Commemoration of post-WW2 deportees from Czechoslovakia was held in Budapest
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Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, addressed a commemoration of ethnic Hungarians deported from Czechoslovakia after the second world war under the Benes decrees, in Budapest on Tuesday.
In 2012, Hungary’s parliament declared April 12 the memorial day of deportees, marking the anniversary of the start of deportations in 1947.
In his address, Gulyás called the deportation “a rather painful chapter” in the period that saw retaliation, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment after the end of the war.
“If we want to live on, we need strong communities that create values and we need strong localities where Hungarian life thrives instead of waning,” Gulyás told the commemoration hosted by the Rákoczi Alliance. He called “the ability to survive and restart” one of the most important characteristics of the Hungarian nation.
Gyula Bárdos, the head of the Hungarian Social and Cultural Association of Slovakia (Csemadok), said that
The decrees were issued by Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes between 1940 to 1945 during his years in exile in London – and are directly related to state of emergency during and just after the war.
We were a member of the Axis (siding with Nazi Germany) and that did not make us very popular. Enter measures (decrees), draconian perhaps by current standards, by those who would eventually be victorious.
Our complicity also got at least 400k Hungarian Jews killed (which were first dispossessed and then deported / marched to Austria / thrown into the Danube).
We’re not entirely innocent, perhaps there was a reason for them hating us?