The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia

E P I L O G U E

"In Transylvania, Transcarpathia, and Voyvodina tens of thousands of innocent men became victims of murderous violence; in Slovakia hundreds of thousands became persecuted simply because they were Hungarians'. So reads the proclamation issued in December 1990 by the Justistia Humana Hungariae to the world's Hungarians. On the wounds inflicted on the nation, the proclamation further emphasizes: "By bloody pogroms, death-camps, internment, and deportations the invading armies, the terrorist groups unleashed on an unarmed population, the re-established public administration of the successor states tried to take revenge on the innocent inhabitants or to alter radically the ethnic compositions of the occupied territories.

If we respond to our moral duty to determine and proclaim the truth, we must remember the victims of these mass murders, keep in mind the murdered, the interned, the persecuted and acknowledge those who survived the persecution.

We wish to heal the wounds, not to inflict new ones. For the crimes committed against Hungarians we blame the governments and the state authorities of that time, not the people.

We must uncover the wounds of the population living in Transcarpathia by feeling responsible for each other and by cooperating with the Hungarian social organizations, churches and scientific institutions living in Hungary, Transylvania, Transcarpathia , as well as in the northern and southern regions".

It was in this spirit that we started assembling our Book of Recollections. The bulk of this contains the lists of losses of the various settlements inhabited by Hungarians in Transcarpathia. We hope that in the near future the lists of the losses of the whole Carpathian basin, that is the regions cut off from the mother country, will also be finished. In this respect, several noteworthy research works have already been published, such as Stark Tamas's book entitled "The Human Losses of Hungary in W.W.II". Before 1989, the archivists if the eastern-Hungary region started the collection of material concerning the internment of Hungarians. In particular, the historian, Dr. Gyarmathy Zsigmond processed the material on the deported victims of the regions of Csonka-Bereg and Szatmar. According to his reckoning, the soldiers of the NVKD carried off to Szolyva about 1200 men from this region. Dr. Fazekas Arpad of Nyiregyhaza, published his book of recollections entitled "The Deported, Nyiregyhaza, 1944-1989" in the newspaper "Hatar-Szel" (Borderline). His data shows that more than 2000 men were taken to the Soviet GULAGs; they met their fate on November 2, 1944. Producer Sara Sandor's film, "Csonka-Bereg", on the fearful days of deportations of that November, was shown in the autumn of 1988. The film gives voice to many survivors of a corner of the Tisza region who speak of their deportations for the first time. Aside from the Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg district, many men and women were taken to reconstruction work from other parts of Hungary also, particularly women with German-sounding names.

In neighbouring Slovakia - estimates Molnar Imre and Janics Kalman - on the basis of the government program of Kassa over 100 thousand families were affected by the deportations, the humiliations inflicted by the Czech-Slovak nationalists. All this is buttressed by facts as presented at the Meeting of those injured by government action of Kassa that the Rakoczi Association organized in Budapest on February 29,1992. The troops of the NKVD took their share in decimating the number of local Hungarian men of draft age. We learn of this from Dobos Ferenc's essay, "Magyarok a tortenelem senkifoldjen" ("Hungarians on History's no-man's-land") where he proves with facts how the men collected in Bodrogkoz, and the region of Ung in eastern Slovakia, were sent to "malenykij robot". The material he collected encompasses 51 settlements in the vicinity of Nagykapos, in the Ung region. He shows that between December 1 and 23, 1944, 2,444 men were deported to the interior of the Soviet Union: of these, 876 perished there.

These are not the final numbers; the research continues.

Csatari Daniel, in his book "Forgoszelben Magyar-Roman viszony 1940-1945" (In the Whirlwind: Hungarian Romanian relations 1940-1945") (1968), illustrates the slaughter of Hungarians in Romania. In some northern Transylvanian settlements, the Romanian right-wing volunteer units, thirsting for vengeance, massacred thousands on the spot or deported masses of them to internment camps.

