The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia

A P P E N D I X

A MEMORIAL CONFERENCE
OF THE
HUNGARIAN CULTURAL ASSOCIATION OF TRANSCARPATHIA
(KMKSZ)

TRANSCARPATHIAN VICTIMS OF STALINISM

Beregszasz, November 18, 1989

The Hungarian cultural Association of Transcarpathia (KMKSZ) has organised a scientific conference in memory of those Hungarian or German men who were carried off, without indictment or trial, beginning on November 18, 1944, from Transcarpathia and the villages of the Csonka-Bereg, Felso-Bodrogkoz and Ung regions.

At the memorial meetings, survivors and witnesses, historians and writers spoke of documents that can be found, of the media reaction to the deportations, of the conditions and consequences of the internment of the male population, as well as of the activities directed towards rehabilitation undertaken by the labour committee of the regional council of Transcarpathia. At the same time, the meetings represent the start of a series of recollections, during which memorial plaques and monuments are erected and a symbolic funeral is held in the cemetery of Beregszasz. Thus, they also mean saying good-bye to fathers, brothers, friends who lie in unmarked graves.

On November 26, at one o'clock in the afternoon the church bells rang throughout Transcarpathia, as well as in Csonka-Bereg in Hungary, where thousands of victims are mourned also. The Hungarian cultural Association of Transcarpathia asked that Hungarians all over the world join them in remembering the victims of Stalinism.

Fodo Sandor: president of the KMKSZ (Ungvar)

Szabo Laszlo: secretary of the Hungarian World Federation Budapest

Tenke Sandor: editor of the journal "Confessio" professor of theology, Budapest

Pozsgay Imre: minister of state, Republic of Hungary; (letter)

Szollosi Tibor: member of the board of directors of the KMKSZ, Doctor of Medicine, Tecso

Dalmay Arpad: member of the board of directors of the KMKSZ, president of the Beregszasz chapter

Nagy Jeno: survivor, retired teacher, Ungvar

Zseliczky Bela: professor, Doctor of History, Moscow; he was not present but sent the text of his speech

Alekszej Korszun: colonel, deputy director of the regional department for Transcarpathia of the Committee for the National Security of the USSR, member of the regional committee for rehabilitation

Dupka Gyorgy: local historian, managing secretary of the KMKSZ Ungvar

Csatary Gyorgy: employee of the Transcarpathian Regional State Archives, Beregszasz

Barat Jozsef: employee of the Transcarpathian Regional State Archives, Mezokaszony

Dr. Gyarmathy Zsigmond: archivist, local historian, Nyiregyhaza

Kerenyi Gyula : head of the Association of Alumni of Verke-Part

Dr. Veres Lajos: jurist, Piliscsaba

Sari Jozsef: Sr. survivor, board member of the KMKSZ

Lusztig Karoly: journalist, Ungvar

Omeljan Dovhanics: historian, lecturer, Ungvar

Dr. Fazekas Arpad: local. historian, physician, Ny[[Atilde]]regyhaza

Balla Gyula: literary historian, chief collaborator of the Institute of Hungarian Studies, Budapest

Dr. Botlik Jozsef: literary historian, Budapest

Zombory Istvan: board member of the KMKSZ, Aknaszlatina

Nagy Zoltan Mihaly, writer, Csonkapapi.

Keresztyen Balazs: local historian, Nagyszollos

Kovacs Imre Zoltan: vice-president of' the Beregszasz regional chapter-of the KMKSZ, Beregszasz.

Gulacsi Geza: member of the presidium of the KMKSZ, Munkacs; (for-lack of time, his speech had to be omitted but he sent its text to the secretariat)

Fodor Ferenc: teacher, Dercen; (for lack of time, his speech had to be omitted, but he sent its text to the secretariat)

Bagu Balazs: teacher, Batyu; (for-lack of time, his commentary had to he omitted, but he sent its text to the secretariat.

We give a sampling of the abridged and edited speeches and commentaries that were presented on November 18, 1989, as well as of those that were sent to us.

Editor of the texts: Buleczane Rethy Rozalia

Dear survivors! Dear relatives! Honoured guests from Hungary and Transcarpathia!

