Karoly-The Hungarian Communist Tragedy

Book excerpt: This is the story of Karoly, a man whose family tried to save Jewish refugees from the clutches of German troops advancing from the west and the advancing Russians Red Army and their Romanian allies to the east. Karoly was used as human-shield by Romanian 'liberators' in Hungary. When, after the war, Hungary was under Russian communist control, he was arrested for being part of the Smallholder's Youth Party, a farmer's union. He was transferred to Marianosztra where he was given the option of starvation rations or working as a miner in a forced labour camp. Karoly worked in a coalmine until he escaped the regime in 1956. This is the story of a man who cheated death and suffered unimaginable privations before escaping to England to start again from nothing, a broken enfeebled refugee who rebuilt his life through hard work and determination.