00:00:03
It is no coincidence that in
European wars the Balkans or the
00:00:09
Baltics have always been among
the points of critical conflicts.
00:00:15
Now such a war has human victims,
and in addition to the victims
00:00:22
there may be crowds of refugees,
and I am particularly sensitive
00:00:27
to this question, all the more
so because from 1938 to 39,
00:00:33
my father, on behalf of Paul Teleky,
worked as an asylum government
00:00:40
official in World War II.
During World War II,
until Hitler's occupation in 1944,
00:00:46
when he was arrested by the Gestapo.
This also meant that 200,000
00:00:53
refugees from Transylvania came
to Hungary and 60,000 refugees
from South Transylvania were here
00:01:00
until the end of the war.
So this refugee wave in Transylvania
00:01:07
was also part of this period.
- They lived in wagons, I believe.
- And these refugees
00:01:13
then were placed (so it was a huge operation)
and he was involved in the resettlement of
the Bukovina Szeklers too.
00:01:20
So that's when the Polish refugee
wave of 100,000 people came.
Then the French, English, German
00:01:27
came, Russians from concentration camps
and every year tens of thousands of
00:01:31
German children were also on holiday
in Transylvania with the Saxon
00:01:36
population, and it has to be mentioned
because so many times Hungary's role
00:01:41
in World War II comes to mind,
which I cannot discuss here in detail,
00:01:47
but I have to say that the housing,
support and humanist treatment of many
refugees, in line with the Geneva Convention,
00:01:53
was based on a great Hungarian tradition.
I think it is worth
00:01:58
talking about it and that is why
I have in my hand a French book. In 1943,
00:02:05
on the shore of Lake Balaton,
on the 14th of July,
00:02:13
a French military officer officer hoisted up
the French flag. - I was there.
00:02:21
And this also meant, of course,
that when the new wave
00:02:27
of refugees came from
somewhere in our neighbourhood,
00:02:31
but especially when they came from
the territory of former Yugoslavia,
00:02:37
Hungarians and not Hungarians.
The escape of Hungarians, Croatians,
Bosnians, then we simply thought
00:02:45
it was natural to take them
in and take care of them.
