You can search for your family: Trianon refugee list now on the internet
A database of nearly 15,000 names has been made available on the internet by the MTA Trianon 100 Search Group. This does not only include the name of the refugees who came to Hungary between 1918 and 1928 but also their residency, profession, and the place of their arrival can also be searched for by the public.
The database was originally made to go along with the book Orphans of Trianon by István Dékány. In the form of a DVD attachment, the database can be purchased, which was made available online thanks to the collaboration of the author, the Noran Libro Publisher and the MTA Faculty of Humanities’ Research Centre, as well as the MTA Trianon 100 Search Group, reports HVG.
The database was put together by the author and researchers based on official papers, lists kept at the Hungarian National Archives, other documents from archives, local press, as well as the paper called Erdély News, which documented the arrivals between 1920 and 1921. Of course, these 15,000 people are only a small portion of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, but “the collection of these people is an important step to understand and get to know history,” emphasised the statement by MTA.
There have not been any comprehensive social history studies done about them yet, but according to the documents discovered, most of them were employees of the state, county, city or state-owned businesses (post office), who had to leave the regions attached to neighbouring countries. The amount of regions on the list which were important for railway and transportation purposes is conspicuous.
Official statistics register about 350,000 people as refugees, of whom 60% came to the Trianon country from Transylvania and Eastern Hungary. In the newly announced database, the first arrivals were registered in 1918, and the last one in 1928. Most of them arrived before the end of 1920 when the Hungarian government drastically tightened the terms of “moving in”, only here and there, and in decreasing numbers, the refugees continued to come in the ’20s.
You can access the database HERE. You can write not only names or partial names but professions, too. The search criteria can also be adjusted with the red arrows found in the header. The people can also be put into groups by the place of leave and arrival.
If we are looking for a certain someone, it is good to search multiple spellings of the same name (Szűcs/Szűts), because at train stations and borders presumably based on just the spoken word, hand-written lists were hard to deal with and keep track of, so a lot of first names might not be correct either.
It is also possible that some people were registered more than once, possibly at different places. The reason for that — besides the chaotic conditions — could be that they were registered once they entered the Hungarian region — which was Szolnok up until April 1920, when Romanian troops left —, and once again when they entered Budapest.
The anniversary of Trianon is coming up, find out more about the national tragedy HERE or read more about the Trianon memorial to-be-built HERE.
Featured image: Wiki Commons
Source: https://hvg.hu/