Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Date:         Thu, 12 Nov 1992 01:02:00 EST
From:         Joe Pannon <76317.2023@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      The Kosice Program

Finally I have some time to address the second half of P. Muzila'a response,
regarding the 1945-48 period, especially the so called Kosice Program.  I do
this because I believe it's better to confront these issues squarely than
pretend that they do not exist.  The communist regimes tried it for over 40
years and made things worse by suppressing it.  Let me also categorically
state, that I NEVER claimed to represent THE Hungarian viewpoint, only my
own.  However, I do enough reading to know that I am not alone with these
views.

So with that, let me first re-quote from the book Patrik cited:

 >        "...During World War II a Czechoslovak goverment-in-exile,
 >established in London, claimed legal continuity with the Czechoslovak
 >Republic. Its postwar program, drafted by the Communists and accepted with
 >only minor changes by other groups represented in the government, was
 >promulgated in the liberated city of Kosice in April 1945. The Kosice program
 >upheld formally the 1920 constitution but provided for important changes in
 >the political process. It abolished the senate and reduced the number of
 >political parties in a fashion favouring the left. The same objective was
 >served by passing laws against collaborators, by nationalizing large
 >properties, and by restricting freedom of press. An amendment to the
 >constitution gave Slovakia limited autonomy."

Well, there is indeed very little information in it about the Kosice Program,
though there is a vague reference there about laws against collaborators.  It
so happens, that those laws summarily branded the Hungarians as collaborators
and revoked their citizenship.  What an irony!  Suddenly, the Slovaks whose
first independent state came about at the direct urging of Hitler, of which
British historian A. J. P. Taylor writes in his book 'The Origins of the
Second World War': "Hitler backed Slovakia for her own sake -- a steady,
reliable satellite, as she proved to be throughout the second World war,"
were declaring Hungarians as collaborators with the Nazies at the end of that
war.  It seems that in few years, the Slovaks managed to break away from the
Czechs with Hitler's active support, and then get back with them again when
it became advantageous to be on the victorious "Nazi victim" side.  And since
after such a war, they needed to deliver collaborators, Hungarians became the
convenient choice after they ran out of their ethnic Germans.

Western historians generally know about the sad fate of ethnic Germans in
countries formerly occupied by Germany, but not much about the fate of
Hungarians of Slovakia.  The Henry Bogdan book does allude to some of what
happened:

  "Czechoslovakia would have liked to eliminate the Hungarian minority in
  southern Slovakia  Several thousand Hungarians were in fact deported to
  Hungary in 1945, and then on February 27, 1946, an agreement between the
  Hungarian and Czechoslovak government authorized an exchange of Hungarian
  "war criminals" and "traitors to the Czechoslovak homeland" for Hungarian
  Slovaks who wanted to move to Czechoslovakia.  About 30,000 people were
  exchanged in this way.  Tens of thousands of Hungarians considered to be
  undesirable in Slovakia but also necessary to the Czechoslovak economy were
  moved to the Sudetenland to replace the recently deported Germans.  They
  were not able to return to their own villages until 1948-1949."

Joerg K. Hoensch, a professor of East European History at the University of
the Saarland, Saarbruecken, Germany, in his book "A History of Modern
Hungary, 1867-1986" estimates the number of exchanged people between the two
countries 70,000:

  "The Czechoslovak government's intention to repatriate approximately
  650,000 Magyars living in Slovakia failed because of the Allies' veto.  A
  treaty between the Prague and Budapest governments, signed after lengthy
  negotiations on 27 February, 1946, proposed an exchange of populations
  between equal numbers of Slovaks settled in Hungary and Magyars resident of
  Slovakia.  Approximately 70,000 people were affected on each side and a
  further 20,000 may well have left Czechoslovakia voluntarily.  As a new and
  more sympathetic policy towards the national minorities began to emerge,
  the 50,000 or so Hungarians, who had been forcibly settled in the Sudeten
  areas abandoned by the Germans in 1945 were allowed to return to their
  villages once relations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary had returned to
  normal."

What these Western history books don't tell is the cruelty of these post-WW
II deportations.  To find out about it, one has to resort to the memories of
victims of which I read plenty in Hungarian publications.  In fact, it was
exactly the unauthorized foreign publication of this type of information for
which Miklos Duray was imprisoned during the CS communist regime.  A noted
Hungarian writer, who wrote the foreword for the Duray book was also punished
in Hungary with a one-year publication silentium for his courage.

I have just read the memoires of a Hungarian priest in Slovakia, describing
his and his people's ordeal of that era.  He describes the typical method of
deportation from a Hungarian village in the cold January of 1947:

  Suddenly soldiers sorround the village.  Then they start rounding up 40
  peasants and their families.  Military trucks are provided to take along
  their belongings to the railroad station where each family gets a cattle
  wagon and the long journey to Sudetenland begins.

Make no mistakes about it: the 20,000, or so, Hungarians who -- according to
professor Hoensch -- "voluntarily" left Czechoslovakia for Hungary were
largely those, who escaped in order to avoid deportation to the Sudetenlands.
I personally knew people who came to my hometown this way.  The story they
told about their escape is a horror story, indeed!

The exchange, that finally came about was not really an even exchange at
all because only the Slovaks of Hungary volunteered for it, not the Hungarians
of Slovakia.  What prevented even more Hungarians deported from Slovakia was
the lack of more volunteers from among Hungary's Slovaks.

Compared to these numbers, the number of Slovaks (and Czechs) who were forced
out of Slovakia by the 1938 territorial changes is very small.  I don't have
the figures for that, but I do recall from my prior readings, that most of
those departures were voluntary in the sense that only those chose it who had
something specific to worry about from individual vendettas or the Hungarian
authorities.  They were typically members of police and local government
bureaucrats.

As to the war reparation issue you, Patrik, qoted from the Csicsey-Ronay
book:

 >   "In February 1947 the Paris Peace Conference restored the Trianon
 >frontiers and obliged Hungary TO PAY REPARATIONS to Soviet Union, Yugoslavia,
 >and Czechoslovakia."

I find nothing surprising in it.  As always, victors dictate the terms of
peace.  What's new?

Regards,
Joe Pannon