The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia

No mention has been made yet of the political circumstances and consequences of the deportation of men of Hungarian or German extraction or other nationalities. It is well-known that the Red Army reached the village of Verbjazs, the first settlement in Transcarpathia, on October 2, 1944. On October 27, the Soviet Army occupied Ungvar. On that day a solemn order was published, signed by Stalin. Among others, it mentions, from the military point of view, the "occupation of an important bridgehead". The Soviet military administration lasting over two month (from; October 1944 to January 1945), as well as the public administration of Czechoslovakia, directed from Huszt, are a separate chapter Transcarpathia's history which still awaits evaluation and analysis.

In that time period, everything that was done was undertaken with an eye to the Soviet-Czechoslovak agreement of May, 8, 1944. The commander of the Soviet army acknowledges the establishment in Huszt of the Czech government-in-exile's delegation arriving from London. Huszt will be its headquarters for a while; from here it will try to organise Czechoslovakia's pre-1938 public administration and the recruitment of volunteers into Szvoboda's army. Frantisek Nemec is the all-powerful heed of the delegation. He personally does everything possible to stop Transcarpathia's annexation to the Ukraine. First, he organises national committees in the controlled settlements (from Beregszasz to Raho). Then Nemec and his minions wanted to revive in Transcarpathia - the local organisations of the Czech agrarian, social democratic, Czech national, socialist, and communist parties. These have become reactivated in the name of civil democracy in many places, such as Beregszasz.

Transcarpathia's Hungarian population had two options: to choose between Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union. (They knew, of course, that their territory will not be rejoined to Hungary, condemned as a guilty nation). Many Ruthenians also acted in accordance with the Proclamation issued at Huszt on October 26, 1944. Nemec set the date of November 21 for the popular meeting, so that this forum could vote on the central body that was to assume direction of a governing administration and to have the chiefs of the settlements' local administration, swear allegiance to the laws of Czechoslovakia.

The local communist party, led by Stalinist functionaries sent from; Moscow, did not sit idly by. It wished to hold the party's reorganising conference on November 19, 1944. The pre-eminent topic of this event: - the passing of a resolution concerning Transcarpathia's annexation to the Ukraine. By that time the leaders of Transcarpathia's communist party recognised the danger: if they do not intervene effectively, Transcarpathia will remain within Czechoslovakia's sphere. With the assistance of the NKVD, they attempted to block the popular meeting called to Huszt by the government's delegation. Again with the active support of the NKVD; they, first of all, cleansed the Hungarian and mixed villages of "dangerous elements" - friends of the Czechs - who would not, according to the observations of the Stalinists, have voted for Transcarpathia's annexation to the Ukraine. This resolution was passed on November 26, 1944, by the conference of the people's committee. This forum unanimously accepted the Proclamation which states definitely "the centuries-old desire of the Carpatho-Ukrainians for the reunification and the integration with the Ukraine". The Stalinists tightly controlled the delegates who voted "yes"; only those were invited to attend whom they could trust. The Hungarians and Germans of Transcarpathia were not represented here. I wonder WHY?

The "screening" of Transcarpathia's Hungarians and Germans was ordered by the supreme command of the 4th Ukrainian Front, with Stalin's knowledge. The scenario of the deportations was entrusted to the general staff of the NKVD, who were to prepare then. As the Soviet armed forces, progressing from settlement, to settlement, chased out the enemy units from the towns end villages, the Hungarians, as well as the Ruthenians, received the troops with some confidence. But as soon as the front moved on, the sub-machine-gun-toting thugs of the NKVD and SZMERS appeared, as well as the partisans of Uszta Gyula, Priscsepa and Tkanko who, together with the local Stalinists, started to gather the Hungarian and German men as called for by the screenplay. Thus, the fabricated story of the "three days of labour" became a trap. The manhunt began on November 13, 1944; the marching columns departed towards Szolyva on November 18. Survivors tell us that those who organised end executed these interments surpassed even the fascists in brutality. From the camp of Szolyva, thousands of men who lived through the epidemics of typhoid fever were scattered to the interior of the Soviet Union. Eyewitnesses and survivors estimate that about 40,000 Hungarians end Germans were put behind barbed wire. Ninety percent of those who were marched to their death were Hungarians with a smattering of Ruthenians, Slovaks and Romanians gathered along the way. The men, exposed to starvation and cold, were only allowed to return home after two years, their ranks decimated. The survivors; were released gradually, from 1946 on. Over 30% of the deportees perished. In every Hungarian village the return of a survivor was a great event, but their reintegration was a lengthy process. They were considered war criminals. This a mistrust of the draft-age Hungarian and German men lasted until about Stalin's death.

