Hungarian government has declared 2015 the Memorial Year for Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union as political prisoners and forced labourers. The year was chosen as a tribute to mark the 70th anniversary of mass internments for forced labour in the Soviet Union that began in 1944-45. Memorial Committee, headed by Zoltán Balog, Minister of Cuman Capacities, was set up to oversee the successful realisation of this year’s Memorial Year for Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union.
During the Second World War, Soviet armed forces arriving in Hungary – the Red Army, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) and Soviet Military Intelligence (SZMERS) – detained and deported large numbers of civilians aged 13 to 76 through deception to work for years as forced labourers in the Soviet Union. People were told they were needed for “a little work” (malenkiy robot) or that they needed their documents checked and it would only take a few minutes. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were tricked in this way to prevent protests, resistance and attempts to escape. Victims included those interned and deported as political prisoners by the communists who arrived together with the soviet troops, thus facilitating their forced takeover of the country.
200-230 thousand civilians were deported for the current territory of Hungary for use as forced labourers. 30-40 percent of them died from starvation, deprivation, circumstances that didn’t provide for even the most basic human needs and forced hard labour, but some Hungarian towns and villages lost up to 60 percent of their internees. The Soviet authorities provided no official information regarding their deaths and in many cases there is still no information to this day concerning how their lives abroad ended.
The survivors came home physically and mentally broken and had to continue their lives with the stigma of having been detained by the Soviet authorities, while unable to speak about their experiences in the Soviet Union here at home. When they arrived back in Hungary they were threatened with being taken back to the gulag if they ever spoke about their experiences. The deportees, most of whom were released in 1947-48, soon realised that despite their best hopes it was not freedom that awaited them at home; a political system was being constructed in Hungary that they knew only too well from their period of internment in the Soviet Union.
Source: http://www.kormany.hu/en/ministry-of-human-resources/news/government-sets-up-memorial-committee
Hungarian government has declared 2015 the Memorial Year for Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union as political prisoners and forced labourers. The year was chosen as a tribute to mark the 70th anniversary of mass internments for forced labour in the Soviet Union that began in 1944-45. Memorial Committee, headed by Zoltán Balog, Minister of Cuman Capacities, was set up to oversee the successful realisation of this year’s Memorial Year for Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union.