The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia

When I talked to the elderly men who went through the hell of Stalinist forced labour camps, but returned to their families. I became acquainted with people whose fate was sad and tragic. For years, they kept silent, they had to keep immediate families: their wives, their brothers and sisters. And how many did not come back - young ones, 18-year olds! Some collapsed already during the march and were left by the roadside, unburied. The stronger ones marched on; then they were transported, packed into freight cars.

What was his crime, that father of nine children from Nagyszolos, whom as breadwinner, was mobilised by neither the Czech nor the Hungarian army? He could stay home. But now he had to leave for "three days of work". He appealed in vain, referring to his children. He never returned. Until now, who could raise their voices in protest, for him and the other victims? Not even the bells could toll. In our region, it is a centuries-old custom to accompany the dead to their graves by the ringing of bells. I feel that all the people mentioned during this meeting are our own unburied dead.

We take on a difficult, almost impossible task when we try to remember, after all these years, those who were carried off for three days of labour in 1944. Aren't we opening up old, long-healed wounds? Nowadays, there are daily revelations of history's so-called blank spaces, which were mostly "dark", and we cannot keep silent about them any more. There are some people who do not know the past and think that it was as they are told.

I was shocked to read in the October 10, 1989 issue of the district newspaper of Nagyszolos, the "Kommunizmus Zaszlaja"(banner of Communism), the declaration of Klavgyija Zabroda. According to this vice-president of the district council of the veterans of war labour "...there are people who spread slanderous rumours saying that in 1944, men of Hungarian nationality were deported. Such alarming tales only serve to incite hostility; what is more, hostility based on nationality."

The hundreds of victims who died innocently - only in the district of Nagyszolos - and their families are witnesses to the fact that this was the shattering reality and not only "alarming tales". To this day, there are some who know nothing about these events, or just do not want to know about them.

The decree aiming expressly at Hungarians is an indisputable fact. What is more, the Protestants and Roman Catholics were specially targeted. From Tekehaza, for instance, no one was taken who professed to be of the Uniate faith.

As soon as the soviet troops entered Nagyszolos, numerous inhabitants participated in repairing the bridge across the Tisza that had been destroyed. They had been working there for several days when, in the middle of November, the order came for "three days of labour". The men were gathered in the county hall and were marched out from there in groups of a hundred to Tiszaujlak. The people from the neighbouring villages were also collected there. Sentries guarded the hall and no one was allowed to leave unless ordered out with his group. Already in Ujlak, many had their more valuable possessions taken from them, then marched on to Szolyva. From there they were transported to various points of the country to camps they shared with Hungarian, Romanian, and German POWs. Their treatment varied from camp; to camp. One survivor, Bak Endre, remembers being among the lucky ones.

He was in the medical corps of the Hungarian army, driving a horse-drawn ambulance. During retreat, his unit happened to cross Nagyszolos. He asked for leave to visit his family. When he was ready to rejoin his unit, it had already left town. Since he was left behind, he did not follow the army but stayed home with his family. For a week he went to work on the bridge over the Tisza. One evening armed civilians came to take him to the county hall. From Ujlak he got to Szolyva where he spent a month and a half logging in the forest. As the barracks were so crowded that all you could do was sit, many people fell ill already here. Some of the feeble and elderly were let go. His group was lined up and marched to Szambor. They marched during the day; at night, they halted at the edge of a village to rest a little, standing in the snow leaning against one another. Those who passed out were left by the roadside. They only received a bit of dry bread to take them to Szambor. It was mostly the young who dropped out of line. Thus, from Nagyszolos, died at 18 Komaromi Istvan, Konya Istvan, Mezei Zoltan, Madi Zsigmond.

They spent three weeks in Szambor where they even got warm food; then they were taken to Donbasz, Makijevka. They selected the strongest for work, the feeble ones were kept in the camp. Many of them died, such as Kovacs Imre, Vince Endre, Nagy Janos, all of them residents of Nagyszolos. Bak Endre spent seven months in the camp. One day he ate a raw cabbage leaf that had fallen off a wagon and he became ill. A German doctor, who was a prisoner himself, cured him more or less. They started to release the ill and weak ones, so he got into a "transport". Accompanied by an officer, they were brought home through Raho and Szlatina. They received dried fish, bread, and a barrel of water for the trip.

Unfortunately, we still cannot give an exact accounting of all the deceased from Nagyszolos.

Kocsi Mihaly, resident of Tekehaza was taken to Szolyva too. They were taken by train to Boriszov where he spent three years and 34 days in camp. They were to move 8 cubic meters of earth daily, two men to a wheelbarrow. One was the "horse" that pulled, the other the "donkey" that pushed, remembers Kocsi Mihaly with a bitter smile. He returned in 1947. He says that many men from Verboc were incarcerated in camps in the Caucasus.

