a superintendent).This book delves deeply into their wartime actions, placing them within the context of 1944, a year when Budapest faced tragedy following the Nazi German occupation in March, and subsequently the Arrow Cross takeover in October 1944.To achieve this, the author clarifies that all these individuals came from rural areas: they were relatively impoverished, first-generation residents in Hungary's only metropolis, the sole true modern city.Their establishment in the city was closely linked to the building owners who provided them with free accommodation—the concierge's lodge—but nothing beyond that, as they received no real salaries.Rather than regular wages, they relied on tips and payments from tenants, a tradition that gained particular significance when concierges had to make difficult choices about which tenants to assist in their survival—they simply could not help everyone. On the contrary, many tenants remembered them as complicit helpers of the Nazis, enforcing anti-Jewish regulations on the residents of the apartment buildings, especially those in the ghetto.Thus, in many respects, this is a distinctive narrative that readers would find valuable, as it sheds light on fundamental aspects of human nature.