Archívum - A Heves Megyei Levéltár közleményei 19. (Eger, 2010)

TANULMÁNYOK, KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Gebei Sándor: Lengyel katonai menekültek Egerben (1939–1944) • 215

Sándor Gebei: Polish soldier refugees in Eger (1939-1945)

The author presents a significant episode of the town's history on the basis of contemporary documents and special literature. Since data on national level is also published, the reader can get an exact basis for comparison for the situation of Eger. In September 1939 when the Nazi Gennan amiy invaded Poland, approximately 60.000 Polish citizens (including soldiers, civilians, single people and families) took refuge in Hungary. The number of Polish refugees in Romania was more than 100.000!). In Hungary there were 140 camps taking in Polish soldier refugees including the amiy camp in Eger. Seven-hundred fifty Polish officers and under-officers of the Polish Officers Camp were housed in the castle of Eger. In accordance with Chapter II article 11 of the 1907 Treaty of the Hague, they were treated by the Hungarian government as non-belligerent parties therefore not as prisoners of war but as internees.

The reader of this study will have a chance to take a look at the everyday life of the officers' camp. The lively descriptions enable us to see how the Polish refugees could gradually assimilate into the life of the town of Eger. The Hungarian authorities granted unlimited freedom to the internees so the Polish people in Eger often found themselves in the spa, libraries, theaters. They set up a "Polish officer internees' camp theater" and a choir. They held public performances, their cultural programs were announced on billboards all over the town. After Hungary was occupied by the German army and and then when the Arrow Cross Party came to power, the situation of the Polish internees became uncertain. The government headed by Ferenc Szálasi intended to move these internment camps, including the one in Eger, to the west. Not one element of this plan was realized because on the one hand Lajos Korossy the commander of the camp in Eger sabotaged the order, on the other hand he connived at the fact that the internees "disappeared". Some of them were actually hiding in the Valley of beautiful women (Szépasszonyvölgy), in Szilvásvárad, etc., or found shelter with families in Eger during the critical days.

The official repatriation started in spring 1945 under the control of the Soviet army that first liberated then occupied Hungary. The process of repatriation finished on August 1946.

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