Hungary in the war against the USSR - how the Hungarian “occupation groups” acted. Hungarian occupation forces in the USSR Partisan General Orlenko

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There was a fire burning brightly. Two Magyars held the prisoner by the shoulders and legs and slowly...

Sergey Drozdov. "Hungary in the war against the USSR."

Sometimes such operations turned into military clashes that were quite serious in scale. An example of one of these actions is the defeat of the partisan detachment of General Orlenko on December 21, 1941. The Hungarians managed to surround and completely destroy the partisan base.

According to Hungarian data, about 1,000 “bandits” were killed. The captured weapons, ammunition and equipment could load several dozen railway cars.
On August 31, 1942, the head of the Political Directorate of the Voronezh Front, Lieutenant General S.S. Shatilov sent a report to the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army A.S. Shcherbakov about the atrocities of the Nazis on Voronezh soil.

“I report on the facts of the monstrous atrocities of the German occupiers and their Hungarian lackeys against Soviet citizens and captured Red Army soldiers.

Units of the army, where the head of the political department, Comrade. Klokov, the village of Shchuchye was liberated from the Magyars. After the occupiers were expelled from the village of Shchuchye, political instructor Popov M.A., military paramedics Konovalov A.L. and Chervintsev T.I. discovered traces of the monstrous atrocities of the Magyars against the citizens of the village of Shchuchye and captured Red Army soldiers and commanders.

Lieutenant Salogub Vladimir Ivanovich, being wounded, was captured and brutally tortured. More than twenty (20) stab wounds were found on his body.

Junior political instructor Fyodor Ivanovich Bolshakov, seriously wounded, was captured. Bloodthirsty robbers mocked the motionless body of the communist. Stars were carved on his hands. There are several knife wounds on the back...

In front of the entire village, citizen Kuzmenko was shot by the Magyars because 4 cartridges were found in his hut. As soon as Hitler’s slaves burst into the village, they immediately began to take all the men from 13 to 80 years old and drive them to their rear.

More than 200 people were taken from the village of Shchuchye. Of these, 13 people were shot outside the village. Among those shot were Nikita Nikiforovich Pivovarov, his son Nikolai Pivovarov, Mikhail Nikolaevich Zybin, head of the school; Shevelev Zakhar Fedorovich, Korzhev Nikolai Pavlovich and others.

Many residents had their belongings and livestock taken away. Fascist bandits stole 170 cows and more than 300 sheep, taken from citizens. Many girls and women were raped. I will send an act on the monstrous atrocities of the Nazis today.”

I myself, an old man born in 1875, was also forced to hide in the cellar. There was shooting all over the village, buildings were burning, and Magyar soldiers were robbing our things, stealing cows and calves.” (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 561-561 rev.)

On May 20, Hungarian soldiers at the collective farm “4th Bolshevik North” arrested all the men. From the testimony of collective farmer Varvara Fedorovna Mazerkova:

“When they saw the men from our village, they said that they were partisans. And the same number, i.e. 20/V-42 grabbed my husband Mazerkov Sidor Borisovich born in 1862 and my son Mazerkov Alexei Sidorovich born in 1927 and tortured them and after this torture they tied their hands and threw them into a pit, then they lit straw and burned people alive in a potato pit. On the same day they not only burned my husband and son, they also burned 67 men.” (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 543-543 rev.)

Abandoned by residents fleeing from the Hungarian punitive forces, the villages were burned out. A resident of the village of Svetlovo, Natalya Aldushina, wrote:

“When we returned from the forest to the village, the village was unrecognizable. Several old men, women and children were brutally killed by the Hungarians. Houses were burned, large and small livestock were stolen. The holes in which our things were buried were dug up. There is nothing left in the village except black bricks.” (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 517.)

Thus, in just three Russian villages of the Sevsky region, at least 420 civilians were killed by the Hungarians in 20 days. And these are not isolated cases.

In June - July 1942, units of the 102nd and 108th Hungarian divisions, together with German units, took part in a punitive operation against the Bryansk partisans, codenamed “Vogelsang”. During the operation in the forests between Roslavl and Bryansk, punitive forces killed 1,193 partisans, wounded 1,400, captured 498, and evicted more than 12,000 residents.

Hungarian units of the 102nd (42nd, 43rd, 44th and 51st regiments) and 108th divisions took part in punitive operations against the “Nachbarhilfe” partisans (June 1943) near Bryansk, and “Zigeunerbaron” "in the areas of present-day Bryansk and Kursk regions (May 16 - June 6, 1942).
During Operation Zigeunerbaron alone, punitive forces destroyed 207 partisan camps, 1,584 partisans were killed and 1,558 were captured.”

The Hungarians failed to liquidate the Soviet bridgehead on the right bank of the Don, and failed to develop an offensive against Serafimovichi. At the end of December 1942, the Hungarian 2nd Army dug into the ground, hoping to survive the winter in its positions. These hopes did not come true.