On the other hand, they actively recruited young Hungarian men who were pressed into service to work in the mines of the Donyec region. Those who escaped and returned on their own, having been brought to trial, were sentenced to years of even harsher forced labour. Many came back broken: they succumbed to alcoholism and their family lives were disrupted. We can say that the actions of the Stalinists toward Transcarpathia's Hungarians was outright genocide; they wanted to exterminate and physically eradicate them.

As late as 1989, the officials still deny that these horrors ever occurred. Today's official line in that the Stalinist cult of personality was responsible, not they. The deportations of the local Jews is frequently evoked by them - and rightly so! - but the unfortunate Hungarian deportees cannot mention, even in their biographies, where they spent the years immediately following the Soviet occupation. No damages have yet been paid to the relatives or the children whose fathers died innocently. No material assistance has been given to the war widows, the families left without a breadwinner, the helpless elderly. The locations of the mass graves of the internees are still not disclosed. For instance, a gas-station and paved road were built, without informing the relatives, over the tombs of the Szolyva death camp, where, according to the survivors, the bones of over 20 thousand inmates are interred. The years the survivors spent in the camps are not counted towards their retirement yet it was in those very camps that many became disabled or contracted incurable diseases. Of course, they cannot prove any of this as the archives are closed to them. The civilian internees, who never took part in any military action, are treated as POWs taken on the battlefields. The overzealous end cruel functionaries of the local administration still maintain that the punishment of the Hungarians was not only well-deserved and justified but, moreover, the years of forced labour was a mild penalty for the suffering inflicted on Transcarpathia's communists and Jews by the tyranny of the Horthy and Szalasi regimes.

It is time for the politicians condemning Stalinism to take action; after all, there are no people in this realm who were not fatally touched by the repression, by Stalinist despotism. The Supreme Council of the Ukraine should pass a law on the legal and political rehabilitation and material compensation of the internees and political prisoners, as well as these convicted by show trials. It would be appropriate to erect memorials to the victims of Stalinist tyranny in the Hungarian villages of Transcarpathia. And in Szolyva, on the site of the concentration camp, we should create a memorial park to the victims of Stalinism. It would also be an excellent idea to find out, on the basis of archival documents, the names of those who carried out the deportations. We must identify the evil-doers so that future generations should know about them. We must write up and publish, in book form, all the available material on these years of reprisals. This subject is still taboo among the historians of Transcarpathia. The official state archives, and the six-volume Sljahom Zsovtnya (On the Road to October) 1957-1965 are rather incomplete in this respect end the compilers were particularly careful not to make public the basic documents concerning the life of the local Hungarians. We discovered one or two pieces of this material and quote, without commentary, a few lines of them:

Doc. # 1: from the order issued on November 4, 1944 by the Soviet Military Commander, Ungvar, "Of the citizens of Zakarpatszka Ukraine, only Russians or Ukrainian nationals may enlist in the Red Army".

Doc. # 125: The speech given by Ivan Turjanica, secretary of the party committee of Zakarpatszka Ukraine mentions some Hungarians who have to be "excluded from public life...".

Doc. # 147: (Excerpt from a report of the village board of Salank): "Until the men who used to be Hungarian soldiers and now work in labour camps are allowed to return there will not be enough workers in the village".

The territory's most talented writer and poet, Kovacs Vilmos, gave the best description of the internment of Transcarpathia's Hungarians in his 1965 book "Holnap is Elunk". (We shall still live tomorrow) (after it was published the Soviet authorities withdraw it from circulation): "...The menfolk, between the ages of 18 and 55, were taken away for labour. They promised to release them after three days, but five months have already gone by and none came home. What is more, there are rumours that some have died...". What increases the tragedy of the Hungarians is that some of them in their fear (of being carried off) and under the impact of discrimination, professed to be Slovaks or Ukrainians, and registered their families as such, although they did not even speak the language.

