13— Return and emigration

At the end of the world war, liberated people returning home from the camps (having lost everything) found their former homes often occupied by strangers, and their clothes, possessions and valuables stolen. 

At the end of the world war, liberated people returning home from the camps (having lost everything) found their former homes often occupied by strangers, and their clothes, possessions and valuables stolen. 

The horror happened in full view of society, often with its active participation, and the survivors had to return to the country that had done this to them. Many were supported by Jewish organisations abroad, but reintegration remained a traumatic experience, and anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism did not disappear with the war. In many cases, compensation claims by Roma survivors were rejected by the authorities on the grounds that deportations were not due to racial persecution but to their own behaviour. Most of them probably did not even go as far as filing a complaint because of a lack of written documentation and fear of the authorities. Members of the LGBTQ community have also not received state compensation.

Many survivors chose to leave Hungary. Those heading west were sent to refugee camps, while those who wanted to emigrate to what is now Israel were turned back by the British authorities. Finally, in May 1948, the State of Israel was established, and in the following years tens of thousands of Jews emigrated from Europe. Photo by FP8

For a long time after the World War, the Nazis' total genocide was considered taboo in many European countries. The social process of coming to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust was slow to begin, and is still ongoing.

The "Greenhouse", the emigration department of the Foreign Interests Representation of the Swiss Embassy (Budapest V., Vadász utca 29., 1944) [Fortepan / Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zürich / Agnes Hirschi]"

BORBÁLA KLACSMANN

Holocaust Stories, Park Publishing House, 2023. 165-167

Municipal certificate for teacher Henrik Friedlander, Monor, 1946 - detail:

After his conscription in May 1944 and the deportation of his family in July 1944, his home was abandoned and unattended, and after his return home on 16 March 1945 he found it uninhabitable and completely looted, so it is likely that all his documents were lost or destroyed (...)

BERNÁTH GÁBOR-BRASSÓI VIVIEN-ORSÓS JULIANNA

Holocaust Stories, Park Publishing House, 2023. 165-167

Mrs Rudolf Krasznai, Friderika Kolompár's recollection in 2000:

We got home. (...) The next morning the women got up, and whoever still had the strength, made two houses. They went up to the village and got axes and saws from the peasants. The village magistrate came down and had the village throw them out: the poor people of the village came home, and whoever could help them, did. So they brought down some food and blankets. We could eat. (...)

BERNÁTH GÁBOR-BRASSÓI VIVIEN-ORSÓS JULIANNA

The European Roma Holocaust. Public Foundation for Research on Central and Eastern European History and Society, 2015, 102.

Piroska Peller in the 1996 film The Unburied Dead (in January 1945, Piroska's entire family was murdered in Lajoskomárom):

Look at me. (...) I have no one. I have no brother or sister. I have no brother or sister. I am alone. I have no one. (...) Let there never be a greater (trouble) in Hungary. There should never be such a big trouble, nowhere. Never.