On January 12, 1943, the offensive of the Voronezh Front troops against the forces of the 2nd Hungarian Army began. The very next day, the Hungarian defense was broken through, and panic gripped some units.
Soviet tanks entered the operational space and destroyed headquarters, communications centers, ammunition and equipment warehouses.

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The introduction of the Hungarian 1st Panzer Division and elements of the German 24th Panzer Corps did not change the situation, although their actions slowed the pace of the Soviet advance.
Soon the Magyars were completely defeated, losing 148,000 people killed, wounded and prisoners (among those killed, by the way, was the eldest son of the Hungarian regent, Miklos Horthy).

This was the largest defeat of the Hungarian army in the entire history of its existence. In the period from January 13 to January 30 alone, 35,000 soldiers and officers were killed, 35,000 people were wounded and 26,000 were captured. In total, the army lost about 150,000 people, most of its tanks, vehicles and artillery, all supplies of ammunition and equipment, and about 5,000 horses.

The 200,000-strong Hungarian army alone, consisting of eight divisions, then lost about 100-120 thousand soldiers and officers. No one knew how much exactly then, and they still don’t know now. Of this number, about 26 thousand Hungarians were taken into Soviet captivity in January 1943.

For a country of the size of Hungary, the defeat at Voronezh had even greater resonance and significance than Stalingrad for Germany. Hungary, in 15 days of fighting, immediately lost half of its armed forces. Hungary was unable to recover from this disaster until the end of the war and never again fielded groups equal in size and combat capability to the lost association.

The Hungarian troops were notable for their brutal treatment not only of partisans and civilians, but also of Soviet prisoners of war. Thus, in 1943, during the retreat from the Chernyansky district of the Kursk region, “Magyar military units took with them 200 prisoners of war from the Red Army and 160 Soviet patriots held in a concentration camp. Along the way, the fascist barbarians locked all these 360 people in a school building, doused them with gasoline and burned them alive. Those who tried to escape were shot.”

You can give examples of documents about the crimes of Hungarian military personnel during the Second World War from foreign archives, for example, the Israeli archive of the Yad Vashem national memorial of Holocaust and Heroism in Jerusalem:

“On July 12 - 15, 1942, in the Kharkeevka village of the Shatalovsky district of the Kursk region, soldiers of the 33rd Hungarian Infantry Division captured four Red Army soldiers. One of them, senior lieutenant P.V. Danilov's eyes were gouged out, his jaw was knocked to the side with the butt of a rifle, he was given 12 bayonet blows to the back, after which he was buried half-dead in the ground in an unconscious state. Three Red Army soldiers, whose names are unknown, were shot” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/497. L. 53.).

A resident of the city of Ostogozhsk, Maria Kaydannikova, saw how Hungarian soldiers on January 5, 1943 drove a group of Soviet prisoners of war into the basement of a store on Medvedovsky Street. Soon screams were heard from there. Looking out the window, Kaydannikova saw a monstrous picture:

“The fire was burning brightly there. Two Magyars held the prisoner by the shoulders and legs and slowly roasted his stomach and legs over the fire. They either raised him above the fire, or lowered him lower, and when he fell silent, the Magyars threw his body face down on the fire. Suddenly the prisoner twitched again. Then one of the Magyars thrust a bayonet into his back with a flourish” (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/494. L. 14.).

In the fall of 1944, all Hungarian armed forces (three armies) fought against the Red Army, already on the territory of Hungary. But the Hungarians remained the most faithful allies of Nazi Germany in the war. Hungarian troops fought with the Red Army until May 1945, when the ENTIRE (!) territory of Hungary was occupied by Soviet troops.

8 Hungarians were awarded the German Knight's Cross. During the Second World War, Hungary gave the largest number of volunteers to the SS troops. More than 200 thousand Hungarians died in the war against the USSR (including 55 thousand who died in Soviet captivity). During the Second World War, Hungary lost about 300 thousand military personnel killed, and 513,766 people were captured.

There were 49 Hungarian generals alone in Soviet prison camps after the war, including the Chief of the General Staff of the Hungarian Army.

In the post-war years, the USSR began repatriating captured Hungarians and Romanians, apparently as citizens of countries where regimes friendly to our country were established.

OWL SECRET 1950 Moscow, Kremlin. On the repatriation of prisoners of war and interned citizens of Hungary and Romania.

1. Allow the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (comrade Kruglov) to repatriate to Hungary and Romania:

a) 1270 prisoners of war and interned citizens of Hungary, including 13 generals (Appendix No. 1) and 1629 prisoners of war and interned citizens of Romania, on whom there is no incriminating material;

b) 6061 prisoners of war citizens of Hungary and 3139 prisoners of war citizens of Romania - former employees of intelligence, counterintelligence agencies, gendarmerie, police, who served in the SS troops, security and other punitive units of the Hungarian and Romanian armies, captured mainly on the territory of Hungary and Romania, since there is no material on them about their war crimes against the USSR.

3. Allow the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (Comrade Kruglov) to leave in the USSR 355 prisoners of war and interned citizens of Hungary, including 9 generals (Appendix No. 2) and 543 prisoners of war and interned citizens of Romania, including Brigadier General Stanescu Stoian Nikolai, convicted of participation in atrocities and atrocities, espionage, sabotage, banditry and large-scale theft of socialist property - before serving the sentence determined by the court.