After the passage of four decades, in the time of glasnost, the Carpathian True Word's November 15, 1980 issue, first raises this question through their readers' letters. We quote:

"N. Jeno resident of Uzsgorod, came to our offices with a petition signed by dozens. He, like countless others following the liberation, performed heavy physical work outside our territory's boundaries. It was not seemly to talk of this earlier, so N. Jeno and his companions could not receive certification for the months of "work contract". We would ask the editors for their help - they end their petition - for if these were certified, we could apply for additional retirement benefits..." (Readers are invited to question, judge, propose...) See how cautiously the writer words his article! We call this "little Perestroika".

The regional archives contain sheaves of documents on the changes of the socio-political scene of 1944 - 1945. At the end of 1944 commissariats came into being in our towns and villages that functioned as primary state authorities. As each village, town, and territory had its commissariat, the documents were grouped under the same geographical identities. The Popular Council. of Carpatho-Ukraine was created; it represented our region on the territorial level and its files are also stored with us.

Our work of compiling the lists of names was facilitated by the Commissariat's circular letter which required a report on the whereabouts of the male population. The one received by Zapszony, Csonkapapi, and Haranglab reads thus:

Subject: List of names of those who are in POW camps.

"I order you to send to the commissariat of the district of Beregszasz, by messenger, in two copies and within two days, a list of those Carpatho-Ukrainian citizens who are presently in POW camps. The following information must he added to the lists of names: place and date of birth, citizenship, and name of camp where be resides.

Beregszasz, July 2, 1945

Since all the settlements of the Beregszasz district responded to this circular and sent in their lists, it is easy to determine exactly the particulars of every deportee. However, by carefully examining these lists, we note that the name of the camp is not always indicated. We find lists completely without the names of the camps. The explanation for this is that the families still did not know where their relatives were taken.

The relatives of the deportees repeatedly asked the commissariats of their village, district or territory for their release but to no avail. It is worth mentioning that the people of Bereg attached the list of names of those in Szolyva Szambor to their petition for the internees' return.

They give six reasons for their application and I quote:

"1.- The military units need men to rebuild the bridges near our village.

2.- Their labor is missing in the reconstruction of the buildings destroyed by the fascists.

3.- We need men for the logging of the forests near our village.

4.- Without them, we cannot fulfil our military work requirements; there is no one to make spare parts for the wagons.

5.- Within the boundaries of our village, there is a mill which serves 6 villages, but at present we have no good miller.

6.- There will be no one to till the soil when the time comes; We did not sow in the autumn and we cannot do so now. This is to the detriment of the state also. "

If you granted our petition, we could accomplish all the work we have listed. In support of our application we must stress that many a man was carried off, without regard to who he is. These men were simple agricultural labourers and woodcutters.

Our village, Bereg, had its communists for a long time and we ask that they be returned to us also. They were honest and conscientious citizens of the village, even during the fascist era. They never supported the enemy and they must have been taken to the camps by chance".

The desperate families, mothers, wives, relatives begged like one the release of their kin. Time and time again, they appealed to the authorities, in person and in writing; The best illustration of the women's fight for the return of their loved ones can be found in one of tire documents at the commissariat of the Batyu district. This letter was forwarded to the commissariat in Beregszasz as the local authority could not ease the difficult times of these mutilated families.

The secretary of the commissariat writes and I quote again:

"I declare that the inhabitants belonging to the commissariat of the Batyu district constantly harass me requesting me to write applications for the release of those who were carried off to labour camps in November 1944. I inquired at the headquarters of the town that mobilised them. I was told that it is not allowed to write any petitions as these men can be released at the end of the war only. With this in mind, I dared not write any applications to the labour camps' commanders.

The sad fact is that one cannot talk to these women. They say that all the secretaries of the district already wrote petitions similar to theirs and that, as a result, several men were released. They accuse me of having no pity and not wanting the men to come home and that it is up to me only that they return.

