Data on Hungarian WW2 POWs found in Russia confirmed as significant

Budapest, March 5 (MTI) – Files found recently by a Hungarian expert in Russia on some 420,000 Hungarian WW2 soldiers who fell into captivity in the Soviet Union but managed to return to their homeland have been confirmed as historically significant, Vilmos Kovács, the head of the Hungarian Museum of Military History told MTI on Saturday.

The announcement about the discovery of files by a Hungarian archivist in a Russian state archive was made by the human resources minister on Feb. 18. Zoltán Balog told reporters after a session of the Gulag Memorial Committee in Budapest that the data will be digitised to make them more easily accessible to historians for research. State Secretary of Defence Tamas Vargha said at the time that there were altogether about half a million Hungarian POWs in the Soviet Union during World War Two. Data on the 48,000 POWs who died in captivity have been available in the archives of the Institute and Museum of Military History in Budapest but data on those who returned was hitherto missing.

Kovács told MTI that Hungarian experts had knowledge of the existence of these files on Hungarian POWs but had no access to the documents at all before. The files are in Russian state ownership and must not be taken abroad, he added.

He said that the Hungarian archivist, whose name has not been disclosed, made specimen copies of a couple of files to show that each POW had personal data recorded on 3-6 pages, containing answers to about 40-50 questions. These include details about the unit where the person served, the place where they were taken into captivity and the personal history prior to taking up service in the army, he said.

Kovács said that although the files cannot be moved, the Russian side offered cooperation in their digitisation, details of which are being currently discussed. He said he expected that completing a research project of the files would take about three years.

Photo: kony.network.hu

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters