Compensation for 1945 Czechoslovakia expellees on agenda

Budapest (MTI) – The government has again put on its agenda compensation for Hungarian nationals who were expelled from southern Czechoslovakia under the principle of collective guilt in 1945, Pál Völner, state secretary at the justice ministry, said on Saturday.

Völner noted that Hungary’s communist Rákosi regime had relinquished any claims for compensation to Hungarians that had been forced to leave their homeland, which had been the northern part of Hungary before the second world war, and added that “there is no point in waiting for the European Union to settle the issue”.

Between May and October 1945, some 170,000 Hungarians, as well as ethnic Germans, seen as responsible for the forced division of Czechoslovakia in 1938, were stripped of all their belongings and expelled from the country.

Hungary’s parliament declared April 12 a memorial day to deportees from Upper Hungary in 2012.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters