József Grassy
József Grassy (31 December 1894 – 5 November 1946) was a Hungarian military officer who served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and later in the Royal Hungarian Army. He was born in Szőlős (now part of Bratislava) into a family of Italian origin; the name Grassy comes from Grassi. He trained as an officer, fought on the Eastern Front in World War I, and was wounded and decorated for his actions.
After the war, Grassy stayed in the Hungarian army, helped to overthrow Bela Kun’s short-lived Soviet Republic in 1919, and held several staff and command roles. By 1938 he had risen to the rank of colonel. In World War II, he held high-level positions and, from 1942, commanded Hungarian divisions as part of the Waffen-SS.
In 1942, during anti-partisan operations in Bačka, he ordered mass arrests that led to the Novi Sad massacre, in which about 3,800 people were killed. He later commanded Hungarian divisions on the Eastern Front and, in 1944, joined the German-formed Waffen-SS, attaining the rank of SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant.
After the war, Grassy was tried for war crimes in Hungary and Yugoslavia and was executed in 1946 in Žabalj, Yugoslavia.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:18 (CET).