The offices of the commissariat are filled every day with hundreds of women, relatives of the deportees, who - seeing that I don't want to write petitions - wail and cry. Please clarify this situation and let me know. Their constant presence hinders us in our work. They don't even want to leave the office, they don't understand that I cannot satisfy their requests.

February 1945, Batyu"

"Dear Comrade Popovich:

As Golova (president) of the district, please be good enough to certify the enclosed village commissariat's petition, addressed to you, concerning the release of the 15 comrades whose names are listed therein.

Vari., November 15. 1945

Respectfully,
Party secretary of the Vari commissariat
Biro Bertalan

The petition they submitted reads as follows:

To the President of the Carpatho-Ukrainian Commissariat Ungvar

The village commissariat of Vari request the release of its following residents who are at the No. 134 camp in Novi-Szambor.

We certify that those named were never members of any fascist organisation; they were all communists or supportive of them.

Again, we ask you to release them from camp, as they are fathers of small children and their parents are already old.

Vari, November 23, 1945
Biro Bertalan, secretary of the communist party
Mester Andras, president of the commissariat

Approved by the district commissariat at Beregszasz The Commissariat of Beregszasz has no objection."

Electric power Works of Carpathia, District of Ungvar, Office of the Beregszasz Supervisor, T.C.(?) Office of the Secretary, Batyu

The undersigned, Electric Power Works of Carpathia, Ungvar, office of the Supervisor in Beregszasz, inform you that our electrician, Petroczy Sandor, formerly entrusted with the duties of district electrician in the Batyu district, is presently in the military camp in Szolyva. According to our information, the military camp commandant of Szolyva would be willing to release him if the secretary, that is, you, of his employers justifies the importance of his duties and his indispensability.

In view of the fact that the power supply to the district of Batyu has already been adversely affected by the said person's absence and emphasising the fact that our electrician's, Petroczy Sandor's prompt return to the district is above all in your best interest, we ask you, Mr. Secretary, to issue' a certificate that stresses the said person's importance and indispensability, not only for the private users but also for the military.

Please address your request to the commander of the military camp and give it to the relative who brings you this letter and who has already taken action.

Thanking you for your favour, I am

Sincerely yours,
Berehovo, December 26, 1945

Aside from the group petitions, we find individual applications which originated in Vari, Batyu, or other villages inhabited by Hungarians. In all instances, the petitioners received evasive answers - or no answer at all.

The communities of Transcarpathia prepared combined or separate lists of the male population that was sent to camps as POWs or deportees. In most cases these lists were combined; only in a few villages were there separate ones.

Of these lists, I would like to analyse one - that of Mezokaszony. We found it in file # 19 in the archives. It was compiled by the village commissariat between February 13 and December 31, 1945 and contains only the list of names of those from Mezokaszony who became POWs or deportees. It is interesting and sad that all 347 men were listed as POWs, whereas there were among them deportees, escapees, communists, and other elements. The lists show each person's name, place and date of birth, the name of the camp, his permanent domicile and the name of the country where the camp is located.

What is most important, however, is that on the basis of this list, we managed to determine that 74 men, of those who were innocently deported in the autumn of 1944, died in the labour camps and that 4 passed away here at home shortly after their return.

It is noteworthy that all the individuals figuring on the main list of Kaszony fall between the age limits, at least according to the numbers shown, whereas among the deportees from other Hungarian settlements of Transcarpathia there were numerous men who have not yet reached the age of 18.

The release of the deportees almost always ended in failure because of the lack of interest and cruelty of the foreign despotism imposed on us.

Here is, for instance, the petition dated August 7, 1945 of Vas Dezsone, resident of Beregrakos, that was approved by the local commissariat, as well as the KNT and forwarded under # 3447 - 1945 to the commander of the camp at Sztarij Szambor. In her petition, Mrs. Vas writes "In the autumn of 1944, the town crier announced that all able-bodies men must report for three days of labour; my husband promptly registered and I have not seen him since. I would urgently ask that this family man be immediately released as here at home we live in great need; I cannot provide for the family by myself and miss the father greatly."