At this historic moment, allow me to greet you with respect and joy in the name of the Hungarian Cultural Association of Transcarpathia (KMKSZ) and to thank you for your presence among us. This event is truly historic because, just one year ago, it would have been unthinkable to organise and hold such a meeting in Transcarpathia. For 45 years, we could not speak of the tragic events of the autumn of 1944, of these who were innocently carried off. Even remembering was banned. Remembering those people who, without cause, became victims of Stalinist terror, of Stalinist concentration camps. Some of the few survivors are here among us and I hope that they will relate to us their experiences.

I was a child when these events occurred. My Own father became a victim of this terror, these kidnappings. Without a legal basis or judicial procedure, these people were herded into cattle cars and carried off for "three days" which became years. And only a fraction returned. This was a tragic loss for Hungarians in Transcarpathia because they numbered in the tens of thousands.

I ask all of you at this conference: do not let feelings of vengeance and anger fill you but the joy of being allowed to remember and the hope of Hungarian revival in Transcarpathia. And the KMKSZ may well. be the guarantor and the first step towards this revival.

It may well be asked: - does the Hungarian World Federation have a right to be present at a meeting whose subject, in the classical sense, could he considered an internal affair? I would like to assert emphatically that yes, it has a right to be present!

People have been forcibly carried off from here; that is the business of humanity. Hungarians were carried off from here and that is Hungarian business. Therefore, I believe that; the Hungarian World Federation, whose flag displays the ideal of humanism and of Hungarians, has to be present at. this and similar events.

We are delighted by this conference. The more so because, in Hungary, it is since last year only that we can remember the victims who lost their lives in W.W.II. But we regret even more the fate of the unsung heroes, the unburied dead of the revolution of 1956.

You know our Church well. Let us thank God that 12 years ago, because of the connections of the Hungarian Reformed Church with the Russian Orthodox Church, a Protestant bishop could be consecrated here in Transcarpathia , in Beregszasz; that we can send over thousands of bibles and prayer books; and that, since last year, Transcarpathian theology students can study in Hungary. We are delighted that three years ago our periodical, "Confession" could give full coverage to the fate of Hungarians living outside its boundaries.

In this connection, we must admit that our Church did a greet deal, but not everything it should have done. I would like to finish by quoting Nemeth Laszlo. Can the struggle of the Hungarian Cultural Association in Transcarpathia, of every honest Hungarian, Ukrainian, Ruthenian or other nationality be considered hopeless? Nemeth Laszlo, in a hopeless situation. said No, because at Marathon also, hopelessness won. I wish that you, this folk and all peoples emerge proud and with head held high from the hell that all suffered to a greater or lesser degree for decades.

Honoured friends! Mourners and commemorators!

The Second World War took its toll of victims from the people of this region also. But it is doubly painful to contemplate the fate of the tens of thousands who were carried off and died innocently. The belated reverence shown them is a moral and historical debt. This conference, called to pay tribute to the deported Hungarian men, will lift the weight of this debt and will help us face history and ourselves squarely. This conference is not the first step that will lead the Transcarpathian Hungarians to find themselves but it is of tremendous value in the history of the world. The possibilities opened by Gorbachev are only the means that have to be seized. But for this, the Hungarians of Transcarpathia must show the moral strength of which they already gave proof. In these days of morning, recollection and prayer, when I wish fruitful and productive work to all the participants of this memorial conference of the KMKSZ, let me quote the poet Illyes Gyula who said: "the greatest act of courage is hope." Bowing my head to the martyrs of Transcarpathia, I bring the greetings of the Republic of Hungary to all who gathered here.

*Letter read by Fodo Sandor

Kosary Domokos said: "A people cannot be offended by world history." But it is its duty to ask for an accounting! It is its duty to bury the crucified victims of a political action that has run amok, to assert its will and to reach a truth as merciful as was merciless the slaughter. Not only history demands this, but the present and future also. Is it enough to rehabilitate the Hungarian, German, Romanian, Ruthenian victims of Stalinism, to re-establish the honour and good name of the martyrs, known and unknown, to redress the wrongs done to the condemned and restore their civil rights?