Many people still keep asking themselves why they had to suffer so much, since they did not look upon the soviet army as the enemy, they did not flee before it, as many of the wealthy folk did. After all, they were told that the working people have nothing to fear...

I think that there is no rational explanation for Stalinist despotism - for any despotism. But we must speak of it so that these things should never happen again.

The Stalinist terror did not pick its victims in forced labour camps only. Those injured in the show-trials and the deportations of the kulaks are also attributable to the despotism of this era.

My uncle, Bodnar Tibor, does not know to this day why he had to spend ten years in prison. He was assistant hairdresser and had never been a soldier in his life. A man called Mandi Jozsef denounced him to the Ukrainian military tribunal. Accusing him of supporting the old regime.

I quote from the letter Majoros Jozsef sent me;"...At my workplace I was told that everybody had to attend a meeting. So they gave me a piece of paper that I was to take to the offices of the local winery. There was a captain there and as soon as I entered he started raining blows on me. He wanted me to confess something that I never did. Finally several people were beating me; they pulled out 90% of my hair. They wanted me to admit that the twenty people whom conspiracy..."

Mate Jolan described how she, like Majoros was denounced by K. Gyorgy resident of Vari. At that time, the whole village feared him. With her 70-year old grandmother and her 9-month old sibling, she was put into a room and the door was nailed shut so that they starved. The then 13-year old Mate Jolan escaped through the window.

We feel it necessary and important that all this material be worked up so that the guilty parties can be brought o account.

*he died with tragic suddenness on October 24, 1990.

From November 1, 1944, the agents of the NKVD recruited men, mostly from Palanka, Varalja, Posahaza, Ujfalu and Munkacs, to repair the Munkacs airport. Those working there were mainly Hungarians and Germans.

In early November, a proclamation appeared ordering all men between the ages of 18 and 50 to report to the Rakoczi-Manor for three days of public works. Masses of unsuspecting people assembled, taking the proclamation literally. A big crowd gathered in front of the manor as relatives and friends accompanied their loved ones. The number of people kept growing. On that day, they separated the Hungarians and the Germans from the other nationalities and drove them to the manor; there were about thirty men. Many received summonses by name for November 18; others were carried off from their workplace, others during the night.

On Saturday, November 18. The men gathered at the manor where they were listed. Those who claimed to be Ruthenian or Slovak were sent home. No one else was allowed to leave the manor; they spent the night in the cellar. There was no medical check-up.

In the morning of the 19th: line up; they departed in a long column marching along the right bank of the Latorca, then along the creek Viznice. Those who fell behind were urged on with kicks and those who had no strength left to continue marching or stepped out of line were shot on the spot. They drank from the Latorca, later from puddles. They spent the night of November 19-20 in the big Szolyva concentration camp, whence they directed people to various locations. They had one option: those who wanted to join the Czech legion could do so, but they had to give proof of a minimal knowledge of the Czech language: recitation of the Czech national anthem or some prayers was the standard. For one group, the first station after Szolyva was Grabovnica where they spent the night in a meadow. On the night of November 20-21, they had already reached Vezerszallas ; again they slept in the fields. Sleet was falling, everything got soaked through, the clothes froze on them by morning. Those who had some tried to make shelter out of blankets. The campground was surrounded by soldiers. Many people escaped during the March. To replace them and to make up the complement, they just caught anyone they met on the road. The soldiers seized all good clothing and boots. The next stops: Tukolyka (sawmill), Turka (ruined houses) Szt. Szambor (stables), Novi Szambor (camp). The March took eight days. Those who were ill, stayed there, the rest were loaded into freight cars. They crowded as many as a hundred men in one car. They were travelling for seven days, arriving in Orsa (Belorussia, district of Vityebszk) on December 10th.

On December 13, 1944, started the ordeal of the residents of Posahaza. Their registration point was the courtyard of the corner building next to the church. Long lines of men started out from Posahaza, Varalja and Palanka toward the Rakoczi manor. But they were not listed here, only in Szolyva. They took 23 men from Posahaza at that time. Those that were ill stayed there, but the healthy ones were taken farther, through Szanok. They left by train for S. Szambor on February 16, arriving on the 21st, then continued on foot to N. Szambor. From there, they travelled 13 days by train, through the Perm to Krasznokamszk in the Urals, in the region named after Molotov. Here they worked with POWs in a paper mill.

At the end of December 1944, they started taking women from 25 to 27. They had to report to the village hall. Afterwards they were allowed to go home but were told to come back on the 29th, ready to travel. They were also told that should they want to hide, their parents would be deported.

