REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Péter BÁLÓ: The Gulag – Through the Eyes of a Survivor 13
day, putting 6,5 m long logs on trucks. They had to build barracks for themselves, and
they could have a bath only every three-four weeks. There was no medical service or
even the basic medicine, so the diseases and epidemics were frequent. If somebody
couldn’t work for his state of health, or refused working – for example for a religious
reason – could be killed or trussed to a tree. There were many mosquitoes in Siberia in
the summer, which could cause serious injuries in such cases.
The prisoners were guarded according to strict regulations: if any of them fell out of the
march column, was shot down. Due to the above reasons the mortality was extremely
high.
The nationality of the prisoners was different; Magdolna told that at the camps she met
Latvians, Lithuanians, Polish, German, Russian, Ukranians and even Coreans.
It helped her survival that she learned Russian language, could adapt to the local
circumstances, and she learned how to save her strength. Several times they could have
the same logs measured by the supervisors twice, so one day they had to work very hard,
but the next day they only imitated the wood-cutting, so they could get the ration after the
execution the norm at 100%.
The turn in her fortune came in 1953, after Stalin’s death, when their guard informed
the Hungarian and German prisoners that they could go home. After the plenty of suffer
and false promises they didn’t believe the soldiers, but one day they were entrained again,
and after a journey longing for several weeks they arrived in Lemberg (Lviv). There they
spent six months, as Mátyás Rákosi, the communist dictator of Hungary considered them
to be persona non grata. In the end he was forced to let them in the country on Soviet
pressure. Later on the leaders of the communist party still took them unwanted in
Hungary. When after the inhuman suffers the train, delivering the survivors from the
GULAG passed the Soviet-Hungarian border (on the 3 rd of December, 1953), the
members of the State Security Authority (SSA) – the political police of the ’50-s –
invaded the train, and the prisoners were seized. They were accommodated in Sóstó-fürdı
near Nyíregyháza, in a camp, guarded by the SSA. They couldn’t even get in contact with
their relatives. Several weeks later they received 10 HUF to buy train tickets, and finally
could go home.
The delight to see her parents and friends, after so many years, was unutterable. Later
the pleasure was shadowed by the fact that in the Socialist system of Hungary she was a
secondary citizen. She was not allowed to talk about her “experience” in the Soviet
Union, and hardly could get a passport. Up to her rehabilitation in 1976 her certificate of
moral included the record of her being a criminal. Despite she was officially dispensed
from any crimes – she never committed -, the services of state security detected her until
1989. Furthermore, she has been still suffering from the health-effects of her captivity:
cardiac failure because of the hard physical work, joint gout due to the cold weather in
Siberia, not to mention the mental consequences, which are not possible to forget.
After coming home she got married with Károly Pintér, whom she had met in Tajset in
1946 for the first time. Later they were taken to different camps, so lost each other for
years. They met each other again on the way back in Lemberg in 1953.