You cannot rehabilitate the orphaned children, the wives reduced to begging, the "WHY" shouted into the cold night

Tamasi Aron said: "A worthless man is not fit to be Hungarian." Let us remember these words when will becomes action, when we clean fear's suffocating dirt and dust off our past, because we shall receive honour in the measure that we honour others.

Luther formulated his thoughts about the future by saying: "If you know that tomorrow you shall no longer be, plant today a walnut tree

Let us take these words to heart and let us plant trees in the earth that covers the remains of thousands end let us stand erect and proud face to face with our past.

This year will enter as an important milestone into the history of Transcarpathian Hungarians. It started with the establishment and strengthening of the KMKSZ, followed by the erection of the "kuruc" (insurrectionist) monument at Tiszaujlak, then the dedication of the Illyes-statue here in Beregszasz. And now we meet at an event that was, in earlier times, unthinkable: a unique event where we pay tribute to the more than 40 thousand Hungarians who were carried off 45 years ago simply because they were Hungarians.

Stalinist tyranny caused greater losses to the Hungarians of Transcarpathia than did W.W.II. It is a comforting and hopeful. sign that today, after four and a half decades, we can speak of these events, that we can bow our heads remembering the tens of thousands who were carried off, maimed for life in body and soul. Let the survivors, widows and orphans, the wooden memorials, the commemorative plaques and monuments erected in the name of the next generation be mementoes of this tragic past. Let them remind the living, the youth of the land never again to allow such cruel humiliations of human dignity as were the deportations of 45 years ago. We must not remain silent, we must speak of these events without embellishments or euphemisms. I quote Gyarmathy Zsigmod, who is here present among us, when he said that be will be blinded who sees in the past only the light and not the shadows. The organisation of the present conference will certainly become a part of our Cultural Association's history. And it is a great honour to us from Beregszasz that it was held here, in the geographic and - let us hope - the future cultural centre of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia.

I was 18 when I first came face to face with Soviet reality.

After all, the soviet flyers that inundated the Hungarian villages proclaimed: "Priests and lords, run away! You, peasants, you just stay!" So the poor folk stayed. To be carried off to the various camps of the Soviet Union, where the majority of then died from famine and epidemics, humiliated, deprived of all human rights, under the most inhumane circumstances. In twenty months, I went from 82 kg to 46. Not from disease; from hunger.

When I returned, my poor mother fainted when she saw what became of her son. I was then 21 years old, right at the age when you need the most nutrition, the highest calories. The organism can never recover from this lack, or make up for it. Yet I consider myself lucky; after all., I did come home. What can those mothers, brothers and parents say whose kin never returned?

I only mentioned the outlines. I did not speak yet of the cudgels, the beatings, the submachine guns and the constant, all-intrusive searches.

It is horrible just to think of all this. And we could not speak of it. Here, in Transcarpathia, we still. cannot.

For 45 years we have atoned for the sins of Horthy's Hungary for 45 years, we ate the bitter bread.

Let us examine therefore, in the spirit of objectivity, who is responsible for subjecting us to this fate. Number one should be Stalinist tyranny; but maybe it is Hitler. Number two ought to be, as many say, the politicians of the Horthy regime in Hungary. The third responsible is the Hungarian Communist Party which never protested our deportations.

I would like to tell you now, point by point, what we the survivors, demand:

1. - Give us dual citizenship

2. - That we, ex-deportees should, in our declining years, benefit from free travel., free stay in rest-homes or health spas, free medical treatment.

3. - The Soviet Government should:

a) apologise to the deportees and their relatives for the actions of Stalinist tyranny;

b) acknowledge, as years of service, the time spent in heavy, health- damaging work

c) pay compensation to each child where the bread-winner of the family lost his life as a consequence of deportation, as is done by leaders of many sates;

d) pay damages to each deportee who survived and pay proper wages for every month spent in camp, since at the time we never received a penny for our work.

What was the essence of Stalin's rule? What. is its heritage?