On December 30th, they slept in the Rakoczi-Manor; others in the former teachers' college and still others spent the night in the Kohner manor. On January 1, 1945, they were walked through town to the station. They were herded into open freight cars, in groups of 200-250. About 40-50 of these women came from Posahaza, Palanka or Nagyret. They were all young - between 18 and 30. Only those were spared who had babies under one year. "Children over one can already be brought up by grandmothers" - they said. The case of the two militiamen is noteworthy: they had to take their own wife and sisters to the collection point. The women were taken to Volov where the concentration camp for Transcarpathian women was located. Some were housed in an unheated, windowless school others were to clean up wagons used to transport horses but there, at least, they were enclosed and could heat. They tarried here for a week. They were not given any food nor water. Later, they travelled for two weeks. In Sztrij, they received some rice and bread. They stopped in Lemberg where they were given inedible bread. Some threw it out but later regretted this rash gesture. They moved mostly at night, attached to various trains. In Dnyepropetrovszk they were disinfected and even received some hot soup. They continued on to Stalino and arrived at their final destination - Gorlovka - at the end of January.

Later, they took whole families. A case in point: one evening they went to a family's home accusing them of being kulaks. They were all deported: a young women, her husband, two children, the mother and sister-in-law. They departed in March 1946, arriving at a settlement 150 km. from Tyumeny in April. They continued on foot through a swamp; whoever fell in had to march on wet until the clothes dried. They were housed in barracks in Szidnaj, 14-20 families per barrack. There were Swabians there, also Moldavians, Germans from the Volga region. Some Russians too, but they were kept apart. There was great hunger. Some died of starvation, some went insane. People ate rats.

In the Ungvar prison after November 1944, many people were innocently convicted. They even brought some prisoners had already signed were doctored with enough damning evidence to justify the death penalty. Several prisoners, had already signed were doctored with enough damning evidence to justify the death penalty. Several prisoners, shortly before their jail terms expired, were reassigned to forced labour camps in the various regions of the Soviet Union. In vain did their punishment come to an end, they did not receive the necessary papers to return home. One prisoner, for instance, 2 months before the expiration of his sentence, was sent to Norilszk where he spent five more years in exile.

These are just a few examples of the fatal ordeal of Transcarpathians whose only crime was to have been born Hungarian or German. I did not mean to go into details about these horrors.

It is no accident that the deportations of Hungarians coincided with the timing of Transcarpathia's annexation (joining? or, as it is officially called "reunification"?) to the Ukraine. Can we speak of the manifestation of public will just when the Hungarian-speaking population was so crassly deprived of expressing its views through the deportations?

I have not only statistical data from every village in my district, but also written testimonials and tape recorded recollections.

It concerns seven villages: Dercen, Fornos, Izsnyete, Barkaszo, Szernye, Csongor and Beregrakos. Izsnyete and Rakos have inhabitants of mixed origins, Barkaszo partly also; but Dercen, Fornos, Szernye and Csongor are pure Hungarian villages. These are all situated on the ethnic border. I must say that the inhabitants of the lathers were treated with more cruelty than was normal. Later, also, the population was under greater pressure. Lack of time compels couple of cases from Dercen which I, myself, have experienced.

Men were deported up to age 50 in other villages; from Dercen it was up to 55 and from Csongor up to 60. What is more, from Dercen they took 19 innocent men as political prisoners without judicial inquiry or a trial. Among them were a 67-year old man, a 50-year old mother and six 16-year old boys. They returned after two, two-and-a-half and tree years-whoever did come back. These people were taken on January 27, 1945, not in November.

I believe that few among us have never heard of Uszta Gyula. He used to live in Dercen; now he lives in retirement, in Hungary. On that day, fateful for so many Hungarians, when the drums called the population to a village meeting, there appeared Uszta Gyula, one of the leaders of the partisan groups, on a white horse like Horthy and gave a fulminating speech. He spoke of the long-awaited liberation, of the coming life of freedom, of our happy future. He ended his speech with the, by now well-known lie, of exhorting the population to join the "three days of labour" to repair the damages caused by the savage fascists. (He may not have known then that he was lying). Everybody knows how it all ended. What few people know, however, is that after his speech, he got back on his horse and didn't stop until Budapest. There, he was promoted to major, then brigadier-general and finally deputy secretary of defence. I am sure that he had no time to think of his village.

To finish, a shameful personal fact. By accident, my brother had his high school diploma with him; he had no way of leaving it at home. When they were searched, the guard found it and ripping it to pieces, he threw it into the mud in full view of my father and all the other prisoners. While I am at it, let me tell you that, of my family, my father and two brothers were among the deported. My father was 51 years old, one of my brothers 23 and the other 16.

Is it any wonder then that even after 45 years our hearts are still bleeding?

The Lonyay-manor in Batyu was the collecting centre for the deportations. My informants: Bence Bela, Jedliszki Ferenc, Nyeste Ferenc, Suto Bela.

