How did the Hungarian forces behave in the USSR? Did they fight a correct and soldierly war against their Red enemy or did they burn villages, shoot civilains and generally terrorise the place like the Germans were known to do? I'm just wondering as the retribution the Soviets took out on the Hungarians once they were on Hungarian soil was extreme.
Quite frankly I don't know anything about that detail. I suppose Slava will know better. In any case I expect Hungary at the time was a backwards economy country with a low literacy rate, and you know that's directly connected with lack of ethical standards. Whether condoned by authorities I have no idea, but it seems credible that the lower ranks wouldn't have any reason not to behave with brutality. BBC - WW2 People's War - Hungary Category
Oh yes they did. In fact Hungary wa snot occupied until 1944 because it was considered an ally. Both Hungary and Romania had nationalists parties ruling .However there was a growing resistance against staying witht Axis (they were more or less forced , in a political and economical way) but when things worsened for the Axis in 1944, Horthy, the leader in Hungary had not much to say. the Germans deiced to deport Hungarian Jews massively , depsite Wallenberg's opposition (he saved Hundreds who fled to the Swedish Embassy) . As the Red army approached Horthy's dreams of great Hungary comprising Transylvania and parts of ther neigbours collapsed for good Here is a nice Wikipedia link: Miklós Horthy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "National parties in Romania and Hungary were at least partially successful in breaking the full force of Nazi attempts to penetrate all aspects of society: King Boris managed to keep Bulgarian troops out of Russia; Admiral Horthy managed until 1944 to keep Hungary free from occupation by Germany and, both countries managed to hold off intially the full impact of the main ideological assaut from Naziism against the Jews. In many cases nationalism was the bulkwark against both Naziism and Communism with national parties consolidating power in the early stages of the war at the expense of home grown Nazi parties. From Hitler's Jackals by Rupert Butler
Yes, war crimes were commited but not to such an extent as some other Axis allies. To my knowledge most were commited in Yugoslavia ( may very well be wrong ) General Frenec, for example was extradited back to Yugoslavia after the war and sentenced to death for the massacre in Novi Sad
Found this on You Tube, some photos set to music of WW2 Hungarian troops. Doesn't help with my query, just good to watch. YouTube - Magyar katonák a II. világháborúban= This one isn't bad, some good footage. Turn the sound down if you don't like rock music. YouTube - Kárpátia - Toborzó=
Hungarians soldiers occupated my region 66 years ago. My town borders with Ukraine and Belorussia. Magyars were more cruel than Germans. They burned many villages near Sevsk. They burned all people who lived in theese villages- old, children, women... My grandfather remembered that they were happy when their village occupated german soldiers
I couldn't find anything on Hungarian atrocities in the USSR. But I did find this on Serbia. Hungarian Is Faced With Evidence of Role in ’42 Atrocity By NICHOLAS WOOD and IVANA SEKULARAC Published: October 1, 2006 BUDAPEST, Sept. 30 — The past caught up with Sandor Kepiro, 92, on Thursday, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center identified him as a junior police officer who was twice found guilty of participating in one of the worst atrocities committed by Hungarian forces during World War II. Filip Horvat for The New York Times Sandor Kepiro, 92, speaking to reporters in Budapest on Thursday. “Prove that I was a war criminal,” he said. At a news conference at a synagogue opposite Mr. Kepiro’s apartment here, members of the Wiesenthal Center ended what for him had been 60 years of relative anonymity as they issued copies of a recently rediscovered wartime court verdict. The document shows that Mr. Kepiro was charged and found guilty along with 14 other Hungarian Army and paramilitary police officers of taking part in the Novi Sad massacre in northern Serbia in January 1942, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed. In an extraordinary scene, Mr. Kepiro returned home from the doctor shortly after the news conference and discovered a crowd of reporters outside his apartment building. Over the next hour, he took questions from reporters at his front door, acknowledging that he had helped round up people before the massacre but denying that he had killed anyone or given orders to shoot. The massacre, which is known in Serbian history books as the Racija, based on the Serbian word for raid, took place over three days. Hungarian forces, who occupied Novi Sad after their German allies conquered Yugoslavia in 1941, rounded up hundreds of families and eventually mowed them down with machine-gun fire on the shores of the Danube. The bodies were then dumped into the icy waters, which had to be broken up by artillery fire. Although found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, Mr. Kepiro never served his sentence — he was freed by Hungary’s fascist leadership shortly after his trial by a previous government in Budapest in 1944 and fled to Argentina after the war. He was convicted again, in absentia, in 