May 1944 - Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Carpathian Ruthenia Transcarpathia (, ) is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast. From the Hungarian Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, conquest of the Carpathian Basin ...

(also called Carpatho-Rus, Subcarpathian Ruthenia, and Transcarpathia) was a region in the easternmost part of

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

which in September 1938 became an autonomous region within that country. On 15 March 1939 it declared its independence as the "Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine"; however, on that same day it was occupied and annexed by

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. Beginning in October 1944, the territory was occupied by the Soviet

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

and was briefly organized as , until in 1946 it was incorporated into the

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

. Between 1939 and 1944, 80,000 Carpathian Ukrainians perished.

Independence and subsequent annexation

In November 1938, under the

First Vienna Award The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on 2 November 1938 pursuant to the Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The arbitration and award were direct consequences of the previous month's Munich Agreement, whic ...

, which resulted from the

Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement was reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, French Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. The agreement provided for the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–194 ...

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and

Fascist Italy Fascist Italy () is a term which is used in historiography to describe the Kingdom of Italy between 1922 and 1943, when Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. Th ...

prevailed on the

Second Czechoslovak Republic The Second Czechoslovak Republic (Czech language, Czech and ), officially the Czecho-Slovak Republic (Czech and Slovak: ''Česko-Slovenská republika''), existed for 169 days, between 30 September 1938 and 15 March 1939. It was c ...

to cede the southern third of Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia to the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

. Between 14 and 15 March 1939, the

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

declared its independence while Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia creating the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexation, annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945), German occupation of the Czech lands. The protector ...

. On 15 March, Carpatho-Ukraine declared its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, with the Reverend Avhustyn Voloshyn as head of state. Hungary immediately occupied and annexed the new republic. The remnants of the Czechoslovak Army abandoned the newly-formed republic, and Carpatho-Ukraine tried to defend itself by local self-defence groups, organised by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as Carpathian Sich. On 18 March, resistance to the invasion ended. On 23 March, Hungary annexed further parts of eastern Slovakia west of Carpatho-Rus. The Hungarian invasion was followed by a few weeks of terror in which more than 27,000 people were shot dead without trial and investigation. Over 75,000 Ukrainians decided to seek asylum in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, almost 60,000 of whom died in

gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

prison camps.Today is the 80th anniversary of the proclamation of the Carpathian Ukraine

Ukrinform The National News Agency of Ukraine (), or Ukrinform (), is a state information and news agency, and international broadcaster of Ukraine. It was founded in 1918 during the Ukrainian War of IndependenceHungarian and the

Rusyn language Rusyn ( ; ; )http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2781/1/2011BaptieMPhil-1.pdf , p. 8. is an East Slavic language spoken by Rusyns in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, and written in the Cyrillic script. The majority of speakers live in Carpathian Rut ...

as official languages.

Persecution of the Jewish population

Beginning in 1939, the anti Jewish laws passed in Hungary were extended to the newly-annexed territories, including the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia. Then in the summer of 1941, Hungarian authorities deported about 24,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia to the Galician area of the occupied

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

under the guise of expelling alien refugees, but in practice most of those expelled were from families that had lived in the region for the previous 50–100 years, but their legal identification was problematic because of the numerous change of status quo. Also, the laws and regulations did not help them confirm their former Hungarian citizenship. Later, most of the deportees were handed over to German ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...

'' units at Kaminets Podolsk and machine-gunned over a three-day period in September 1941. A few thousand of the deportees never reached the massacre site but were instead abandoned in Galicia, in towns close to the massacre site such as Mielnitza-Podolsk (Mielnica). These deportees were forced to live in German-occupied Galicia and suffered the same fate as the Jews who were native to the area. Only a handful of these deportees survived until liberation by Soviet soldiers in summer of 1944. Hungarian authorities conscripted Jewish men of working age into slave labor gangs in which a high proportion perished. In March 1944,

Operation Margarethe In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by the Wehrmacht. This invasion was formally known as Operation Margarethe (Unternehmen Margarethe). Course of events Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, who had been in office from 1942, had the kno ...

had German forces overthrow the Hungarian government and install

Döme Sztójay Döme Sztójay ( sr-cyr, Димитрије Стојаковић, 5 January 1883 – 22 August 1946) was a Hungarian soldier and diplomat of Serb origin, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1944, during World War II. Biography Born in ...

as prime minister. In April 1944, 17 main ghettos were set up in cities in Ruthenia. 144,000 Jews were rounded up and held there. Starting on 15 May 1944, Jews were taken out of these sites to Auschwitz every day until the last deportation on 7 June 1944. By June 1944, nearly all the Jews from ghettos of Carpathian Ruthenia had been exterminated, together with other Hungarian Jews. Of more than 100,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, around 90,000 were murdered.