It is striking that in the regions mentioned, the collecting activity of the NKVD and SZMERS troops took place more or less at the same time. Only minor differences in the manner and intensity are noticeable in these actions when compared to those occurring in Hungarian settlements in Transcarpathia and other neighbouring territories. The people on the lists were herded at gun-point into the Szolyva, Perecseny or other concentration camps, whence they were marched or transported by cattle-cars to other GULAG camps of the Soviet Union. The losses of the Hungarian-inhabited villages were roughly the same: Every second or third man fell victim to hunger or cold. Studying the question of the Hungarian and German deportations, historians nowadays are wondering whether a border adjustment to the Tisza or beyond, or the annexation to Karpatszka Ukraine of the Slovakian region of Nagykapos, the Bodrogkoz and the Halmi district of Romania were considered by the administration. It is a fact that in September 1945 all the villages in Bereg County located on the right bank of the Tisza were occupied for two weeks by the Ukrainian troops. Dr. Gyarmathy Zsigmond writes: "During those two weeks, they occupied 21 villages' postal and administrative offices, the equipment and buildings of the border guards of the frontiers as drawn by the Trianon peace-treaty, and disarmed the police."

There is only one answer to the above question. The troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front occupying Transcarpathia did, indeed, want to expand the Soviet empire. Did they do this on the suggestion of Stalin and his military leaders? After all, the annexation of Transcarpathia already gave them an important bridgehead towards Western Europe. We also know that in 1944-45, some overzealous communist functionaries redrew Transcarpathia's map. Some variations of these can be found in the archives of the NKVD. One of the motives of the internment's was their fear of a general Hungarian uprising in the back country. The NKVD's actions to acquire new territory were brought to a halt by some high government-level instructions which validated the 1937 frontiers set by the Yalta agreement.

Opening up the historical wounds of the Hungarians, brings to light the differences in the fate of the deported of the mother country, Transcarpathia, and Slovakia, from those who were persecuted and tortured to death in Romania, as well as those who were slaughtered in Voyvodina. In these regions the victors enacted a peculiar scenario for decimating the Hungarians. This is supported by Matuska Marton's book, "A megtorlas napjai. Ahogy az Emlekezet megorizte" ("Days of Reprisals: As they live in Memory") in which he commemorates the over 40 thousand Hungarians of Voyvodina killed by Tito's partisans.

None of the books and essays published since 1989 on this recording of our dead is motivated by feelings of revenge but of respect. It is important to speak out these cruel historical truths because it serves the common cleansing process for the peoples of eastern and central Europe. Thus, every book of recollections, from whatever side, may become, in the near future, the basis of mutual reconciliation.

Our book of recollections contains the truths, unspoken so far, the collapse of taboos. We do not wish to detail the circumstances of the internment's of 1944, as these can be found in the published documents, speeches, recollections and archival material.

Until 1990, we could find no documents which would have given a clear picture of the life of those deported to the camps or could have supported the eye-witness accounts of the surviving ex-prisoners. At first, oral recollections were rare too. We received negative or no replies to our requests sent to the various archives in the country. Still, we were confident of our success to bring out the truth, at least partially.

Of course, we still cannot obtain those secret documents that would unequivocally prove the crimes committed against Transcarpathia's Hungarian and German nationals.

Col. Alekszej Korszun, member of the Territorial Rehabilitation Commission and former territorial deputy of the KGB, managed to secure the first lists of names from the highly confidential Moscow archives. This enabled us to piece together the mosaic of the deportations, its antecedents and its consequences.

As is well known on November 13,1944 the first military order was issued for the cleansing of the back-country and for the deportations of the soldiers who deserted the Hungarian army, as well as of the draft-age men. Many people asked: who is personally responsible for the deportation of several tens of thousands of men?

Among the documents found so far is the Resolution #0036 of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front which ordered the collection and internment of Hungarian and German men. The commander of the front was General Petrov, who presumably did not act on his own initiative, but on instructions from Stalin and Beria. Sooner or later the relevant documents will also appear. The highest levels of political and military leadership also played a role on the execution of this cruel action: N. Khrushchov, General Szerov, commander of the SZMERS among others.