4. Oblige the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (Comrade Kruglova) and the USSR Prosecutor's Office (Comrade Safonov) to prosecute 142 Hungarian prisoners of war and 20 Romanian prisoners of war for the atrocities and atrocities they committed on the territory of the USSR.

5. Oblige the USSR Ministry of State Security (Comrade Abakumov) to accept from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs 89 prisoners of war Hungarian citizens who served in the gendarmerie and police in the Transcarpathian and Stanislav regions, document their criminal activities and bring them to criminal responsibility.

Annex 1

LIST of prisoners of war generals of the former Hungarian army convicted by Military Tribunals for crimes against the USSR:

5.Clogs Laszlo Anton born 1895 General - Major
6.Feher Gezo Arpad born 1883 General - Major
7. Szymonfay Ferenc Ferenc born 1891 General - Major
8. Erlich Gezo Agoshton born 1890 General - Major
9.Ibrani Mihaly Miklos born 1895 General – Lieutenant

In addition to combat operations on the Eastern Front, the Hungarian army participated in the suppression of the partisan movement and punitive actions against civilians in the occupied territory of the USSR - in Belarus, Ukraine, as well as in the Bryansk and Kursk regions of the RSFSR.

Already on September 17 - October 3, 1941, 2 Hungarian infantry brigades and 8 German police battalions fought against Soviet partisans and encirclement in the Bryansk forests. During this operation, the Hungarians and Germans lost about 3,500 soldiers and officers killed and wounded.

Hungarian military on the streets of Soviet cities...

At the end of November 1941, Hungarian brigades began to arrive in Ukraine to perform exclusively police functions in the occupied territories. The headquarters of the Hungarian “Occupation Group” was located in Kyiv. Already in December, the Hungarians began to be actively involved in anti-partisan operations. Sometimes such operations turned into military clashes that were quite serious in scale. An example of one such action is the destruction of the partisan detachment of General Orlenko on December 21, 1941. The Hungarians managed to surround and completely destroy the partisan base. According to Hungarian data, about 1,000 “bandits” were killed.

The nature and methods of the actions carried out against the civilian population of the USSR can be judged from the testimony of the affected Soviet citizens.

A peasant from the village of Svetlovo, Sevsky district, Bryansk region, A.I. Krutukhin, reported: “Fascist accomplices of the Magyars entered our village of Svetlovo 9/V-42. “All the residents of our village hid from such a pack, and as a sign that the residents began to hide from them, and those who could not hide, they shot them and raped several of our women. I myself, an old man born in 1875, was also forced to hide in the cellar.... There was shooting throughout the village, buildings were burning, and Magyar soldiers were robbing our things, stealing cows and calves.”

Peasant woman from the same region V. Fedotkitna - “The Magyars arrived and began to gather us into one (nrzb) and drove us out to the village. Korostovka, where we spent the night in the church - women, and men separately at school. In the afternoon of 17/V-42 we were driven back to our village of Orlya where we spent the night and for tomorrow i.e. On 18/V-42 we were again gathered in a heap near the church where we were re-sorted - the women were driven to the village. Orlia Slobodka, and left the men with them.”

Peasant woman from the same area V.F. Mezerkova - “When they saw the men of our village, they said that they were partisans. And the same number, i.e. 20/V-42 grabbed my husband Mazerkov Sidor Borisovich born in 1862 and my son Mazerkov Alexei Sidorovich born in 1927 and tortured them and after this torture they tied their hands and threw them into a pit, then they lit the straw and burned them in a potato pit. On the same day they not only burned my husband and son, they also burned 67 men.”

A peasant from the same area, Z. S. Kalugin: “When my family and I noticed a moving convoy, all of us residents of our village fled to the Khinelsky forest. The old people who remained in the village were shot by the Hungarians."

Peasant woman of the same region E. Vedeshina - “It was in May on the 28th day of 42 years. I and almost all the residents went into the forest. These thugs also followed there. They are in our place, where we (nrzb) with our people shot and tortured 350 people, including my children who were tortured, daughter Nina 11 years old, Tonya 8 years old, little son Vitya 1 year old and son Kolya 5 years old. I remained barely alive under the corpses of my children."

Peasant woman from the same area N. Aldushina - “When we returned from the forest to the village, the village could not be recognized. Several old men, women and children were brutally killed by the Nazis. Houses were burned, large and small livestock were stolen. The holes in which our things were buried were dug up. There was nothing left in the village except black bricks. The women who remained in the village talked about the atrocities of the Nazis."

As a result, in just 3 villages of the Sevsky district of the Bryansk region, at least 420 civilians were killed by Hungarian soldiers in 20 days.

In June - July 1942, the anti-partisan operation “Vogelsang” was carried out in the forests between Roslavl and Bryansk. The battle group included a tank regiment of the 5th Wehrmacht division, units of the 216th Wehrmacht infantry division, units of the Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA), units of the 102nd and 108th Hungarian brigades - a total of about 6,500 people. During the operation, 1,193 partisans were killed, 1,400 were wounded, 498 were captured, and more than 12,000 residents were evicted.