First, I would like to analyse the petition submitted by the local commissariat, the communist party organisation, as well as the general population of Nagybereg (I sincerely doubt the last). This petition is dated February 2, 1945 and was forwarded, with the approval of the Commissariat of Transcarpathia (the KNT hereafter), to Colonel Tyulpanov, the assigned delegate to the KNT and the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front. Its further fate is unknown. In this application, they beg the Commissariat to intervene for the release of the Hungarian communists from Nagybereg who languish in the camps of Szolyva and Szambor. According to the list they submit, they ask the release of 44 communists of Nagybereg from Szolyva, as well as of 36 men from Szambor, a total of 80 men.

The Bereg Commissariat and Party summarised their request in six points, the gist of which was the following: as the adult males were all carried off, the village has no able men to do the work; there is no one to provide for their families; agriculture and the exploitation of the forests around Bereg have come to a standstill. The 5th item points out the lack of a good miller to work the mill grinding the wheat of five villages.

The petition also points out that Nagybereg is a predominantly Protestant Hungarian village, which explains why so many men were innocently carried off, regardless of whether they were communists or not.

The application of the Vari local Commissariat, dated January 27, 1945 is a typical case. It requests the release from the labour camp of Sztarij Szambor of Vari's one-time notary, Kerekes Dezso, who was born in Kiralyhelmec on October 27, 1900. The petition points out that the said person always acted in the best interests of the village's population and served justice; that he was never involved in politics or was ever member of any party; furthermore, he never spoke out against the Soviet Union or the Red Army and never stirred up any bad feelings against them. The petition ends by mentioning that Kerekes Dezso left behind his seriously ill wife who cannot do without her husband's everyday assistance. This fact is supported by a medical certificate which was joined to the petition.

Here is another request, # 86/1945, dated February 17, 1945 from the Commissariat of Csap. According to this, at the meting of February 10, the local commissariat resolved to ask for the release and returned home of all (mostly Hungarian) residents and railway workers from the Szolyva, Perecseny, Sztarij and Novi-Szambor and other forced labour camps. Csap supported this request with the following reasons: the Soviet occupation troops carried off to the camps, without investigation or questioning, the adult male population thus creating famine; there is no labour force to run the railroad, for local industry, to carry out the reconstruction of the ruined town.

Finally, I would like to bring up the petition dated March 5, 1945 of the "Mundusz" wood products industry's workers' committee. In this, they request the liberation of Valc Jeno plant engineer, head of the technological section, from the Szolyva forced labour camp where he was carried off by the Soviet occupation forces. In the application they point out that Valc Jeno's release would be most important because without his leadership production has stopped with the direct consequence that the workers do not receive their pay and their families go hungry.

My research is connected to the events that occurred in Bereg at the end of 1944. It is not directed towards individual fates but their general socio-historical consequences. In Hungary, their researcher is dr. Kun Jozsef, erstwhile head of the military archives, now retired, who was, by the way, born in Lonya. My other colleague in this research is Filep Janos, pensioner, who heads the Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg county's party archives; he is also from Lonya. Both survived the deportations.

Joined by them, I searched for archival material. I did not participate in the deportations, nor did I suffer from them. As a historian, I have to direct my studies towards finding the truth and the motives for these events.

In Vasarosnameny, we already published two volumes, entitled "Meeting with Bereg", "Meetings in Berg". I would like to assure the present audience that we do deal with these events, that we do not and shall. not allow them to he forgotten. We already published documents and lists or names in the "Szabolcs-Szatmari Szemle" (Review of Szabolcs-Szatmar)

While listening to my colleagues, I was wondering if they ever found a document which answers the petitioners. I found only one in the county archives of Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg. This reply came from the head of the temporary control commission in Debrecen. Puskin, ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary announces that the Soviet Union has no desire to keep the deported men; they will be returned eventually to their relatives. Thus, we have no firm answer to why this whole thing was started. Only by stringing together the facts of these historical events can we proceed to conclusions.

The deportees from Bereg outnumbered those from other villages. Their numbers reached 80-100-120, at least those that are known, whereas in other villages of neighbouring Szatmar only 8-10-14 men became victims of these events. As a historian, I would like to point out that these events occurred very rapidly. These villages were liberated at the end of October and the first announcements by the town criers had already been made by November 20th, that is, within a month.

