Tag Archives: Hungary

“We have nothing to lose!”
The refugees, who arrived in the European Union are ready to revolt

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This spring I travelled to Austria and Hungary, spending a few days in Vienna, and then reaching Budapest by train. Budapest gave me the impression of a rather clean and sleepy city, a city of contrasts, where some buildings in the main street were in desperate need of repairs, while another building right beside it would glitter with newest uplifting. And overall, a rather friendly city to be in. But nothing spoke of the coming disaster in the form of the hoards of the refugees – both real and for-hire, who would swamp Hungary in only a month’s time…

In this light, the following article in “Argumenty i Fakty” seemed very enlightening. It is written by the travelling journalist Georgij Zotov and is the first article in a series of two, the second telling about the situation in Austria. The original can be read in the newspaper weekly “Arguments and Facts” number 39 9/23/2015. Translation of the second article, pertaining Austria, can be read here.

“We have nothing to lose!”
The refugees, who arrived to the European Union are ready to revolt

Crowds of desperate Arab refugees storm the “entrance” to the EU. However, it is not too late for Europe to join Russia to work together so as to destroy the “Islamic state.” Otherwise, the worst predictions will come true.

You know, it’s just a real apocalypse. Dirt. Everywhere heaps of rubbish. Barking of the police dogs. Thousands of people wander under the cold rain on rusty rail tracks – wet, hungry, exhausted, with children in their arms. At the police cordon volunteers gave them bananas, they sat down on the ground and ate them right there. A hastily built wall on the border did not improve the situation – the refugees climb over it, throwing clothing over the barbed wire. Old railway near the town Rёske (following it, the refugees travel to Hungary on foot) was blocked by a carriage. The Iraqis and Syrians on the Serbian side openly discuss the possibility to dig a tunnel: “Then try to make our way through the forest in Austria and Germany … It is better to sleep off during the day, and walk by night.” Police are trying to put the newcomers into buses to be sent to a filtration camp. Some accept it, others break through the cordon and walk on foot 170 kilometres (!) To Budapest: taxi drivers and drivers of private vehicles are forbidden to give them a lift. Along the road tired refugees sit in groups: to gain strength, then to get up and move on. Crawl they may have to do, but forward – to Europe.

“We will start a rebellion”

– Previously, local Gypsies took the Arabs along the secret paths, asking $500 per person – says the captain of the Hungarian police Attila Rakosi. – Now so many refugees have accumulated, that they can not be held back at a checkpoint. The border is now closed, but will it have any effect? Syrians and Iraqis have gone to a bypass – through Croatia. We do not register people, don’t even look though their passports – as the result, many of the “guests” from the Arab countries scattered across Europe. On many occasions I identify former soldiers among the refugees. When I frankly wonder against whom they fought, I get a scripted response – “for democracy and against Syrian President Assad”. But frankly, it is the “Islamic state” that is fighting against Assad… I have a strong feeling that I’m just losing my mind: perhaps we are witnessing the end of Europe.

Hastily equipped Hungarian refugee camp for refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa is located in the open field, three kilometres from the border. There Syrians, Libyans and Iraqis lodge in army tents, handed out blankets and food. But there is nowhere to wash – chronic shortage of water. There is a constant traffic jam at the gates – 4-5 buses stay there, crowded with refugees, having just arrived from Rёske. Police does not let journalists into the camp to talk to people, so I walk up to the fence. “I am here with the children for five days!” – complains 36-year-old Mustafa from the Libyan city of Sirte. – “My house was bombed already 4 years ago during NATO air raids, I lived with relatives, but we had to run here because of the attack on Sirte from the “Islamic state.” We were promised to be taken to Germany, but persistent rumours of deportation back to Serbia are spreading. If this happens, the rebellion will rise … We have nothing more to lose!”

“Throw them into the sea?”

Officials privately admit: the situation is dreadful. Hungary is not prepared, there is the danger of epidemics: people live on the ground, in unsanitary conditions, do not wash. I’ve seen a lot of camps in Iraq, where the Kurdish survivors of ISIS live – there things are organized much better. Here it’s a mess, oceans of dirt, piles of garbage. It is clear: Europe did not fully believe in the influx of the refugees.

