Karoly from Hungary

Book excerpt: This is the story of Karoly, a man whose family protected Jewish refugees trying to escape the advance of Nazi Germany, from the west, and the advancing of the Russian, Red Army, and their Romanian allies, to the east. Karoly was forced to be a human-shield by the Romanian army liberators. When, after the war, Hungary was under Communist control, he was sent to prison. Karoly was committed, as a political prisoner, for being a member of the Independent Small-holders Party, the communist party's only serious political rival. Under the communist regime anyone who held authority in the community was a threat and Karoly was arrested under a trumped up charge. He was imprisoned in Márianosztra where he was given the option of starvation or working as a miner in a forced-labour-camp. Karoly worked in a coalmine until he escaped the cruel communist regime in 1956. This is the story of a man who cheated death and suffered terrible privations before escaping to England to start again from nothing.