Hortobágy labor camps
The forced labor camps of Hortobágy were established by the communist regime in the eastern parts of Hungary during the beginning of the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1953 about ten thousand people were taken here without a legal verdict. They had to work under armed supervision and in inhuman conditions on the state farms in Hortobágy, Nagykunság, and Hajdúság. The laborers couldn't return to their homes even after the 1953 amnesty and weren’t eligible for compensation. The deportations beginning on June 23rd 1950 were the typical examples of the morbid fears of the communist regime . Thousands of families from the western and southern borders, which were claimed to be “unsafe” because of the Cold War by the government at the time (Dobi István, Rákosi Mátyas, Nagy Imre), were taken to the twelve labor camps on the Alföld. The deported had barely an hour to pack, their papers were taken, and their beds were about half a meter wide. Their forced labor took place on the state farms of nearby villages until the first Nagy Imre government declared amnesty in July 1953. The camps were closed in the fall of the same year. However, the aggrieved  could not return to their homes and were only employed as unskilled laborers. As such, the real estates and wealth of the claimed seditionaries were confiscated by the state, by which it hoped to frighten the population. The victims haven’t been compensated since. Today. Those forced laborers who were still alive in 2000 founded the Association of those Deported to the Labor Camps of Hortobágy (Hortobágyi Kényszermunkatáborokba Elhurcoltak Egyesülete). It has 915 members today. A stone was erected to recognize those incarcerated.