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A proposal in the Bratislava parliament to commemorate Hungarians forcibly deported in a post-World War II population swap has met with opposition from Slovak politicians.
The first reading of a proposal by Slovakian-Hungarian MP György Gyimesi of the government party OLANO and three of his colleagues (Gábor Grendel, Zita Pleštinská, Peter Polák) to introduce a law on the Day of Remembrance of the forcibly displaced Hungarians took place in the Bratislava Parliament on Wednesday.
Czechoslovakia, which was reconstituted after the Second World War, concluded a population exchange agreement with Hungary in 1946. Under the terms of the treaty, the Czechoslovak authorities were allowed to forcibly deport as many Hungarians to Hungary as Slovaks voluntarily left. The first train carrying the displaced Hungarians left on 12 April 1947, the last on 5 June 1949, and between these two dates the designated families and their belongings were transported to Hungary almost daily.
The Ma7 portal recalls that the authors of proposed Day of Remembrance intended their motion to have a symbolic value, to commemorate the victims of forced deportations and expulsions, and at least to ask for a moral apology for the suffering caused by the state. If the plans had been adopted, no financial compensation would have been paid.
Jakob Krúpa of the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SAS) party rejected the proposal, saying that the victims of forced displacement should not be lumped together with the victims of the Holocaust, since the displaced were not killed, although, as he said with a rather cynical undertone, “they may have suffered injustice”.
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