The anniversary was marked by the national self-government of Germans in Hungary in an online event. Chairwoman Ibolya Hock Englender said on Facebook that the commemorative event which is normally held annually in Bonyhád, a city in southern Hungary with a large ethnic German population, has been moved online as a result of the coronavirus epidemic. She said the first cattle cars deporting ethnic Germans from Hungary left on January 19, 1946, transporting “humiliated, dispossessed people robbed of their homes to the unknown”. Further trains of ethnic Germans followed, even when tens of thousands had already been taken to the Soviet Union for forced labour starting from 1944, she added. Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communications and relations, said on Facebook that the deportation of Swabians had caused Hungary an “irreparable loss”.
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