Background:  The Red Army deported between 360,000 and 400,000 Hungarian Royal Army soldiers and between 200,000 and 240,000 civilians of Hungarian nationality to labor camps in the Soviet Union from September 1944 until the middle of 1945.

A further 300,000 Hungarian Royal Army soldiers fell into U.S., British and French captivity in the spring of 1945. All of these soldiers returned to Hungary by the summer of 1946. Life in the camp everywhere meant misery, vulnerability, hopelessness and mass death.

Soviet officials began authorising the release of Hungarian prisoners of war only after the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace with Hungary in February 1947, repatriating 100,288 Hungarian POWs by the end of the latter year, 84,310 in 1948 and around 215,000 more over the subsequent few years.

Therefore, around one-third of the roughly 600,000 Hungarian Royal Army soldiers and civilians of Hungarian nationality that the Red Army deported to the Soviet Union in 1944 and 1945 never returned to Hungary and are presumed to have died in captivity.

Soviet POW over 18 months 1945-1947

Endre as a captured war prisoner at the siege of Budapest in 1945, was sent to Uszmány, a Russian Prisoner Of War camp settlement 65 km northeast of Voronezh, the Voronezh-Gryaz railway line along  and  was then handed back to the Soviet run Hungary government (gulag Camp No. 176).

DATABASE ONLINE REFERENCE : 2 POW CAMPS  POST WW2 THAT HE WAS INTERNED IN.

POW Camp No. 95 Soviet Union (Russia)

The registration form of POW Camp No. 95 in Uszmány (Usmanь), and of the POW branch of the Ministry of Public Welfare in Debrecen, after his return home, both show his date of birth as 1894.

POW Camp No. 197 Moldovian Soviet Socialist Republic

Endre Kovacs was handed over to the 176th from the camp to the Hungarian government – передан из лагеря № 176 Венгерскому Правительству

POWs and civilians were handled by the NKVD’s Main Department for Affairs of POWs and Internees (known by its Russian acronym, GUPVI), with its own system of labour camps, similar to the Gulag. “One major difference with the GULAG system was the absence of convicted criminals in GUPVI”

After the fall of Budapest, all Hungarian officers were taken there.

LIVING CONDITIONS

The living conditions in the USZMÁNY POW camp were harsh and brutal. The camp was established by the Soviet authorities in 1945, and it held Hungarian and German prisoners of war, as well as civilians and political prisoners. It’s important to note that these conditions were not unique to USZMÁNY POW camp, but were common in many Soviet POW camps during World War II and the post-war period.

My grandfather wrote in the diary, “which it was the same as before: water soup, cabbage but surprisingly, with a portion of meat and the odd egg”.

The living and working conditions of the prisoners depended on the commanders, the guard staff and the relationship with the local population, as well as on the largely unknown “higher orders”.  Even so, my grandfather in his diary states that he was starving on many occasions and living conditions were harsh. Everywhere meant misery, vulnerability, hopelessness and a sense of mass death.

Endre returned home from the Uszmány officers’ prison camp in 1947, weighing only 45 kilograms.