REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

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Remembrance in Time
hoping to ease the pressure on the Hungarian minority – signed the Hungarian-
Czechoslovakian agreement of population exchange on the 27 th of February, 1946. The
hopes of the Hungarian government were not fulfilled, because the deportations went
on even after signing the agreement. Due to that the Hungarian partner started to
obstruct the execution of the agreement.
As an answer the government of Prague started further even more brutal deportations with
the purpose of pressure: more than 43.000 people (whole families with babies and old
people) were taken to force agricultural labour to Bohemia. (The deported people could get
back to their homeland).
The action was stopped only when Budapest agreed to fulfil the agreement. Due to it from
the May of 1947 to the end of 1948 – 90.000 Hungarians had to leave for Hungary, while
73.000 – identifying themselves Slovakians, but not having any ethnic consciousness, even
hardly speaking Slovakian language, but hoping better living conditions in the houses of the
expelled Hungarians – people moved to Slovakia.
We cannot talk about mutually population exchange on a voluntary basis, because while
the Slovakians of Hungary voluntarily moved to Slovakia, the Hungarians of Slovakia were
forced to leave their homeland.
Parallel with the execution of the population exchange the campaign of “reslovakization”.
Due to the campaign 411.000 of the Hungarians in fear applied for their reslovakization and
327.000 of them were validated. (They got back their citizenship, their property and they
escaped from the expulsion or deportation. The majority of the reslovakizated could claim
themselves Hungarian again from 1949.) Afterwards there were still 190.000 Hungarians to
“expulse”, but the political situation was not suitable for that, so the plan could not be
completely executed.
∗∗∗
The 20 th century was the century of the formation of nation states – according to several
historians and politicians. In fact we can be the witnesses of the aggressive attempt of the
ethnically homogene nation states. The Hungarians of the Carpathian Basin became the
victims of this ethno-politics after 1918 (that time 350.000 Hungarians were expelled from
their homeland) and then, after 1944.
At the end of WWII the Czech/Slovakian, the Romanian, the Serbian and the
Ukranian (Soviet) leaders thought that the time has come to expulse the Hungarian
(and German) minority, considered war criminals. If not all of them, but as many as it
would be possible. The forced population exchange or the mass expulsion by the
authorities was a relatively “civilized” form of the homogenization politics. The
internments, the deportations and mainly the mob laws and the showdowns, the affrays
and massacres done by the several corps, partisans and the army all targeted to execute
the declared or withheld/denied ethnical homogenization. The only sin of the people
executed without a legal verdict, or those who were interned or expelled, was that
they were born Hungarian.