This was followed by Operation Nachbarhilfe, carried out in June 1943 near Bryansk by the 98th Wehrmacht Division and the 108th Hungarian Brigade with the help of RONA units, and Operation Zigeunerbaron in a number of areas of the Bryansk and Kursk regions, in which May 16 - 6 June 1943. The XLVII Tank Corps of the Wehrmacht, the 4th, 7th, 292nd Wehrmacht Infantry Divisions, the 18th Panzer, 10th Motorized and 102nd Hungarian Brigades participated. During this operation, 207 partisan camps were destroyed, 3,192 partisans were killed and 1,568 were captured.

History teacher from the village of Novosergeevka, Klimovsky district, Bryansk region, M. S. Govorok “In our forests, a detachment (100 people) under the command of Nikolai Popudrenko fought with the 105th Hungarian Infantry Division of Aldy Zoltan stationed here, which was famous for its particular cruelty in the fight against partisans. .. At the beginning of July, the Hungarians decided to put an end to them and pulled large forces here, blocking the detachment in the Sophia Forest. The bloody battle continued for several days and nights. In a last desperate rush, the partisans managed to break out of the blockade with heavy losses. Unfortunately, the glorious commander Nikolai Popudrenko died three kilometers from Novosergeevka. His body was secretly taken away at night and transported to the civil cemetery of the farm. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and after the war the commander’s remains were reburied in Chernigov. But the enemy also suffered losses - dozens of birch crosses appeared in the center of the village. The enemy simply went wild from such impudence of the partisans. In the village of Parasochki on July 7, 83 people were shot within a few minutes - old people, women, children, even infants. Whole families (Saputo Evdokia and her 6 children, Irlitsa Fekla Yakovlevna and her 6 children, etc.). There were also victims in the village of Važice - 42 people. You have to be such inhumans that you wouldn’t even spare children! There is no data on the exact number of deaths; at that time there were many undocumented refugees. Our villages repeated the fate of Belarusian Khatyn.”

In May - October 1943, Hungarian aviation was involved in reconnaissance and bombing of the Sumy partisan formation under the command of S. A. Kovpak during his raid from Putivl to the Carpathians.

For 1941 - 1943 In Chernigov and surrounding villages alone, Hungarian troops took part in the extermination of 59,749 Soviet citizens.

After the retreat of German troops from the Bryansk and Kursk regions to the territory of Belarus, Northern Ukraine and Poland, the Hungarian occupation units here continued to fight against Soviet partisans and units of the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (UPA). Thus, on the border of the Brest and Volyn regions from May 21 to 25, 1944, Operation Gebrull was carried out, during which in the area northeast of the urban-type settlement of Shatsk and Lake Orekhovskoye, between the forces of the partisan brigade “For the Motherland” and the 2nd Hungarian The battle broke out with the reserve regiment. The Hungarians killed more than 350 people from among the partisans and the local population. During the punitive operation, 1,600 civilians were captured and used for construction work in the front line.

Hungarian troops were noted for their brutal treatment not only of partisans and civilians, but also of Soviet prisoners of war. Thus, in 1943, during the retreat from the Chernyansky district of the Kursk region, “Magyar military units took with them 200 prisoners of war of the Red Army and 160 Soviet patriots held in a concentration camp. Along the way, the fascist barbarians locked all these 360 people in a school building, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. Those who tried to escape were shot.”

There is other evidence:

- “On July 12 - 15, 1942, in the Kharkeevka farmstead, Shatalovsky district, Kursk region, soldiers of the 33rd Hungarian Infantry Division captured four Red Army soldiers. One of them, senior lieutenant P.V. Danilov, had his eyes gouged out, his jaw knocked to the side with a rifle butt, 12 bayonet blows to his back, after which he was buried half-dead in the ground in an unconscious state. Three Red Army soldiers, whose names are unknown, were shot.”

Actually, there was already a story about him, three years ago, but everything changes, people come, and it’s not always possible to keep up with everything. So let's repeat.

First, a little history.

Already on June 27, 1941, Hungarian planes bombed Soviet border posts and the city of Stanislav. On July 1, 1941, units of the Carpathian group with a total number of more than 40,000 people crossed the border of the Soviet Union. The most combat-ready unit of the group was the Mobile Corps under the command of Major General Bela Danloki-Miklos.

The corps included two motorized and one cavalry brigades, support units (engineering, transport, communications, etc.). The armored units were armed with Italian Fiat-Ansaldo CV 33/35 tankettes, Toldi light tanks and Hungarian-made Csaba armored vehicles. The total strength of the Mobile Corps was about 25,000 soldiers and officers.

By July 9, 1941, the Hungarians, having overcome the resistance of the 12th Soviet Army, advanced 60-70 km deep into enemy territory. On the same day, the Carpathian group was disbanded. The mountain and border brigades, which could not keep up with the motorized units, were supposed to perform security functions in the occupied territories, and the Mobile Corps became subordinate to the commander of the German Army Group South, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt.