Transcarpathian Ukraine

Map of Ukraine political simple Oblast Transkarpatien

In October 1944, Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied by the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

army and the German and Hungarian military forces were expelled from the region. Merely two weeks after the entrance of the Soviet armed forces tens of thousands of Hungarian and German male civilians were deportated to the death camp of Svaliava (Szolyva). With the assistance of the Soviet military administration, the territory was temporarily organised as an independent transitional state, namely , and it remained as such until the territorial dispute between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union was settled in 1946.

Territorial dispute

A Czechoslovak delegation under František Němec was dispatched to the area which was to mobilize the liberated local population to form a Czechoslovak army and to prepare for elections in cooperation with recently established national committees. However, loyalty to a Czechoslovak state was tenuous in Carpathian Ruthenia. The

Czechoslovak government-in-exile The Czechoslovak government-in-exile, sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia (; ), was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee (; ), initially by Government of the Unit ...

led by President

Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1939 to 1948. During the first six years of his second stint, he led the Czec ...

issued a proclamation in April 1944 excluding from political participation former collaborationist Hungarians, Germans, and the Russophile Ruthenian followers of Andrej Brody and the Fencik Party (who had collaborated with the Hungarians). This amounted to approximately one-third of the population. Another one-third was communist, leaving one-third of the population as neutral. Upon arrival in the territory, the Czechoslovak delegation set up headquarters in Khust and on 30 October issued a mobilization proclamation. Soviet military forces prevented both the printing and the posting of the Czechoslovak proclamation and proceeded instead to organize the local population. Protests from Beneš's government-in-exile went unheeded. Soviet activities led much of the local population to believe that Soviet annexation was imminent. The Czechoslovak delegation was also prevented from establishing a cooperative relationship with the local national committees promoted by the Soviets. On 19 November, the communists, meeting in Mukachevo, issued a resolution requesting separation of the territory and the incorporation into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. On 26 November the Congress of National Committees unanimously accepted the resolution of the communists. The Congress elected the National Council and instructed that a delegation be sent to Moscow to discuss union. The Czechoslovak delegation was asked to leave the area. Negotiations between the Czechoslovak government and Moscow ensued. Both Czech and Slovak communists encouraged Beneš to resign on the territory. The Soviet Union agreed to postpone annexation until the postwar period to avoid compromising Beneš's policy based on the pre-Munich frontiers. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, in June 1945, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union signed a treaty ceding Carpathian-Ruthenia to the Soviets. The Czech, Slovak and Rusyn inhabitants were given the choice of Czechoslovak or Soviet citizenship. In 1946, the area became part of the

, as the

Zakarpattia Oblast Zakarpattia Oblast (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian: Закарпатська область), also referred to as simply Zakarpattia (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian: Закарпаття; Hungarian language, Hungarian: ''Kárpátalja'') or Transcar ...

('Transcarpathian

Oblast An oblast ( or ) is a type of administrative division in Bulgaria and several post-Soviet states, including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Historically, it was used in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The term ''oblast'' is often translated i ...

').

Impact on Hungarian population

The end of the war was a cataclysm for the ethnic Hungarian population of the area: 10,000 fled before the arrival of Soviet forces. Many of the remaining adult men (25,000) were deported to the Soviet Union; about 30% of them died in Soviet gulags. Deportation of the Hungarian and German adult male population started from 17 November 1944 to the Szolyva (Svalyava) concentration camp. Ethnic cleansing among Ruthenians started soon.Áron Máthé: The Ukrainien Puzzle Alapjogokért Központ, Budapest, 2023 As a result of war losses, emigration and extermination of Hungarian

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

, the Hungarian-speaking population of Carpathian Ruthenia decreased from 161,000 in 1941 (Hungarian census) to 66,000 in 1947 (Soviet census).

References

External links

A transport of Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia is taken off the trains and assembled on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base

{{WWIIHistory Eastern European theatre of World War II History of Carpathian Ruthenia

Politics of World War II Historical geography of Slovakia

1938 Events January * January 1 – state-owned enterprise, State-owned railway networks are created by merger, in France (SNCF) and the Netherlands (Nederlandse Spoorwegen – NS). * January 20 – King Farouk of Egypt marries Saf ...