A personal, dictatorial authoritarianism came into being (called variously: "military-feudal dictatorship" "barracks socialism", "administrative totalitarianism" - this last appellation being the brainchild of Mr. Gorbachev) by which we understand a political system that is based, economically, on forced labour in its socialised industry and agriculture: ideologically, it is a system of dogmatism that will not tolerate any deviation from approved thought; end, on the judicial plane, it is a system of strict bureaucratic subordination. It was built on authoritarian tyranny and functioned until tire present when they started, with great difficulties, to demolish this enormous state machinery, this gigantic bureaucracy that still hinders development and even Perestroika. This was a system which condemned masses of people to social, economic, and political passivity and taught then to tolerate every tyranny and lawlessness.

The Stalinist system underwent various phases of development and its "activities" had their own consequences:

- industrialisation, which should have modernised economic life, was not brought about by evolutionary means but was imposed by brute force to the detriment of the people and of democracy, which was more and more limited, and engendered reprisals;

- in 1930, the year of the elimination of the "kulaks' (wealthy peasants), 10 million people were arrested and sent to perform forced labour; many died;

- 1932: mass starvation followed the collectivisation (of farms) in the Ukraine, the Volga region, Kazakhastan and the Ural area. Its victims numbered over 6 million (in the Ukraine alone, more than 3 million) but, according to some calculations it reached 10 million. Yet, in 1929, Stalin himself declared: "If the collectivisation and establishment of state farms continue to progress as before, in three years our country will become the biggest grain producer of the world."

- On January 26, 1934 the XVII Party Congress met. Kirov received 3 votes more than Stalin. After the Congress, of the 1966 delegates, 1108 were arrested. Of the elected 138 members and alternates to the Central Committee, 98 were imprisoned. At the beginning of December, Kiros, himself, was assassinated in Szmolnij where he worked as first secretary of the county.

The Stalinist regime claimed more and more human victims, building up its machinery of subjugation to new heights. Statistics reveal its "achievements". Thus, if during the years of revolution and civil war (1917 - 1923) the loss of population amounted to 13 million (including the bourgeois elements, white Russians, etc. who fled abroad); then the loss of people during the peaceful. years of 1929-1941 totalled 60 million, generally considered victims of Stalinism.

Facts prove that during the 30's, little by little all leaders, who could have become Stalin's rivals, disappeared from the political scene. But even the potential leaders were "neutralised", particularly the armed forces who took the brunt of Stalinism. That is to say that in 1937-1938, immediately before the outbreak of W.W.II, close to 40 thousand leaders of the armed forces, among them some of the supreme command, fell victim to Stalin's suspicious nature, his lawlessness, and tyranny. Stalin himself personally signed the 303 memoranda containing the lists of several thousand people who were to he executed.

It is a sad fact that Stalinism continued to collect its victims not only during W.W.II, but also in the years after the war.

Soviet military historians assert that Stalin himself set the soviet losses of the war at 20 million. This number is not only inexact, it is an outright fabrication. The losses were far greater than that.

During the years spanning the 30's to the 50's, a whole network of forced labour, re-education and other camps was developed and functioned under the authority of the GULAG. According to data recently come to light, on March 1, 1940 this authority supervised 53 camps (including those destined to build railways and canals, such as the BAM and the canal connecting the Volga to the Baltic Sea), 425 "correctional-educational" labour camps (which means 170 industrial, 83 agricultural, and 172 so-called "Kontragens", i.e. construction and farming colonies), as well as 50 colonies for the education of juveniles. Part of this authority was also the so-called "reform-labour bureau" which handled the overseeing of those who were judicially condemned to forced labour. These "students" were generally not kept apart from society as a whole.

In the 30's, the yearly average of the camp population hovered around half a million but reached a million and a half in 1938-1940, then decreased to 600-700 thousand during the war-years. It increased again during 1946-47, reaching 1,200,000. This was partly due to the "prophylactic" exiling of repatriated soldiers who were screened and controlled, and partly to the interned and deported inhabitants of the newly acquired territories. An important number of the camp population was sent there for "counterrevolutionary crimes" (in 1938 19%; in 1939: 34.5%; in 1940 33%; in 1941 28.7%, in 1942 29.6%; in 1943 35.6%, in 1944 40.7%, in 1945 41.2%; in 1946 59.5%; in 1947 54.3%).