It is to be noted that the internment's were fully approved by the local communist party leaders and functionaries(Turjanica, Andrasko, stb.)

Col. Korszun managed to obtain the photocopy of the order signed on December 17, 1944 by Brigadier-General Fagyejev, commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front's NKVD troops detailed to secure this territory. This document summarizes the results of the first month's "cleansing": "They collected 154 enemy officers (of which 132 were Hungarians), 7,729 soldiers (7,669 Hungarians), 7,093 draft-age men (7,025 Hungarians). Besides those that are listed, they also arrested 6,319 soldiers and officers, 1,179 draft-age civilian men, as well as 9 gendarmes and policemen." The result of the first month's cleansing: from Transcarpathia's territory, a total of 22,951 men were interned in concentration camps. The report closes with the following sentence: "The cleansing continues". The civilians, who were not arrested as military, were recorded as "internees".

From another report we learn that the NKVD troops under the leadership of Fagyejev, started a secondary action: - with the help of the local commissars and partisans, of rounding up the German men between the ages of 18 and 50, as well as later women also, from the districts of Szolyva, Munkacs, Ilosva, Nagyszolos, Raho and Huszt. As a result, 292 people were interned and taken to POW camps. According to the reports that were obtained, the number of internees from Transcarpathia can be estimated at between 25 and 30 thousand. The reports of later dates are still being searched for; perhaps we shall have a clearer picture of the results of the internment's of January-February 1945.

As our book of recollections contains many more details, we do not wish to talk further about the concentration camp in Szolyva, erected on the site of a former Hungarian military barracks. However, we find it necessary to mention that the Szolyva concentration camp, together with six others, was a part of the Sztarij Szambor system. The official name of the camp at Szolyva was SZPV-2, or concentration point #2 for POWs (in Russian: Szbornij Punkt Vojennoplennih). Its first commander is assumed to have been Col. Jermilov. About 12 thousand prisoners were incarcerated in his barracks at the same time. From there , they were sent in large groups to the various GULAGs of the Soviet Union.

The material found in the archives proves that most of the prisoners perished in Szolyva. Due to an epidemic of typhoid fever that broke out in December, hundreds of men died daily. The process was accelerated by the fact that in the middle of winter the prisoners were kept in unheated barracks, without shoes or warm clothing, thus condemned to death by cold and hunger also. From this death camp, even the sickest prisoners were sent without food for days on end, hastening the demise of the weakened prisoners. Similar inhumane conditions were found in other camps too.

Until January 30, 1945, thousands of the internees' relatives were besieging the local administrative leadership and the military commanders. They were all demanding the release of the men.

In a report in the Moscow archives, we find that Colonel-general Menlisz, Stalin's well-known accomplice and member of the 4th Ukrainian Front's military council, was the first to question the causes of the mass deaths among the internees. As a result of his inquiry, Mehlisz signed a resolution which made the release of the very ill possible. Thus, between January 20 and 30 several hundred weak or ill prisoners were transported back home. We do not know of any further acts of such mercy. In the Beregszasz archives, there are over 100 documents which list by name those internees that the local administration tried to save, underscoring their communist past. We can create a fairly accurate picture of the fate of the internees in POW camps or residing in "unknown places" from the lists which were sent in by each village upon the request circulated by the Social Department of the Peoples Council of Transcarpathia. The leaders of the villages, the party secretaries were the compilers and signers of these reports coming from the villages inhabited by Hungarians, between July 1 and 7, 1945 about 30 thousand draft-age men were held in unknown places. The lists prepared by the NKVD are kept in the Moscow archives.

We can draw the conclusion from the material available so far that the majority of the internees did not return home: they could not survive the inhumane treatment. The material in the Moscow archives gives us a glimpse into the hospital records of other camps too. So far, only the files of the men from Badalo were found. It was thanks to Col. Korszun that we received proof of the death of 23 men from Badalo all come from the camp hospitals of Boriszov, Territory of Minsk, or the Doneck and Harkov regions. These records show the death and burial of the individual. Thus, Biro Albert died at the age of 30, Biro Bela at the age of 40, as a consequence of the ordeals they suffered.