1946 by the new Communist government in Hungary. He returned to Budapest in 1996, after the Communists fell, after consulting with Hungarian Embassy officials in Argentina who said he could come back, he said Thursday. Mr. Kepiro has not been arrested, and it is not clear whether he will face prosecution or imprisonment. A spokesman for the military prosecutor in Budapest said his previous convictions were no longer valid and that it would be up to the civilian courts to start a new investigation. Speaking to reporters in Budapest, Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, listed Mr. Kepiro, a former lawyer, as one of four leading suspects he said he hoped would be tried in connection with crimes committed during the Nazi era. The pursuit, which the center calls Operation: Last Chance, hopes to find and prosecute criminals from World War II. The other three suspects are Milovoj Aser, a former Croatian police commander, accused of persecuting Jews in Slavonska Pozega, Croatia; Charles Zentai, a Hungarian accused of killing an 18-year-old Jew in Budapest, and Aribert Heim, a doctor accused of conducting medical experiments on inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. All of the suspects are in their early 90’s. According to the Wiesenthal Center, Mr. Zentai lives in Australia, where he is fighting an extradition request by Hungary, and Mr. Aser lives in Austria. Mr. Heim’s location is unknown, but the center says it believes he is alive. In Hungary, the Novi Sad massacre is one of the most-discussed atrocities of the Nazi era, and it has featured prominently in books and films, including the 1966 movie “Hideg Napok,” or “Cold Nights.” In Novi Sad, too, memories are relatively fresh, at least among the elderly, of what happened from Jan. 21 to 23, in the middle of a bitter winter. Eva Volcevic, now 75, said a soldier came to her house and ordered her and her mother onto the back of a truck, which was crowded with dozens of other people. Like her, most of them were Jews. “That day all soldiers on the streets were drunk,” she said. “The truck was driving us around for a long time, making circles. We finally stopped at the former theater building. We went in and took seats as if we had been waiting for a play to begin.” People had their identities checked and were separated into two lines, she said. One line was allowed to return home, but the rest were taken to an area of the Danube known locally as the Strand, where they were shot. Mrs. Volcevic and her mother were allowed to go home. Artur Rozenstein, a former resident of Novi Sad who now lives in Budapest, was 6 years old at the time and was among those designated to be executed. “We were led to the shore and stood in a large group,” he said. “I remember my father holding me in his arms and watching as this big group of people, about 100 meters away, kept falling down. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized they were being shot.” He said an order came to cease the executions before it was his family’s turn. Two years later, 14 members of his family were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and were killed there, he said. His father died during a forced march to a labor camp; he and his mother went into hiding in Budapest. A memorial on the river bank marks where most of the people were killed. The inscription reads, “Memory is a monument harder than stone.” None of the witnesses interviewed were able to cite Mr. Kepiro’s involvement in the killings. Questioned about his role in the massacre by reporters in Budapest on Thursday, Mr. Kepiro said he was a lieutenant in the paramilitary police at the time, and denied taking an active part in the executions. “We had a list of people who had to be identified by us,” Mr. Kepiro said. “It was given by a committee which was dealing with the identification of people.” Soldiers, he said, and not members of the police, were responsible for the killings. He also said he had refused orders to take part in anything illegal. “I was the only one who asked for a written command. At the time of the massacre I was reluctant,” he said. “Prove that I was a war criminal.” The 1944 court verdict, handed out by the Wiesenthal Center on Thursday, also refers to Mr. Kepiro’s request for written orders, but said he cooperated with his commanders despite the fact that none were given. “To my mind he is a moral monster,” said Mr. Zuroff of the Wiesenthal Center. “All he was concerned about was covering his own back.” Tamas Kovacs, a leading expert on war crimes in Hungary, said it was unlikely that Mr. Kepiro did not know the people he was rounding up were destined to be shot. “It was a planned operation by the gendarmerie and the army. I can hardly believe he didn’t know what was happening there.” A prominent Hungarian historian, Krisztian Ungvari, said that it would be difficult after so much time to prove Mr. Kepiro’s guilt, and that it was unlikely that there would be much will to prosecute the case. “We are talking about someone who is accused of having command responsibility, but this is very difficult to prove so many years after the event,” he said. “Prosecutors also have to take into consideration that this man is 92. There are many more people who are more dangerous to citizens, so people won’t understand why he is being prosecuted.” Such suggestions anger Mr. Zuroff, who said Mr. Kepiro should face justice no matter his age. “Trust me, from tomorrow, Sandor Kepiro will do everything to look as sick and unfortunate as possible,” he said. “So if you see him with a limp or sitting in a wheelchair, just take a minute and think back to the victims of 1942.