On July 23, Hungarian motorized units launched an offensive in the Bershad-Gaivoron area in cooperation with the German 17th Army. In August, near Uman, a large group of Soviet troops was surrounded. The surrounded units were not going to give up and made desperate attempts to break through the encirclement. The Hungarians played almost the decisive role in the defeat of this group.

The Hungarian Mobile Corps continued its offensive along with the troops of the German 11th Army, participating in heavy fighting near Pervomaisk and Nikolaev. On September 2, German-Hungarian troops captured Dnepropetrovsk after fierce street fighting. Hot battles broke out in the south of Ukraine in Zaporozhye. Soviet troops repeatedly launched counterattacks. So, during the bloody battle on the island of Khortitsa, an entire Hungarian infantry regiment was completely destroyed.

Due to the increase in losses, the warlike fervor of the Hungarian command decreased. On September 5, 1941, General Henrik Werth was removed from his post as Chief of the General Staff. His place was taken by infantry general Ferenc Szombathely, who believed that it was time to curtail the active military operations of the Hungarian troops and withdraw them to protect the borders. But it was possible to achieve this from Hitler only by promising to allocate Hungarian units to guard supply lines and administrative centers in the rear of the German army.

Meanwhile, the Mobile Corps continued to fight at the front, and only on November 24, 1941 did its last units leave for Hungary. Corps losses on the Eastern Front amounted to 2,700 killed (including 200 officers), 7,500 wounded and 1,500 missing. In addition, all tankettes, 80% of light tanks, 90% of armored vehicles, more than 100 vehicles, about 30 guns and 30 aircraft were lost.

At the end of November, “light” Hungarian divisions began arriving in Ukraine to perform police functions in the occupied territories. The headquarters of the Hungarian “Occupation Group” was located in Kyiv. Already in December, the Hungarians began to be actively involved in anti-partisan operations. Sometimes such operations turned into military clashes that were quite serious in scale. An example of one such action is the defeat of the partisan detachment of General Orlenko on December 21, 1941. The Hungarians managed to surround and completely destroy the enemy base. According to Hungarian data, about 1,000 partisans were killed.

At the beginning of January 1942, Hitler demanded that Horthy increase the number of Hungarian units on the Eastern Front. Initially, it was planned to send at least two-thirds of the entire Hungarian army to the front, but after negotiations the Germans reduced their demands.

To be sent to Russia, the 2nd Hungarian Army was formed with a total strength of about 250,000 people under the command of Lieutenant General Gustav Jan. It included the 3rd, 4th and 7th Army Corps (each with three light infantry divisions, similar to 8 regular divisions), the 1st Tank Division (actually a brigade) and the 1st Air Force (actually a regiment ). On April 11, 1942, the first units of the 2nd Army departed for the Eastern Front.

On June 28, 1942, the German 4th Panzer and 2nd Field Armies went on the offensive. Their main goal was the city of Voronezh. The offensive included troops of the 2nd Hungarian Army - the 7th Army Corps.

On July 9, the Germans managed to break into Voronezh. The next day, south of the city, the Hungarians reached the Don and gained a foothold. During the battles, the 9th Light Division alone lost 50% of its personnel. The German command set the task for the 2nd Hungarian Army to liquidate three bridgeheads remaining in the hands of Soviet troops. The most serious threat was posed by the Uryvsky bridgehead. On July 28, the Hungarians made their first attempt to throw its defenders into the river, but all attacks were repulsed. Fierce and bloody battles broke out. On August 9, Soviet units launched a counterattack, pushing back the advanced units of the Hungarians and expanding the bridgehead near Uryv. On September 3, 1942, Hungarian-German troops managed to push the enemy back across the Don near the village of Korotoyak, but in the Uryv area the Soviet defense held out. After the main forces of the Wehrmacht were transferred to Stalingrad, the front here stabilized and the battles took on a positional character.

On January 13, 1943, the positions of the 2nd Hungarian Army and the Italian Alpine Corps were attacked by troops of the Voronezh Front with the support of the 13th Army of the Bryansk Front and the 6th Army of the Southwestern Front.

The very next day, the Hungarian defense was broken through, and panic gripped some units. Soviet tanks entered the operational space and destroyed headquarters, communications centers, ammunition and equipment warehouses. The introduction of the Hungarian 1st Panzer Division and elements of the German 24th Panzer Corps did not change the situation, although their actions slowed the pace of the Soviet advance. During the battles in January-February 1943, the 2nd Hungarian Army suffered catastrophic losses.

All tanks and armored vehicles were lost, in fact all artillery, the level of personnel losses reached 80%. If this is not a defeat, then it’s difficult to call it anything else.

The Hungarians have inherited a great legacy. To say that they were hated more than the Germans is to say nothing. The tale that General Vatutin (low bow to him and eternal memory) gave the order “not to take Hungarians prisoner” is absolutely not a fairy tale, but a historical fact.