To cite some concrete examples: Biro Elek, born in 1917, camp number 401, hospital number 1673, Boriszovo. He became ill on July 5, 1945. Entered the hospital on July 27. He died at 7 A.M. on August 2nd. Diagnosis: Intestinal infection and hemorrhage. He was buried in the cemetery of the prison hospital #1673. Similar data emerge from the hospital record of Nagy Elek who died of dystrophy of the third degree and fatal weakness. His death certificate shows that he was buried in the 12th plot, 20th parcel of the 3rd Boriszovo cemetery.

We find these cold-blooded entries on every hospital record, hiding the tragic fate of a man whose only sin was to have been born Hungarian.

In our Book of Recollection, we published the lists of losses of 115 settlements inhabited by Hungarians. Of these 37 are in the District of Beregszasz 27 in the District of Nagyszolos, 20 in that of Ungvar, 8 in Munkacs, as well as 13 located in the Upper Tisza Region.

We do not claim a complete record; we chose those villages where the KMKS~ had established a chapter facilitating the compilation of data and where the survivors and the relatives came forward in response to our request. We did not endeavour to analyze all the settlements of Transcarpathia as, in the past decades, many Hungarian families moved away from their villages or became assimilated.This is particularly true for those who felt the weight of the stalinist reprisals but now live scattered about, in a diaspora. Nor are the lists of the losses of the villages that are included complete, as few of the internees are still alive or they do not have relatives.

According to our data, the total number of those who were carried away varies from village to village. For example, from Aknaszlatina 690, from Dercen 402, from Mezovari 340, from Eszeny 313, from Csongor 300, from Visk 286, and from Batyu 270 civilian men were interned. The number of deaths in camps is astoundingly high. For instance, from Aknaszlatina 172, from Mezovari 169, from Muzsaly 129, from Csongor 101, from Eszeny 91, from Visk 95, and from Barkaszd 86 able-bodied men perished. Fewer than that died in both World Wars from the villages listed. As S. Benedek Andras puts it: "At the end of the war, so many Hungarian and German men and women were carried off to POW camps that elsewhere it would have wiped out communities with demographic decline as its conequence. But here, we see a strengthening, an increase in the population. The Hungarians are a strong and viable race here in Transcarpathia."

After three years of research work, we come to the conclusion that we shall not be able to come up with a complete list in the near future. But as the compilation of the camp lists continues, we get a clearer picture thanks to the activists of the local chapters of the KMKSZ. This was also helped along by the fact that Hungary extended the right to compensation to territories beyond its borders. Unfortunately, nobody cares to count up the victims in those villages where no chapter of he KMKSZ was established. It must be said though that in some the number of Hungarians is negligible. However, we also know of some settlements, such as Galocs, where, for some reason, no Hungarian men were deported.

We finished the manuscript of this collection at the end of December 1992. In collecting its material and compiling the camp lists, of greatest help to us were the presidents and activists of the oft-mentioned KMKSZ; some leaders of the village councils; as well as the survivors and relatives of the victims. We thank them all.

Our special thanks go to Foltin Dezso, deputy director of the State Archives of the District of Beregszasz, and to his colleagues who put the archival material at our disposal.

For their zeal in this noble cause, we owe a debt of gratitude to Alekszej Korszun, retired colonel, Molnar Bertalan, president of the Territorial Rehabilitation Commission, and to all those to whom we can no longer express our personal gratitude for their invaluable contribution, who can no longer gaze upon this Book of Recollections: Varadi-Sternberg Janos, Fedak Laszlo, Bendasz Istvan, Kovacs Imre Zoltan.

We also thank the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education for making the publication of this Book of Recollections possible.

We still accept with thanks any remarks, new additions to our Book of Recollections or any verification of its contents.

Address: 294018 Ungvar, Tyihaja (Gotwald) u. 15/74.

Dupka Gyorgy.

The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia