Those Who Lived and Died Free

A line from the National Song, a hundred years after the War of Independence, carries an entirely different meaning.

My pastel work commemorates the Transylvanian soldiers and civilians who were taken into Soviet captivity after the Second World War.

In the autumn of 1944, the Hungarian population of Northern Transylvania was completely exposed to the arbitrariness of the advancing Soviet and Romanian armies. For Bucharest, reducing the number of ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania by every possible means was a central objective.

On 19 October 1944, the Romanian High Command issued a decree stating that “soldiers who had served in the Hungarian army and had returned to their homes in liberated Transylvania were to be regarded as prisoners of war and interned in camps.”

In September–October 1944, from Northern Transylvania occupied by the Red Army, an estimated 20,000–30,000 Hungarian civilians and several thousand Germans were deported. The regions most affected were Székely Land, Cluj (Kolozsvár), Torda, and the Hungarian population of Partium. The deportees ranged in age from 14 to 70, though most were between 20 and 40 at the time of their arrest.

In addition, approximately 20,000 Hungarian soldiers captured during the fighting in Transylvania — many of them of Transylvanian origin — were taken into Soviet captivity. Together with civilian detainees, the total number of Transylvanian Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union approaches 40,000.

The prisoners were dispersed among GUPVI sub-camps across the western territories of the Soviet Union. In most places there was insufficient food to sustain them. Even months after the prisoners’ arrival, the camps often lacked the necessary provisions.

Of the Transylvanian Hungarian civilian prisoners, roughly two-thirds — at most 13,000–14,000 people — survived captivity. They returned home gradually between the spring of 1945 and October 1949.

My painting depicts prisoners awaiting return and their relatives. The black background and ominous red lines emphasize deprivation and the vulnerability imposed by authoritarian power.

And those who never returned? In Petőfi’s words, they still rest in the soil of servitude.