Hungary Commemorates Gulag Deportees

Memories of the Gulag link “people living east of the River Elbe”, Zoltán Balog said, marking the memorial day of Hungarian political prisoners and forced labourers deported to the Soviet Union. The human resources minister opened an international conference at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the occasion of the memorial day. The histories of the affected countries show a striking resemblance, with military occupation, deportations, forced labour and few people returning home, he said. “We would like all Hungarians who fell victim in the past century, in 1920, 1944, 1945, or 1956, considered as a common loss,” Balog said.

Despite the many hundreds of thousand Hungarian families affected by Soviet occupation, the events of the period have not been fully researched and published, the minister said. “Sometimes it won’t hurt to talk about the perpetrators, too, not just about the victims. The time has come for this,” he added.
Earlier in the day, a wreath-laying ceremony was held by the memorial of Gulag victims in Budapest and an exhibition opened at Nyugati Square. In his speech, Vice-President of the National Memorial Committee Áron Máthé emphasised that this day is not only the day of remembrance but also that of homecoming. He reminded his audience that 1,500 political prisoners had returned home from the Soviet Union on this day in 1953. They made it clear that “there is a way back from hell on Earth”, he said. According to the Vice-President, it is our duty to do justice to the dead, to our Hungarian predecessors. At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that although many people had died, “we, Hungarians as a community, have survived”.