Thus, the despotic regime of Stalinism kept increasing the number of its victims not only through the executions of the camp population but also through the harsh treatment, the forced labour and starvation diet which decimated it daily. Even those who survived suffered from infirmities for the rest of their lives as a result of camp life.

The Stalinist system did not remain an isolated phenomenon. With the end of the war, the surrounding countries developed their own clones, organising veritable "schools" with their own "students". One can any that it became an international system. It is well-known that one of its very best students was Rakosi Matyas - with Rakosism becoming the Stalinist prototype. It is a notorious fact that the good students not only did not hinder, but outright assisted the system, sending fresh labourers to the Stalinist camps from these countries. Much data support this assertion.

The Stalinist policy or minorities started by limiting the use of the people's national language, followed by their extermination or resettlement. By depriving them of the use of their national language in schools and offices, it also denied them any possibility of cultural development.

Stalin himself, as a "linguist", in his famous essay, "Marxism end the questions of linguistics", expounded the false premise of rapid absorption based on language and nationality. The well-known consequence of this theory was the elimination of thousands of ethnic villages, communities and territories. Ethnographers and linguists certify that in the years 1932-1933 alone, at the time of "Passportisation", the number of ethnic end linguistic communities was HALVED.

Experts show that in 1926 the total number of minorities in the USSR was 194, whereas in 1979 only 101 were official acknowledged. This despite the territorial acquisitions that brought new ethnic groups into the soviet orbit Collaterally, the languages taught in minority schools also decreased. This ethnic and linguistic contraction curtailed the possibilities of the minorities and their human rights. In their essence, these policies were destined to promote the total absorption of the minorities and were its effective means.

It must be mentioned, that with the approach of war, Stalin developed his theory of "guilty nations". By now it is widely known that as a result. of this theory whole nations and ethnic groups were subjected to forced resettlement and banishment from, their ancestral. homes: tens-and hundred of thousands of Crimean Tatars, the Caucasian Chechen-Ings, the Turks of Meszhet, as well as the millions of Germans of the Volga region.

These mass resettlements, justified by national. security considerations, did not only mean the abandonment of ancestral communities; they were also undertaken with the not so hidden purpose of isolation and absorption, as well as an act of branding whole peoples and nations as "guilty", an adjective that is now, after 40 years, still hard to obliterate. These people have become homeless paupers; most. of them even forgot their mother tongue and lost their native cultural roots. The first steps in their rehabilitation and return to their homeland are just beginning to be undertaken within the possibilities opened up by glasnost.

However, these were not the only people who became the victims of Stalinist tyranny. So far, no mention was made of the resettlement of Curds, Greeks, end Koreans whose problems were here-to-fore suppressed. But nowadays, those interested in the resettlement and deportations of Finns, Estonians, Lets, Lithuanians, and particularly Poles (1,730,000) as well as in the fete of about 50,000 Armenians resettled in the 50's, can ask for information on them from the Supreme Council. During its present meeting, the question of the extermination of 250,000 Belorussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Lets was brought up. Beyond these, according to the experts, 120,000 Poles fell victim to Stalinism and are buried in mass graves.

As we can see, the oppressive machinery of Stalinist dictatorship was grinding away mercilessly on all the nation's minorities; none could escape it

Varga Jeno's March 28, 1938 letter to Stalin gives an excellent idea of the prison-like atmosphere of dread, of the all-pervasive fear of arrest that hung, like a sword of Damocles, over everyone's head: "As a consequence of mass arrests, the cadres living freely in the Soviet Union are completely demoralised and in an all-encompassing fear. This demoralisation penetrates every section of workers in the Comintern, including the members of the Comintern's VB Secretariat. The reason for this demoralisation is our helplessness over the fate of the arrested political emigrants. Most foreigners gather their belongings every evening in order to be prepared for an eventual arrest. This perpetual fear makes many of them half-crazy, unable to work."

It was important to speak of all this to get a better picture of Stalinism, its character and the wide circle of its victims. With all. that, we have not even mentioned its perfidious, law-defying actions here in Transcarpathia. Let us hope that subsequent lectures during our Conference will fill in the gaps.

The deportation to concentration camps and subsequent extermination of the many defenceless, adult citizens is undoubtedly one of the most striking proofs of Stalinist despotism. It is a notorious fact that in 1944-1945 masses of 18 to 50-year old men who escaped the war were mobilised to perform so-called "labour of restoration", carried off to the Szolyva or Perecseny concentration camps and from there scattered among the various forced labour camps of the Soviet Union. According to approximate calculations, 40-60 thousand Hungarian men were deported from the territory of present-day Transcarpathia and the neighbouring regions of Szabolcs, Szatmar and Bereg (without even mentioning the displacement of this area's German population). A great number perished in the camps of the Donyec-basin, in Siberia, or the Far East. The vagaries of climate, starvation, disease, cruel treatment, working beyond endurance in their weakened conditions decimated their ranks. Thus, only about a quarter of then came home a few years later.

Nobody asked, nobody could ask what; their crimes were, who condemned then to their fate, who was responsible for this trampling of their human rights, for these mass murders.

This lecture was intended to serve as a starting point for an open discussion.

The questions of rehabilitation are among the most important tasks of the National. Security Commission. Its jobs are entrusted to well-educated, experienced and skilled workers who co-operate effectively in disseminating information throughout society.

At the end of October 1989, the Zakarpatszka Pravda published a list of 80 names, among them Hungarians, who had earlier been victims of repression. A second list is being readied for publication in the offices of the National Security Commission. It is sad to read these lists, but one must no longer conceal these cruel occurrences. Though it is late, we feel great satisfaction in the fact that we were able to identify some of the victims and that we can do them justice by restoring their honour. To reveal the truth is in the interest of this generation and the next. Over 2000 documents came to light at the archives of the state institutions that prove the sad, and often deadly fate of the victims. It would take too much time to read all the letters about the victims that the Commission received. However, we would like to quote one.

Toth Borbala, resident of Csap, will, we hope, forgive us for going public with her letter. She writes:

"I write to you as a widow who raised four children between the ages of 2 to 7 without a husband, The children only know their father from photographs. After the liberation of Csap, in December 1944, my husband was taken by force, supposedly for three days to help bury those who died in action - but he never came back. In those cruel times, I wrote to the military prosecutor but I never received a reply. The men who were forcibly deported like my husband were kept under strict military guard. They told me that my husband was taken to the Szolyva concentration camp. I went to Szolyva but I could not find my husband.

Many years passed, but neither I, nor my children know anything of the fate of my husband, their father. My husband was a workmen, he never belonged to any party, he led a strictly middle-class life.

I write to you now because I read the article in the Carpathian True Word about the victims of Stalinism.

I am beginning to hope that at last now I will find out about my husband's fate, how and where he died."

This letter is painful; not only because of its contents but also because it will be difficult to reply to fellow-citizen Toth Borbala. Unfortunately, there is no information available in the regional archives about the fate or people who disappeared under similar circumstances.

Nor does the National Security Commission's main Department have any information on the men who, as witnessed by Toth Borbala and others, were, in November-December 1944, carried off and sent to the so-called labour camps under one pretence or another. There are no documents on the activities of the Szolyva concentration camp.

The 9-member working group, established parallel to the Regional Rehabilitation Commission, whose task is to study the fate of the Hungarian men deported to the labour camps in 1944 can, without a doubt, be of great help.

It cannot be allowed that people who perished in the camps should he registered as "disappeared without a trace". The lists prepared by the activists of the KMKSZ will be used in this work.

The emphasis today will, to a certain extent, he placed on the clarification and revelation of the fate of the deported Hungarian citizens. We can state categorically that these events were a manifestation of a series of horrors that was brought about by Stalin's lawlessness which picked its victims indiscriminately, namely in the course of historical. changes when the deportees were not yet Soviet citizens but were treated worse by the repressive machinery than its own citizens.

This despotism revealed the essence of this repressive system.

I would like to see this work progress without enlarging or exaggerating these painful past events and without hurting the sensibilities of the Hungarians and other ethnic groups. After all, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Jews, end Romanians, all suffered the same fate. We have no right to present the bill for the past to the present generation.

* This lecture was presented in the Russian language.

The Tragedy of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia