Budapest conference marks deportations in communist era

The number of Hungarians aware of the deportations carried out by the communist authorities in the early 1950s is shockingly low, National Resources Minister Miklos Rethelyi said in Budapest on Tuesday.

Addressing a conference on the issue, the minister said that "collective amnesia, the biggest invention of the Kadar regime, still prevails."

The first wave of deportations, which started in June 1950, affected thousands of "class enemies" living along the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The second wave followed in the summer of 1951, when about 15,000 Budapest residents associated with the ruling elite of the previous regime were deported to rural areas, mostly to labour camps on the eastern Hortobagy puszta.

In late December Rethelyi and public administration minister Tibor Navracsics presented a draft resolution to parliament on keeping the memory of those deported and those who gave them shelter during the communist dictatorship.