Represija v Prekmurju med drugo svetovno vojno – primer internacije kolonistov iz okolice Dolnje Lendave v Sárvár

Abstract

REPRESSION IN PREKMURJE DURING WORLD WAR II: AN EXAMPLE OF INTERNMENT INTO SÁRVÁR

The article based on archive sources, literature and testimonies of internees describes the policy of the Hungarian authorities during World War II towards the colonists, settled near Dolnja Lendava by the Yugoslav‐Hungarian border in the context of the Yugoslav agrarian reform. After the Prekmurje region had been annexed to Hungary in April of 1941, the authorities confiscated all of the agrarian land expropriated in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the context of the agrarian reform, so it became the property of the state. Thus the colonists lost their means of survival. After the negotiations between Hungary and Italy, where the colonists had originated from, with regard to the extradition of the colonists failed, in June 1942 the Hungarian authorities interned 587 colonists from the surroundings of Dolnja Lendava in the Sárvár internment camp. Soon after their arrival to the camp, the children younger than 16 were taken to Bačka, where they remained until the end of the war, while more than 50 colonists decided to leave to the Independent State of Croatia. During the internment, 35 of the colonists from the surroundings of Dolnja Lendava died.