This way of proceeding with the deportations was used not only in Bereg; it also spread to Nyiregyhaza and, what is more, to the Transdanubian region. Here I would like to put in an aside: the local women reacted to the rumour that all the men will he released if they became members of the Beregszasz communist party. The relatives tried to manage this by writing to the People's Council of Carpatho-Ukraine in Ungvar.

The facts indicate though that the post offices, wireless stations and village halls of Vasarosnameny, Tiszaszalka, Lonya, on the right bank of the Tisza , were occupied on August 26, 1945, by the Ukrainian military forces. Here, everyone was allowed to leave if he/she so desired, but no one was allowed IN. The Yalta agreement, reinstating the December 1937 borders, annulled this quasi-governmental regulation.

There was much anxiety in those times among the population of Csonka-Bereg (Rump-Bereg), on the other side of the border. Not so long ago, Sara Sandor, film director, produced a film entitled "Csonka-Bereg". This film started to open up that shell of fear that silenced the people for over four decades. I, in the name of the historians, maintain that you do not teach history through films; rather have the historians unveil the truth.

He who looks at the light but does not see the shadows will be blinded.

I was not among the deportees, had I been, I probably could not be speaking now. I was humbled differently. Many perished among my relatives, friends, classmates. Those who, came home told us about their struggle against inhuman conditions. Their memory is evoked by the memorial tablet that has been set up and wreathed in the hall of our meeting place. Schuber Gyula had it sent, from Budapest, in the name of the Alumni Association of Verke-Part (shores of the Verke creek) . Many of them died.

Of all the similar cases, I would like to mention that of Barta Gabor, who considered himself a good Hungarian. He stood proudly in the 4th row, ready to contribute his work to the reconstruction of all the damages. He was a cobbler, the father of two children; unfortunately one of his legs was shorter than the other; yet he undertook the march to Szolyva. He wanted to be no less then the other Hungarians. Another man had to leave too. He had buried his young wife in 1942, and was father of 4 children. All this is fairly clear to us.

Balazsi Laszlo, who compiled the lists, told us many details. He personally witnessed many an ordeal.

Birta Barna, one of our town's famous soccer players, marched to Szolyva, ill with tuberculosis. His health deteriorated within two weeks. Three days after he came home to Beregszasz he found eternal rest.

Forgon Gusztav, a hairdresser, had access to the barracks and saw with horror how they threw still living Hungarians on a pile and took them to the deep pit. He tried to remove one of his comrade's leggings and saw with revulsion the teeming maggots on the lately still living flesh.

The grief of the Imre family is heartbreaking. Among the siblings, the youngest, barely 20 years old, died first. When his older brother saw this, he followed him into death within ten days. The third brother tells us this.

The daughter of Ujvari Jozsef relates in harrowing details how her father came home:

"He died in the camp in Szolyva. My mother went to visit him; there she was told of her husband's, death. They took her down to the basement where she found her husband among the many dead. She received permission to bring his body home. They left at noon on December 24th and arrived at night, in 20 degree cold. He had died of typhoid fever so we could not bring him into the house. That was the end of three days of forced labour: we buried a strong, healthy, 40-year old man. He was the only dead from Beregszasz who came home like this."

A survivor friend of mine, whose name I am not allowed to mention because he is still afraid, writes the following:

"...On November 18, 1944, we were herded into the building of the local financial administration in Beregszasz. The next day we were marched to various camps. After eight days I arrived at a camp in the Volga region. Alas, from here only two or three men out of ten came home. The young men who left with me, Deak Gyorgy, Deak Gyorgy jr., Kari Bela, Kovacs Pal, Marosi Miklos, Regos Istvan, Sarkozi Jozsef, Szabo Sandor and Szendrei Jozsef, ...all perished. The teacher, Szabo Sandor, was with us too. Once be showed the Soviet commander his communist party card, as well as his stamped ID card, made out in Hungarian and Russian, proving that he was lieutenant in the Red Army. They tore up his cards right in front of his eyes, gave him a beating and sent him back into line. Thus, Szabo Sandor died in camp too..."

I was deeply disappointed in the population of Beregszasz when the question arose of compiling names and erecting a memorial tablet. So very many still dare not make a statement.

The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia