English-language expatriate publication Politics.hu reports the aim of the memorial year is ”healing wounds.” The minister spoke only of those deported from the present territory of Hungary, which amounts to some 300,000 people — Wikipedia and authors like Anne Applebaum argue for a figure closer to 700,000. It is known that about 300,000 people died on the way to or in the camps.
The reasons for the deportations are not entirely clear, as only some 150,000 people were actual Prisoners of War. Presumably the reason is to be found in the Soviet system.
The Geneva Conventions do not allow for civilians to be taken in place of P.O.Ws, and from 1944-45, the 1929 Geneva Convention was in force, but the USSR never ratified it and thus the Soviets did not consider themselves bound by its limits. The Convention states that at the end of a conflict:
Article 75 covers release at the end of hostilities. The release of prisoners should form part of the armistice. If this is not possible then repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace.
The Soviet capture of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany was clearly in violation of the Rules and Customs of War, but as they were a victorious and Allied Power, there is no legal redress for either the victims or their families.
According to the Wikipedia summary, the Convention also says:
Article 76 covers prisoners of war dying in captivity: they should be honorably buried and their graves marked and maintained properly. Wills and death certificate provisions should be the same as those for the detaining power’s own soldiers.
Victims of Soviet deportations are buried in unmarked mass graves without any ”honour” or proper remembrance.
On a personal note, many of my second cousins were deported to the Donbass (where the fighting is in Eastern Ukriane) but also my uncle Elemér was deported. The family knows about his death, but not where he died. Hungarians were scattered in some 2,000 camps in the former USSR, so there is no way to know which unmarked mass grave he is buried in.
A problem arising in Hungary is that even if people have survived this long, they are still, 20 years after the end of Communism, afraid to speak, because they were ordered not to do so on their return. Young people are also not taught about this vast crime.
The present move by Hungary is definitely a step in the right direction, even if it does come some 20 years too late.