Nikolai Fedorovich could not remain indifferent to the stories of the delegation of residents of the Ostrogozhsky region about the atrocities of the Hungarians, and, perhaps in his hearts, threw out this phrase.

However, the phrase spread piece by piece with lightning speed. Evidence of this is the stories of my grandfather, a soldier of the 41st joint venture of the 10th division of the NKVD, and after being wounded - 81st joint venture of the 25th Guards. division page. The fighters, being aware of what the Hungarians were doing, took this as a kind of indulgence. And they treated the Hungarians accordingly. That is, they were not taken prisoner.

Well, if, according to my grandfather, they were “especially smart,” then the conversation with them was also short. In the nearest ravine or forest. “We teased them... When they tried to escape.”

As a result of the battles on Voronezh land, the 2nd Hungarian Army lost about 150 thousand people, virtually all its equipment. What was left was already rolled out on the soil of Donbass.

Today, in the Voronezh region there are two mass graves of Hungarian soldiers and officers.

This is the village of Boldyrevka, Ostrogozhsky district, and the village of Rudkino, Khokholsky district.

More than 8 thousand Honved soldiers are buried in Boldyrevka. We haven’t been there, but we will definitely visit for the 75th anniversary of the Ostrogozh-Rossoshan operation. As well as the town of Korotoyak, the name of which is known to virtually every family in Hungary. As a symbol of grief.

But we stopped in Rudkino.

The memorial is always closed, it is opened only when delegations from Hungary arrive. But there are no barriers for aircraft, so we used a drone.

It’s difficult to say how many Hungarians are lying here. On each plate there are 40-45 names. It is possible to count how many slabs there are, but it is difficult. I tried. It turned out that approximately 50 to 55 thousand are buried here. And plus 8.5 thousand in Boldyrevka.

Where are the others? And everything is there, along the banks of the Father Don.

The moral here is simple: whoever comes to us with a sword will die anyway.

Some people find it unpleasant that cemeteries of Hungarians, Germans, and Italians exist like this. So well-groomed.

But: we Russians do not fight with the dead. The Hungarian government maintains (albeit with our own hands) the cemeteries of its soldiers. And there is nothing so shameful about this. All within the framework of a bilateral intergovernmental agreement on the maintenance and care of military graves.

So let the Hungarian warriors lie, under marble slabs, in a rather beautiful corner of the Don bend.

As an edification to those who suddenly think of utter stupidity.

“Hungarian lackeys,” as they were called in Soviet reports, committed atrocities everywhere. 1942, Voronezh region. After the liberation of many Voronezh villages, the Red Army saw the following picture: the corpses of captured soldiers and officers, mutilated and brutally tortured by the Magyars. They were stabbed with bayonets, stars were carved on their bodies... The Hungarians raped girls and women.

A similar picture is described in reports from the Bryansk region (1942). Residents of villages who did not have time to hide (and they preferred to hide from the Magyars) were shot by Hungarian soldiers; violence against women was also par for the course for the invaders. The Hungarians robbed civilians and stole livestock. There is documentary evidence that the Magyars burned people alive on suspicion of involvement in the partisans. The victims of such Magyar atrocities numbered in the hundreds.

In the summer of 1942, two Hungarian divisions, together with the Germans, as a result of the punitive operation “Songbird” (“Vogelsang”), killed over a thousand partisans in the Bryansk forests, and the occupiers evicted more than 10 thousand civilians from nearby villages. The names of the subsequent bloody “cleansing operations” in which the Hungarians participated were no less poetic - “Zigeunerbaron” (“Gypsy Baron”), spring-summer 1942, Bryansk and Kursk regions, “Nachbarhilfe” (“Neighbourly Help”) - summer of 1943, Bryansk... Only during the implementation of the “Gypsy Baron” did the Magyars destroy over 200 partisan camps, kill more than one and a half thousand people’s avengers and capture the same number.

Sergey Drozdov. "Hungary in the war against the USSR."

At the end of November 1941, “light” Hungarian divisions began arriving in Ukraine to perform police functions in the occupied territories. The headquarters of the Hungarian “Occupation Group” was located in Kyiv. Already in December 1941, the Hungarians began to be actively involved in anti-partisan operations.
Sometimes such operations turned into military clashes that were quite serious in scale. An example of one of these actions is the defeat of the partisan detachment of General Orlenko on December 21, 1941. The Hungarians managed to surround and completely destroy the partisan base.
According to Hungarian data, about 1,000 “bandits” were killed. The captured weapons, ammunition and equipment could load several dozen railway cars.
On August 31, 1942, the head of the Political Directorate of the Voronezh Front, Lieutenant General S.S. Shatilov sent a report to the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army A.S. Shcherbakov about the atrocities of the Nazis on Voronezh soil.

