Lajos Izsák: The deprivation of rights of the Upper Hungarians and their removal from their native land 1944–1949
Upper Hungary was lived by Hungarians from the 11th century. After the Second World War the Hungarians had to leave that territory, and/or were removed from that territory. According to the census in 1773 during Maria Teresa’s reign the Hungarian territory’s boundary was considered to be in the line of Nyitra-Léva-Losonc-Rimaszombat-Rozsnyó-Jászó. According to the population census in 1910 almost 900 thousand Hungarians lived on the territory that recently belongs to Slovakia. The decades that passed by from that time resulted vast ethnic and language changes as well. The forcible champagne on Hungarian teaching commenced after the change in 1918/19, when the new Czechoslovak state expelled more than 100 thousand Upper Hungarians from its native land. The program for establishing the Czechoslovak national state was completed by Edvard Beneš and the Czechoslovak immigration government in London at the end of 1942, and at the beginning of 1943 it was completed by demanding the expel of the Hungarian nationality population that was accepted in the spring of 1944 by the Czechoslovak communistic emigration together with the Soviet government.
The study introduces and analyses in detail the resolutions against Hungarians that were valid from 1944, the consequences of the Kassa governmental program, the execution of the Beneš Decrees, the work of the Czechoslovak Committee for Resettlement in Hungary, the so-called re-slovakisation, and the decisions of the peace conference in Paris. At the same time the Hungarian political parties, the work of the National Assembly and cardinal Mindszenty József and their steps taken for the Upper Hungarians. Finally, he summarizes in numbers to the end of December 1948, 73 273 Slovak people left Hungary voluntarily, and/or 89 600 Hungarians were deported from Czechoslovakia. Plus another 6000 persons, who officially „voluntarily” left for Hungary, and 20-30 thousand people were expelled, and many thousands came for accomplishing their studies in Hungary and to settle here later. The Hungarians left in Upper Hungary 160 thousand acres of land and 15 700 houses. The Slovaks left here 38 000 acres and 4400 houses. The Upper Hungarians did not receive any compensation.