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/world/europe/01hungary.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The hungarian long feud with the Romanians and their being granted the country or area of transylvania after WW1 led to hated disputes, and the fact that Romania was liberated, or folded and taken by Russia forced Hitler to send in troops, or occupy Hungary. Although Romania had participated against the hated Russians, but because they had succumbed earlier, they where able to appease or aid in an attempt against Germany, where as they had sided but a few months earlier, and because Hungary was unable to land or territories reverted back into Romania's hands... a side note on Hungarian hatred for the soviet occupation was scene at a memmorial where as a T-34 was painted pink, re-painted by Russia, painted pink again, and finally removed and sent to a display in Russia
I have heard that while Hungarians were not sadistic to an excess they for some reason were big on rape. They were also ill equipped and poorly trained in many instances. I have never found many instances of atrocities, but I wouldn't give them vodka in a village full of women and girls. Keep in mind also that Hungarians are Magyars, originally from the steppes of Russia if I am not mistaken. Perhaps there was some animosity there because of that.
What about the Romanians and atrocities? I suppose that they werent considered as bad given the relative leniancy with which they were treated after they were "liberated"?
On Sandor Kepiro mentioned above: European Union BreakingNews - information on BreakingNews in EU Wednesday 24 September 2008 Serbia's war crimes prosecutor on Wednesday requested an investigation into a 94-year-old Hungarian suspected of committing genocide against Jews and Serbs in World War Two. Sandor Kepiro is suspected of taking part in a raid by Hungarian forces in January 1942 in northern Serbia "when, in an attempt to destroy members of the Jewish and Serbian national groups, they killed at least 2,000 of them," the prosecutor's office said. Serbia has started gathering evidence and archive data on Kepiro on a request from Efraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem.
*lol* where did you get your info from ? Most Hungarians don't drink vodka. If the drink shorts its mostly palinka. As for rape, well guess you can say that for every country that has been invaded. Rape goes hand in hand. From my understanding, when Russia invaded Hungary, they raped women and girls. That didn't stop till 1989 when they got there freedom. Can only speak from what I saw. I remember go back to Hungary for Christmas. ( My family are all Hungarians, Mum and Dad came to England in the '56 revolution ) We were at a dance in the next village. I was asked to dance by a Russian ranking officer, when I said no, everyone was scared and worried who where with me. No one says no to a Officer. The only way I got out of there was showing him my English passport, and threatening him with the embassy, newspapers, and everything else I could think of at the time. No way was I gonna dance with some officer from Russia. The Russians in '44 shoot my Grandfather in Sziberia. Ancsa Ancsa
In war time. all nations are animalic. Because defense sel country.or because invaded another country. I'm Hungarian.. my grandfather say the Ucraineans are very very happy when hungarians go there and ....... named hungarians "liberators" . Anyone from Kiev here?.... I trying to find my another grandfathers burial grove......in Kiev.
Two things come to mind. One, "All's fair in love and war"! Two, "War is hell". As previously mentioned, battle brings out the animal in all people especially when ethnic/national rivalry and historical grudges are concerned. I'd choose not to comment further on this subject because of MY national biases, although I must add that some of the previous comments seem to be somewhat dis-/misinformed!! Please do some surfing on the topic folks before making any judgement or conclusion!!!
The Shepherd account has it that the Hungarians were of a particularly homicidal bent in their anti partisan operations; War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans But Shepherd draws on German sources and as such it could be a case of "the pot calling the kettle black." Much of what happened in that murky time and place remains unknown-what is certain is that the populations of the Axis occupied areas took a precipitous drop-which is still felt unto this very day. JeffinMNUSA PS. Shepherd traces how the Axis policy degenerated into the creation of "dead zones" around Partisan strongholds-which seems to have been in effect the picking off of the weaker settlements on the periphery; as the guerrillas at the center became an impossible target for all but frontline forces, one must surmise. These dead zone raids were in effect plundering expeditions against mostly unarmed peasants, with the surviving inhabitants being hauled off into slavery and the slain being counted as "partisans". A gruesome and unenviable mission for any military force.