– There have already been cases where the elderly have died – says the Hungarian volunteer Maria Hedek. – They cross the border, lay down, and do not get up. There is a lack of medicines, there is no funding: The EU promised the Hungary money, but not really helped. Brussels do not care about our problems. This is interesting: Americans and the British fought in Iraq, Libya was bombed by the Italians and French, militants in Syria were trained all of them together, while the Hungarians must take responsibility for this. 10 thousand refugees come to Rёske every day… and what should the police do: take them back to Greece and to drop back into the sea? It is necessary to destroy the ISIS, pounce on the terrorists together – and necessarily with the help of Russia.


The main ways of refugees into Europe. Infographics

Inside the underworld

What the emotional Libyan Mustafa warned about, happens in the evening. The refugees walk out of the camp gates in Rёske and in front of the bewildered guards scatter in all directions, while about a thousand of their “colleagues” from Serbia are storming the Hungarian fence. Stones are thrown at the police, the guardians of order respond by firing tear gas, even though there are lots of children in the crowd. We hear screaming and children crying, the refugees are in full frenzy, break through the barriers and begin beating the police, those respond with batons. Spray of blood scatter around, giving the feeling that I am in one of the circles of hell. Women throw children over the barbed wire: “Let at least them get into the EU!” An hour later the refugees are finally being pushed back, and wiping broken faces, they use the foulest words about Europe. Residents of Rёske watch the battle with the outright resignation. “You see how much trash there is all around?” – sighs a local farmer. – “The town turned into a dustbin. Why not ask the refugees to clean up after themselves? But the authorities piled everything on us, the service can not cope with cleaning up of the surrounding area. Leftovers are rotting everywhere, dirty clothes lying lying around.”

…The night only confirms the thought of apocalypse. Howling of dogs is heard, refugees along the borders of the EU lit fires – and there is no end to them in sight. The US adventure with the overthrowing of the rulers of Iraq and Libya, as well as US support for the civil war in Syria and Yemen has forced Europe to spit blood, and this is just the beginning. “Islamic state” is not held back by anyone – it can easily spread to Egypt and Turkey, and Jordan… And then absolute “fun” will start. It is still not too late for Europe to reach out to Russia: so as by joining forces in Syria, together pounce on militants of ISIS. Otherwise Apocalypse will become a reality. Being in Rёske, you realize this with specially clarity.

The Hungarian Amnesia

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Below is my translation of an article by Georgij Zotov, published in “Argumenty i Fakty” on the 13th of February 2015:

Despite the fact that Hungary joined Hitler and attacked the USSR, the position of the local historians is often the same: in 1945 the country became a “victim of Soviet tyranny.” Is this true? An “AiF” observer is trying to make sense of the situation.

In number 3 of “AiF” we published a report from Poland “The Sorrow of a Warsaw Woman” (English translation here): why Polish politicians and the media ignored the memory of Soviet soldiers who liberated Warsaw. The article caused an unprecedented surge of responses and questions from readers: how do things stand with memory in other European countries? In this regard, commemorating the 70th anniversary of Victory, “AIF” begins a series of reports from European capitals that the Red Army occupied after Warsaw: on February 13, 1945 it liberated Budapest.

Soldier with PCA was removed

– Of course, we are absolutely not like Poles – a freelance journalist Laszlo Kovacs, who in 1981-1986 studied in the USSR, politely starts the conversation. – In Hungary, there is no general negative attitude towards Russia, our Prime Minister is in favour of the construction of the “South Stream” and the cessation of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions. However, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, our media since 1989, hammered into people’s minds the same thing, that in 1945 the evil Russians came here and brought on tips of their bayonets the communist regime. We tend to forget that in fact it was Hungary that joined Hitler and declared war on the Soviet Union and sent to the Eastern Front hundreds of thousands of soldiers – during the Battle of Stalingrad a whole Hungarian army perished there. We took the land of the neighbours in Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia. In just one year the Hungarian police and SS together with the Germans destroyed 450,000 local Jews and 28,000 Gypsies. It’s just awful. The Red Army saved Hungarians from becoming a Nazi monsters.


