Hungarian Group
Immigration waves in Hungary between 1945 – 1955
World War II, subsequent peace treaties, evictions, and forced settlements resulted in further migration flows, significantly modifying the ethnic map in central and eastern Europe. Some 200,000 ethnic Germans were evicted from Hungary, and 73,000 Slovaks left Hungary as part of an "exchange of population." The number of those leaving Hungary in the three years following the end of the war is estimated to have exceeded 100,000. At the same time, 113,000 ethnic Hungarians were resettled in Hungary from Czechoslovakia, 125,000 from Transylvania, 45,500 from Yugoslavia, and 25,000 from the Soviet Union
Following the Communist takeover in 1947, the borders were closed. The state prohibited migration; illegal departure from the country and failure to return home from abroad became a crime.
The borders opened briefly in 1956 as part of that year's uprising against the Communist government. Over a period of just three months, nearly 200,000 people fled the country and made their way through Austria. Most eventually settled in the U.S., but the rest scattered across some 50 other countries.
After World War II, thousands of Hungarian Displaced Persons arrived in Australia. After the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 the Australian Government offered settlement assistance to around 14,000 Hungarian refugees. Many of these migrants made significant contributions to various aspects of Australian life and to their ethnic Hungarian community.
The circumstances of the third wave of emigration had much in common with the first wave. In 1956, Hungary was again under the power of a foreign state, this time the Soviet Union, and again, Hungarians rose up in revolution. Like the 1848 revolution, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution failed and led to the emigration of 200,000 "56-ers" fleeing persecution after the revolution, 40,000 of whom found their way to the United States.
World War II, physical devastation, economic collapse and gradual takeover by a communist dictatorship in Hungary. Australia welcomed about 15,000 refugees officially termed Displaced Persons recruited from the International Refugee Organisation's refugee camps, mainly in Austria.
Immigration to Hungary did not end with World War II. The civil war that followed in Greece launched one of the largest waves of Greek emigration in the modern era, sending some 7,000 Greek refugees to Hungary. Most of them settled in a village near Ercsi named Beloiannisz after Nikos Baloyannis, the Communist resistance leader, which was built for this very purpose in 1950.
Sources:
texts:
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/hungary-transit-country-between-east-and-west
http://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02185/html/207.html
https://museumvictoria.com.au/origins/History.aspx?pid=25&lang=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Australians
http://www.hungarianreview.com/article/20160114_migrations_in_hungarian_history_part_i
pictures:
http://www.c-and-e-museum.org/Pinetreeline/metz/otherm2/otherm2-16e.html
Réka Fekete
Petra Szerdahelyi
Donát Remport
