„Banished from Home” is the title of a new temporary exhibition at the House of Terror Museum. The exhibit presents photographs and documents concerning the treatment and movements of ethnic Hungarians in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. In a fiercely disputed history with ramifications lasting up to the present day, this exhibition is a surefire way to gain insight into contemporary Hungarian politics.Founded in 1918 during the Treaty of Trianon following the devastation of the First World War, the territories that formed Czechoslovakia included lands populated almost entirely by ethnic Hungarians, mostly in the southern parts of Slovakia. Despite having signed away these territories in the treaty, the Hungarian government protested the fact and spent most of the period between the wars attempting to peacefully reclaim what they had lost, to no avail. Their chance came with the onset of WWII, when Hungary was granted their claims to land in exchange for alignment with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. During a time of intense turmoil in the area during and immediately following the defeat of the Axis powers by the Soviet Union, Czech President Eduard Beneš, in exile in London, issued a series of decrees regarding the treatment of hundreds of thousands of Germans and tens of thousands of Hungarians, both of whom he regarded as „collectively guilty” for the actions of their governments, branding them war criminals.
The period between 1945-48 saw first the stripping of citizenship and property rights, forced resettlement to far-flung parts of the Czechoslovak countryside and unilateral expulsion of anyone deemed „war criminals”, all due to the Beneš Decrees. In these violent years Czechoslovakia expelled countless Germans unilaterally, while a demand by the Western Allied powers declared the necessity of a population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which due to repeated delays did not occur until April of 1947. Before the worst parts of the Beneš Decrees were cancelled in 1948 for Hungarians with the arrival of Soviet domination of the region, untold thousands of people were moved from their homes, now referred to „The Hungarian Tragedy.”
Stop into the House of Terror Museum to find out more about this extremely controversial issue.
Time: Opens September 28th
Place: House of Terror Museum
1062 Budapest, Andrássy út 60.
Open weekdays 10am-6pm, weekends 10am-7:30pm, closed Monday.
www.terrorhaza.hu