Before and after: a monument to our soldiers completely anonymised. Photo: RIA Novosti, AIF / Georgy Zotov

And what is the gratitude for the salvation? Stepping carefully on the steep stairs, I climb Mount Gellert: in 1947 there was a monument to 80,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the battle for the capital of Hungary. You can see in my photos what’s left of it – a bronze figure of a soldier with the PCA has been removed, five-pointed star is removed, the names of all 146 who died in the battle for Gellert carefully erased from the marble stella – a monument was simply made impersonal. And not far from another obelisk to the soldiers of the USSR in the center of Budapest (at Freedom Square), there is even a monument to… an ally of Hitler – dictator Miklos Horthy. And even though this initiative is not coming from the government, but from the far-right party “Jobbik”, the closeness is quite disgusting.

– I want to emphasize – the installation of a bronze likeness of Horthy has caused a storm of protest in Budapest!, explains historian Istvan Hegedyush. – Yes, it should be recognized: Hungary acted badly when it comes to the monument on Gellert Hill – in the nineties the politicians were vying to portray themselves as fighters against “communist tyranny.” Hungarians then tempered… signed an agreement with the Government of the Russian Federation on the status of military graves: the graves of the soldiers are looked after, kept clean, fresh flowers are put there. Recently, we have restored the Soviet military cemetery Kerepesi Cemetery and invited relatives of soldiers buried there to visit Hungary without a visa. Hundreds of young people are involved in scouting forces, searching for the remains of the Red Army, so as to bury them with honour. But, of course, the attitude of the Hungarians to the Victory has strongly been influenced by the sense of offence, as a popular uprising in 1956 was drowned in the blood by your army. Then many viewed Russians not as liberators Russian from Nazism, but as occupiers.


Hungary’s capital in ruins. Restoration will be done at the expense of the USSR. Photo: RIA Novosti / I. Ozersky

The revolution, suppressed on Khrushchev’s orders, cost the Hungarian people 2652 killed citizens. The war on Hitler’s side claimed the lives of 300,000 Hungarian soldiers and 600,000 civilians – 10 percent (!) Of the total population. This is not to mention the following: the Soviet Union “shelved” the facts of Hungary’s participation in punitive operations in 1941-1944 in our country. Executions of women, burnt villages, the executions of the partisans, torture of prisoners of war – tens of thousands of victims. Documents are still kept in Russian archives: take only one case among many. On May 28, 1942 Hungarian soldiers shot 350 people in the village of Svetlov in Bryansk region “for helping the partisans”. Peasant woman gave E. Vedeshina gave testimony about it, the punishers killed her four children – 11, 8, 5 and 1 year(!) old. She miraculously survived, lying in a hole under the children’s corpses. Why am I saying this? Seems like we must forgive these kinds of atrocities, but our mistakes in Eastern Europe, no one at all forgets and is still reminding us about at every step.

“There’s nothing to thank for”

It can hardly be disputed, that after the Victory, Stalin established a regime, unpleasant for most Hungarians. However, in 1945 the Soviet Union didn’t treat Hungary as a country-aggressor (which it had the rights to do): reparations were symbolic, unlike Germany, the state was not dismembered, the government of the USSR financed the rise of the capital of Hungary from the ruins in 1950-1960s, rebuilt five bridges across the Danube. Maybe these facts should be remember too along with the “tyranny”? But no. Supporters of the label of “Soviet occupation” are ill with an interesting kind of amnesia: everything that the Soviet Union did wrong, they remember very well, but what was good, is forgotten.

After 70 years, Hungary views its liberation differently than Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States: the war with the monuments has seized, and the former SS men have no respect. Although the theme of Victory remains difficult for the local community. Hungarian Embassy in Russia, once promising to help with the interview on the topic of February 13, 1945, didn’t find a single person(!) who wanted to comment on this event, and I had to look to the interlocutors. Often we hear such opinions: “It’s enough to reproach Russian for past, but also there’s nothing to thank Russia for”. Fortunately, there are enough people with a sense of gratitude living in Hungary – the descendants of the Jews saved from the concentration camps, veterans from among thousands of Hungarian military who switched to the side of the Red Army in 1945, the participants of the anti-fascist organizations. IT will be them, who will put flowers on the graves of Soviet soldiers on the anniversary of the liberation of Budapest. Only those who wish so themselves are ill with amnesia in Eastern Europe…