Levéltári Közlemények, 92. (2021)

Emigráció, ki- és betelepítések - Krisch András: A hűség „jutalma”. A németek kitelepítése Sopronból, 1946

Emigráció, ki- és betelepítések

Andräs Krisch

THE “REWARD” OF LOYALTY The expulsion of the Germans from Sopron,

1946

In 2021, we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the plebiscite in Sopron

and

the 75th anniversary of the expulsion of the Germans from Sopron.

This

paper describes the latter sequence of events, the path to the expulsion and the consequences that still affect us today. After the Second World War, the Hungarian government’s deportation decree declared collective guilt for the entire German population of the country. In Sopron,

a

local movement was immediately launched to rescue at least some of the Germans living in the town, but these attempts at exoneration proved futile. The collective punishment of the Germans in Sopron

is

particularly unjust, since without its civilised strata, the area would not have remained with Hungary in the 1921 referendum. In “gratitude” they were expelled twentyfive years later. For the generations born in Germany, Hungary, the land of their ancestors, in many cases reduced only to a tourist destination.

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