Lász­ló Bukovszky: The Issue of Hun­gar­i­ans in the Coun­ty of Ko­má­rom in the Last Year of the Sec­ond World War – Fórum Társadalomtudományi Szemle
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Forum Social Science ReviewStudiesForum Social Science Review

Lász­ló Bukovszky: The Issue of Hun­gar­i­ans in the Coun­ty of Ko­má­rom in the Last Year of the Sec­ond World War

, ,
PDF version

The events of the last years of the Sec­ond World War in many aspects changes the inter­pre­ta­tion of gen­er­al con­cepts and sys­tem of val­ues used to that time. This is true for the issue of refugees, since the oper­at­ing mech­a­nism cre­at­ed from the begin­ning of the World War to the early spring of 1944 was changed with all its con­comi­tants dur­ing a short momen­t. While from 1938 the issue of refugees in Hun­ga­ry was on ensur­ing the tem­po­rary place­ment of Hun­gar­i­an and other nation­al­i­ty peo­ple com­ing from abroad, from the spring of 1944, due to oper­a­tional events, the place­ment of ci­vil pop­u­la­tion com­ing from Bu­da­pest, then from the east­ern and south-east­ern ter­ri­to­ries of the coun­try.

From the point of view of assess­ing the issue of refugees of the coun­ty of Ko­má­rom, the study is too short. The Mar­xist his­to­ry writ­ing of the last peri­od dealt with the issue of refugees, and/or oper­a­tional evac­u­a­tion very broad­ly. Pri­mar­i­ly, they pre­ferred pre­vent­ing dis­ar­ma­ment of indus­tri­al works impor­tant from the point of view nation­al econ­o­my. At the same time, they men­tioned only short­ly the num­ber of mil­i­tary and ci­vil refugees, and deport­ed peo­ple, that is today esti­mat­ed to one mil­lion.
The issue of refugees, focus­ing on the Somor­ja dis­trict of the coun­ty of Ko­má­rom, accord­ing to the pres­ent sit­u­a­tion, gives shock­ing news. Accord­ing to sta­tis­ti­cal data the num­ber of refugees, re-set­tled peo­ple, etc. sit­u­at­ed to the ter­ri­to­ry of the dis­tric­t, in Jan­u­ary 1945 reached 77% of the total num­ber of pop­u­la­tion. One-third of the peo­ple sit­u­at­ed at the ter­ri­to­ry of the dis­trict was ci­vil refugee. From the dis­trict of Somor­ja, accord­ing to the data, we assume that about 5000 peo­ple found them­selves at the ter­ri­to­ry of the Third Em­pi­re in con­nec­tion with the depor­ta­tion, main­ly to Aus­tria and Bavari­a. If we try to find con­nec­tion between the events and con­se­quences of the Hungarian-Slovak pop­u­la­tion exchange in 1947/1948, then we can feel the weight, exten­t, and anal­o­gy of the issue.

Follow us