William Penn Life, 2000 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2000-09-01 / 9. szám
Free at last Hungarian POW returns to Budapest 55 years after World War II Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press BUDAPEST (AP) -- After five decades in a Russian mental hospital, an elderly Hungarian is back in his homeland for the first time since he was sent to the Russian front in World War II. The elderly Hungarian, identified as András Tamás because of the name recorded for him at the Russian hospital, returned to Hungary Aug. 11. He has mentioned a different name as his own, but that information has been kept secret as authorities attempt to verify it. Tamás, 75, showed no emotion as the Hungarian airliner that brought him from Moscow landed in Budapest, a city he had not seen since 1944. Instead, all he wanted to know was when he would get a new leg to replace one amputated three years ago, according to Dr. Akos Barth, A Hungarian pyschiatrist who accompanied him from Moscow. "When we landed, I told him, 'Look, we are back in Hungary/" Barth said. "But there was no emotion." Tamás' arrival in Budapest marked the end of a strange and tragic saga that spans more than half a century, most of it spent in virtual isolation among people with whom he could not even communicate. Until he was taken Aug. 11 by bus to Moscow's airport, Tamás had not set foot outside the hospital in the Russian town of Kotelnich since Soviet secret police brought him there in 1947. He is believed to have been among the 150,000 Hungarian troops who fought under Nazi command at the Don River in 1944, where an estimated 10,000 Hungarians died. According to Russian records, Tamás was among prisoners of war sent by train from western Russia to a prison camp in Siberia. He seemed to be suffering from psychological problems, so guards took him off the train when it passed near Kotelnich and left him at the hospital, where he was forgotten. For years, no one knew who he was, and hospital staff mistook his Hungarian for gibberish. His fellow patients described him as "a loner, someone who keeps himself to himself." An encounter with a Hungarianspeaking Russian unlocked the mystery. Dr. András Veer, head of Hungary's National Psychiatric and Neurological Institute, visited him in the hospital and came away convinced Tamás was Hungarian. Hungarian authorities decided to issue him a passport and bring him home, even though no record of his birth has been found. Isolated from fellow Hungarians for so long, Tamás forgot many details of his early life, including the name of his mother, Hungarian authorities said. Now, that he is among other Hungarians, he is regaining his memory and his identity may be clarified soon. "I am in Hungary, in the capital," Tamás said when he read the Budapest inscription on a seal on his hospital sheet. "He actually recognized Gellert Hill and said its name when we drove past," Veer said. Since his arrival in Budapest, Tamás has been staying at the National Psychiatric and Neuorological Institute. He has undergone a thorough physical examination and will get reading glasses, dentures, a hearing aid and an artificial leg, Dr. Veér said. Tamás also has talked about his childhood, mentioning two small communities in eastern Hungary. The names of several people he said lived there have checked out, said Vujity Tvrtko, a television reporter who visited Tamás twice in the Russian hospital and befriended the elderly man. Tamás reads several newspapers each day and has a sense of humor. "When offered grapes, he said he'd rather have what you make from grapes," Tvrtko said. Doctors said they hope Tamás would be ready to leave the institution after two months, but added his discharge could happen in as little as one week. Tamás' case is not the only one of its kind. In 1989 Veer discovered a Hungarian woman living in England under similar circumstances. The woman, Mária Tanti, went to London in 1939 to work as a maid but suffered a mental breakdown when the bombing began. She was taken to a psychiatric hospital where she remained for 50 years until her return to Hungary in 1989, Veer said. Veer said a search was under way for other Hungarian POWs still in Russia. [WPE] Information for this story was also taken, with permission, from The Budapest Sun and The Budapest Sun Online. 6 HillUm Penn Life, September 2000