“I report on the facts of the monstrous atrocities of the German occupiers and their Hungarian lackeys against Soviet citizens and captured Red Army soldiers.
Units of the army, where the head of the political department, Comrade. Klokov, the village of Shchuchye was liberated from the Magyars. After the occupiers were expelled from the village of Shchuchye, political instructor Popov M.A., military paramedics Konovalov A.L. and Chervintsev T.I. discovered traces of the monstrous atrocities of the Magyars against the citizens of the village of Shchuchye and captured Red Army soldiers and commanders.
Lieutenant Salogub Vladimir Ivanovich, being wounded, was captured and brutally tortured. More than twenty (20) stab wounds were found on his body.
Junior political instructor Fyodor Ivanovich Bolshakov, seriously wounded, was captured. Bloodthirsty robbers mocked the motionless body of the communist. Stars were carved on his hands. There are several knife wounds on the back...
In front of the entire village, citizen Kuzmenko was shot by the Magyars because 4 cartridges were found in his hut. As soon as Hitler’s slaves burst into the village, they immediately began to take all the men from 13 to 80 years old and drive them to their rear.
More than 200 people were taken from the village of Shchuchye. Of these, 13 people were shot outside the village. Among those shot were Nikita Nikiforovich Pivovarov, his son Nikolai Pivovarov, Mikhail Nikolaevich Zybin, head of the school; Shevelev Zakhar Fedorovich, Korzhev Nikolai Pavlovich and others.
Many residents had their belongings and livestock taken away. Fascist bandits stole 170 cows and more than 300 sheep, taken from citizens. Many girls and women were raped. I will send an act on the monstrous atrocities of the Nazis today.”

And here is the handwritten testimony of the peasant Anton Ivanovich Krutukhin, who lived in the Sevsky district of the Bryansk region: “Fascist accomplices of the Magyars entered our village Svetlovo 9/V-42. All the inhabitants of our village hid from such a pack and they are a sign that the inhabitants have become hide from them, and those who failed to hide, they shot them and raped several of our women.
I myself, an old man born in 1875, was also forced to hide in the cellar. There was shooting throughout the entire village, buildings were burning, and Magyar soldiers were robbing our things, stealing cows and calves." (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 561-561ob.)

On May 20, Hungarian soldiers at the collective farm "4th Bolshevik North" arrested all the men. From the testimony of collective farmer Varvara Fedorovna Mazerkova:
“When they saw the men of our village, they said that they were partisans. And on the same date, i.e. 20/V-42, they seized my husband Sidor Borisovich Mazerkov, born in 1862, and my son Alexei Sidorovich Mazerkov, born in 1927 and tortured and after this torment, they tied their hands and threw them into a hole, then they lit the straw and burned people alive in a potato hole. On the same day, they not only burned my husband and son, they also burned 67 men." (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 543-543 rev.)

Abandoned by residents fleeing from the Hungarian punitive forces, the villages were burned out. A resident of the village of Svetlovo, Natalya Aldushina, wrote:
“When we returned from the forest to the village, the village could not be recognized. Several old men, women and children were brutally killed by the Hungarians. Houses were burned, large and small livestock were stolen. The pits in which our things were buried were dug out. In the villages there was nothing left but black brick." (GARF. F. R-7021. Op. 37. D. 423. L. 517.)

Thus, in just three Russian villages of the Sevsky region, at least 420 civilians were killed by the Hungarians in 20 days. And these are not isolated cases.
In June - July 1942, units of the 102nd and 108th Hungarian divisions, together with German units, took part in a punitive operation against the Bryansk partisans, codenamed "Vogelsang". During the operation in the forests between Roslavl and Bryansk, punitive forces killed 1,193 partisans, wounded 1,400, captured 498, and evicted more than 12,000 residents.
Hungarian units of the 102nd (42nd, 43rd, 44th and 51st regiments) and 108th divisions took part in punitive operations against the partisans "Nachbarhilfe" (June 1943) near Bryansk, and "Zigeunerbaron" "in the areas of present-day Bryansk and Kursk regions (May 16 - June 6, 1942).
During Operation Zigeunerbaron alone, punitive forces destroyed 207 partisan camps, 1,584 partisans were killed and 1,558 were captured."

What was happening at that time at the front where the Hungarian troops were operating. The Hungarian army, from August to December 1942, fought long battles with Soviet troops in the area of Uryv and Korotoyak (near Voronezh), and could not boast of any special successes; this is not to fight with the civilian population.
The Hungarians failed to liquidate the Soviet bridgehead on the right bank of the Don, and failed to develop an offensive against Serafimovichi. At the end of December 1942, the Hungarian 2nd Army dug into the ground, hoping to survive the winter in its positions. These hopes did not come true.
On January 12, 1943, the offensive of the Voronezh Front troops against the forces of the 2nd Hungarian Army began. The very next day, the Hungarian defense was broken through, and panic gripped some units.
Soviet tanks entered the operational space and destroyed headquarters, communications centers, ammunition and equipment warehouses. The introduction of the Hungarian 1st Panzer Division and elements of the German 24th Panzer Corps did not change the situation, although their actions slowed the pace of the Soviet advance.
Soon the Magyars were completely defeated, losing 148,000 people killed, wounded and prisoners (among those killed, by the way, was the eldest son of the Hungarian regent, Miklos Horthy).
This was the largest defeat of the Hungarian army in the entire history of its existence. In the period from January 13 to January 30 alone, 35,000 soldiers and officers were killed, 35,000 people were wounded and 26,000 were captured. In total, the army lost about 150,000 people, most of its tanks, vehicles and artillery, all supplies of ammunition and equipment, and about 5,000 horses.

The motto of the Royal Hungarian Army, “The price of Hungarian life is Soviet death,” did not come true. There was practically no one to give the reward promised by Germany in the form of large land plots in Russia to Hungarian soldiers who had especially distinguished themselves on the Eastern Front.
The 200,000-strong Hungarian army alone, consisting of eight divisions, then lost about 100-120 thousand soldiers and officers. No one knew how much exactly then, and they still don’t know now. Of this number, about 26 thousand Hungarians were taken into Soviet captivity in January 1943.
For a country of the size of Hungary, the defeat at Voronezh had even greater resonance and significance than Stalingrad for Germany. Hungary, in 15 days of fighting, immediately lost half of its armed forces. Hungary was unable to recover from this disaster until the end of the war and never again fielded groups equal in size and combat capability to the lost association.

The Hungarian troops were notable for their brutal treatment not only of partisans and civilians, but also of Soviet prisoners of war. So, in 1943, during the retreat from the Chernyansky district of the Kursk region, “Magyar military units took with them 200 prisoners of war of the Red Army soldiers and 160 Soviet patriots held in a concentration camp. On the way, the fascist barbarians locked all these 360 people in a school building and doused them with gasoline and burned alive. Those who tried to escape were shot."
You can give examples of documents about the crimes of Hungarian military personnel during the Second World War from foreign archives, for example, the Israeli archive of the Yad Vashem national memorial of Holocaust and Heroism in Jerusalem:
"On July 12 - 15, 1942, on the Kharkeevka farm in the Shatalovsky district of the Kursk region, soldiers of the 33rd Hungarian Infantry Division captured four Red Army soldiers. One of them, senior lieutenant P.V. Danilov, had his eyes gouged out and his jaw knocked to the side with a rifle butt , inflicted 12 bayonet blows in the back, after which they buried him half-dead in the ground, unconscious. Three Red Army soldiers, whose names are unknown, were shot" (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/497. L. 53.).
A resident of the city of Ostogozhsk, Maria Kaydannikova, saw how Hungarian soldiers on January 5, 1943 drove a group of Soviet prisoners of war into the basement of a store on Medvedovsky Street. Soon screams were heard from there. Looking out the window, Kaydannikova saw a monstrous picture:
“The fire was burning brightly there. Two Magyars held the prisoner by the shoulders and legs and slowly roasted his stomach and legs on the fire. They either lifted him above the fire, then lowered him lower, and when he died down, the Magyars threw his body face down on the fire. Suddenly the prisoner twitched again. Then one of the Magyars thrust a bayonet into his back with a flourish" (Yad Vashem Archives. M-33/494. L. 14.).

After the disaster at Uryv, the participation of Hungarian troops in hostilities on the Eastern Front (in Ukraine) resumed only in the spring of 1944, when the 1st Hungarian Tank Division attempted to counterattack the Soviet tank corps near Kolomyia - the attempt ended in the death of 38 Turan tanks and a hasty withdrawal 1st Panzer Division Magyars to the state border.
In the fall of 1944, all Hungarian armed forces (three armies) fought against the Red Army, already on the territory of Hungary. But the Hungarians remained the most faithful allies of Nazi Germany in the war. Hungarian troops fought with the Red Army until May 1945, when the ENTIRE (!) territory of Hungary was occupied by Soviet troops.
8 Hungarians were awarded the German Knight's Cross. During the Second World War, Hungary gave the largest number of volunteers to the SS troops. More than 200 thousand Hungarians died in the war against the USSR (including 55 thousand who died in Soviet captivity). During the Second World War, Hungary lost about 300 thousand military personnel killed, and 513,766 people were captured.
There were 49 Hungarian generals alone in Soviet prison camps after the war, including the Chief of the General Staff of the Hungarian Army.

In the post-war years, the USSR began repatriating captured Hungarians and Romanians, apparently as citizens of countries where regimes friendly to our country were established.

OWL SECRET 1950 Moscow, Kremlin. On the repatriation of prisoners of war and interned citizens of Hungary and Romania.

1. Allow the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (comrade Kruglov) to repatriate to Hungary and Romania:

Annex 1

LIST of prisoners of war generals of the former Hungarian army convicted by Military Tribunals for crimes against the USSR:

1. Aldya-Pap Zoltan Johann born 1895 General - Lieutenant
2. Bauman Istvan Franz born 1894 General - Major
3. Vashvari Friedrich Joseph born 1895 General - Major
4. Vukovari Derdy Jacob born 1892 General - Major
5. Szabo Laszlo Anton born 1895 General - Major
6. Feher Gezo Arpad born 1883 General - Major
7. Szymonfay Ferenc Ferenc born 1891 General - Major
8. Erlich Gezo Agoshton born 1890 General - Major
9. Ibrani Mihaly Miklos born 1895 General - Lieutenant