The first group started out from the Lonyay-manor on November 18, 1944. The 80-year old Bence Bela remembers it thus:

There were about 2000 men here from the villages of Szernye, Batyu, Botrany, Bakos, Ujbatyu, Szaloka, Lonya. They all gathered the day before in the Lonyay manor. All these people volunteered for three days of labour. Not knowing what to do, some went home for the night." Markus Ilonka remembers that someone came from Ungvar and spoke from the manor's balcony asking for help in reconstructing the tunnel. This was announced a few days earlier, by the town crier. The men reported for work, saying that life must begin anew. The men thought, three days is nothing, they could stand even three weeks. There were five communists in the departing group; they wanted to set a good example and even took their party cards with them. When they found out that they were tricked, they tried to show their cards but no one was listening. Mothers, wives, girl-friends accompanied the men across the Eger fields as far as the railroad tracks. They were all sobbing, as if they knew that some of the men will never return.

Here is a letter that Szabo Andras wrote to his parents, still from Barkaszo:

" I am trying to send my letter from Barkaszo, so as to reassure you. Don't worry; already the first transport started out well. At registration they tried to keep me apart; I think I'll be a scribe wherever we go. Our next destination is Munkacs. I won't do anything foolish. Father must not worry, it is bad for his health. I wish him a quick recovery. As soon as it becomes possible, he must take Menyus to the hospital in Munkacs. And Menyus must not go to camp, he should go to school. All the men from Batyu are here in Barkaszo. I hope my letter finds you all in good health. And give thanks to the person who takes it and gives it to you. I send lots of kisses to father, mother, Emi, my brother Menyus and everybody.

With love, Bandi
Barkaszo, November 18, 1944.

Szabo Andras is still full of confidence. The legend of the three days of labour still endures. After all, only two mounted soldiers are guarding them. In Szolyva, they are housed in the barracks of the border guards. In this group, 49 men from Batyu are marching towards the death-camp. Here they find barbed wire and young thugs, armed with sticks, are guarding the buildings. During the night, they hear machine-gun fire; rumours are going around that anybody who tries to escape will be shot. Here, it finally dawns on them that they were duped.

Nyeste Ferenc, who was prisoner in the Sverdlovsk region, also remembers November 1944:

They were working on the railroad. Some 3 to 4 thousand men were incarcerated there. Then they were taken farther; there, they encountered some 500 Hungarian Jews. They released the Romanians from this camp. Conditions were a little better in this camp; there were fewer deaths. Their main job was logging. Some lucky ones got to the kolhoz to work, but the local population looked at them askance. Since there was no blacksmith in the village, Nyeste Ferenc volunteered to do the job. Two of them worked here. They fixed a few things for the people and received food in exchange.

In the summer of 1946, they were allowed to write to their relatives or families. Nights Ferenc was sorry he never wrote a letter. All of a sudden, they started to distribute clothing in the camp; it was not new but at least it was not torn. The men received down jackets, padded pants and boots and were told that they are going home. They filled out the necessary paperwork for them; they were given food to last them 10 days: salt fish, bread and two tins. That was all. Accompanied by one officer, they were walked to the station, then put on a train in Sverdlovsk they were given regular train tickets. They got as far as Lemberg where, for the first time, they had a warm meal. But how to continue? As far as they knew, Transcarpathia belonged to Czechoslovakia. Someone told them, when asked, that the border was at Csap. Nights Ferenc reached home on October 6, 1946. That is when he found out that Transcarpathia was annexed to the Ukraine.

The participants of this Memorial Conference issue a call to all Hungarians and non-Hungarians alike to keep in memory the innocent victims of Stalinism. Let them do all in their power that the past should not be repeated, that the spread of democracy should banish forever all thoughts of reprisals and of fear.

1.-Let us urge the leaders of this territory to serve justice to the deportees. By collective rehabilitation and by denouncing the perpetrators by name, let them erect a suitable memorial to those who perished far from home and to the survivors who returned, maimed in body and soul.

2.-The local chapters of the KMKSZ (Hungarian Cultural Association of Transcarpathia), together with the village and district authorities, should prepare the list of all those deported in the autumn of 1944 for "three days of labour". When completed, they should give them, for appropriate action, to the Rehabilitation Committee of the District Council.

3.-The KMKSZ should gather the survivors into groups or circles so that the members of these can, with their recollections, effectively assist the Rehabilitation Committee in its work and in the redressing of historic justice.

4.-From November 18 to the 26, 1989, let us hold a week of mourning, in the course of which let us erect memorial tombstones and tablets, hold meetings of sorrow for the victims, meetings of recollections. Let all the bells toll at 13 o'clock on November 26. At 18 o'clock, let us place lighted candles in the windows in memory of the victims of Stalinist despotism. We appeal to the Hungarians of the world to join us in quiet meetings of recollection.

5.-The KMKSZ should publish, in book form, the material of this conference.

The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia