State Secretary Honors Victims of Post-War Deportations from Czechoslovakia
Hungary commemorated the Day of Remembrance of the Hungarians expelled from the southern part of present-day Slovakia, with State Secretary for National Policy Árpád János Potápi saying that the Western idea of destroying and surpassing nations permeates Europe today. Potápi said that the expulsion of Hungarians from the region resulted from the idea of a unified nation-state which was entirely foreign to the Carpathian Basin’s history, and the misinterpreted nationalism of the time. He recalled that on April 12, 1947, wagons transporting expelled families left Czechoslovakia, which Hungary had no choice but to accept due to the so-called population exchange agreement. Potápi lamented that the expulsions and resettlements, approved by great powers, forced 15-20 million people in Central Europe to move, making it impossible to create smaller nation-states and resulting in human tragedies of deportations, expulsions, and population exchanges. Between 1947 and 1949, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians were resettled from Czechoslovakia, many of whom found themselves in far more difficult circumstances.
