A ‘45-ös emigráció első évei
The First Years of the 1945 Emigration

Summary/Abstract: The end of the Second World War found almost one million Hungarian citizens – both civilians and soldiers – beyond the country’s western borders, mainly on the territory of the crumbling Third Reich. The majority returned home in a short time, but about two hundred fifty thousand people – mainly military officers and civilian intellectuals, who feared the usually unjustified retaliation in Hungary – chose to emigrate, thus creating the group of the so-called Forty-Fivers. In the early days, the prisoners of war and the refugees struggled primarily for survival in the camps. Then, in 1948–1949, at the time of the establishment of the two German states, the lowering of the Iron Curtain, the communist takeover in Hungary and the stabilization of the international situation, seeing that they could not return to their homeland soon, they chose emigration and integration. At the same time, the Forty-Fivers have preserved their identity, their language, their traditions, and they have built a worldwide system of relationships. The present study presents the group composition of the Forty-Fivers as well as their fate after World War II.

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