719. Leaflets were circulated in Budapest containing what purported to be accounts of deportations. One such publication entitled Magyar Október (Hungarian October) dated 15 November 1956 declared that people living near the Western Railway Station in Budapest could hear hammering on the freight cars and that freedom fighters who escaped said that hundreds of captured fighters had been packed into freight cars. Near the Soviet frontier, a wallet was said to have been thrown from a train bound for the USSR. The wallet was alleged to have contained a list of names of Budapest youths who were being deported to the Soviet Union.

B. INVESTIGATION BY THE COMMITTEE

720. Faced by this conflicting evidence, the Committee set out to make an objective and dispassionate study of the facts of the case. On 14 January 1957, the International Commission Against Concentration Camp Practices transmitted twenty-two signed depositions regarding deportations. While none of the refugees who had signed these statements had actually been taken to the USSR, several declared that they had been liberated from trains moving eastwards and, as they assumed, to the Soviet Union. Neither these statements nor any other written evidence in the Committee's possession at the outset was felt to justify it in adopting the attitude either that deportations had, or had not, occurred. As the Committee proceeded with its investigation, it found that the witnesses questioned on the subject seemed convinced that deportations had taken place. Some told of relatives or friends who had allegedly been deported. It was said that lists of names and addresses and appeals for help by those being deported had been thrown from trains moving eastwards and picked up. Students were declared to have visited the addresses in question and to have confirmed that members of the household had disappeared. Other witnesses claimed to have some first-hand knowledge of the deportations, such as seeing sealed trains on their way towards the frontier. None of these first witnesses, however, had themselves been deported and the Committee was still not prepared to voice an opinion based on hearsay only.

721. After a while, however, the Committee had the opportunity to hear several witnesses-seven men and boys, and one young girl, a first-aid nursewho had actually been deported to the Soviet Union after the events of 4 November 1956. One of these witnesses had succeeded in escaping from a Russian prison. The others, for various reasons, had been returned to Hungary. Several other refugees offered to testify before the Committee about their deportation to the USSR, but the Committee was unable to hear them, The Committee also heard a number of witnesses who had been placed in deportation trains or trucks moving towards the Hungarian-Soviet frontier, but who had been liberated by Hungarian railway workers or freedom fighters. Other witnesses had participated in such liberation activities, and described how they had stopped trains or trucks and freed the prisoners.

722. The Committee subjected all these witnesses to searching cross-examination. As a result of its study of their testimony, and other evidence confirming it, it reached the conclusion that, beyond doubt, deportations to the USSR had indeed taken place, and had taken place in considerable numbers. It was satisfied that the circumstances in which these deportations had occurred were, in general, as described by the witnesses. The official statements denying that any deportations had occurred in Hungary are therefore not in accordance with the facts. These deportations may be regarded as an effort to undermine potential opposition within Hungary.

C. SEIZURE OF DEPORTEES

723. According to the evidence, deportations of Hungarian citizens of the Soviet Union began in the period following the second armed intervention by Soviet forces. The number of such deportations appears to have been particularly large during the three weeks following 4 November. Witnesses said that, on some days, in the middle of November, several trainloads of deportees left Budapest. Deportation trains are said to have arrived in Russia as late as mid-December, and some Hungarians are alleged to have been deported even in January 1957. The largest number of deportees seems to have come from the provinces, especially from the eastern part of Hungary. Witnesses testified that they had seen deportees in Soviet prisons from such towns as Karcag, Szombathely, Györ, Kecskemét, Miskolc, Debrecen, Nyiregyháza and Veszprém. 724. In Budapest itself, most of the early arrests were made in a haphazard

manner. People were rounded up in the streets in groups that ran into hundreds and sometimes included elderly people and children. According to witnesses, the general practice was to close off part of a street by stationing a tank at each end. Anyone found within the area was taken away. One case was reported where fifty people were liberated from a number of trucks, after which the Russian soldiers immediately arrested fifty other people in their place. Some people were seized in centres of resistance, such as the revolutionary barracks taken over by Soviet troops. Others were taken in house-to-house searches by teams of Russian soldiers and former AVH agents, after the fighting had subsided. In the provinces, few were arrested in the streets, but large groups of students, workers for freedom fighters were sometimes arrested together. In some cases, the entire Revolutionary Council in a town or the whole Workers' Council in a factory would be seized.

725. The prisoners were collected in trucks or Soviet armoured cars and generally taken to political prisons or to other assembly places. Witnesses described how, in Budapest, groups of 400-500 people were assembled in underground halls at the Eastern and Western Railway Stations. On 6 November, according to a witness, ninety men and eight women were kept in a Budapest church for three days before being taken to a deportation train. Some prisoners were held captive in the military barracks, such as the Kilián and Petöfi Barracks in Budapest, and then transported to Vecsés, a railway station south-east of Budapest. Prisoners were searched for weapons, questioned and any valuables or papers in their possession were confiscated. In some cases, it appeared that their shoes and top clothing were taken away. Sometimes, prisoners remained at the places of detention up to four days or longer, after which they were taken to heavily guarded trains or trucks.

726. Most of the trains bearing deportees to the Soviet Union went through Záhony, the frontier station between Hungary and Soviet Union, but deportation trains are also reported to have crossed into Romania. The Committee, however, has no conclusive proof that any Hungarians were taken to Romania, apart from those who accompanied Mr. Nagy. Trains bound for the USSR took either the Cegléd-Szolnok-Debrecen-Nyiregyháza line, or that through Gödöllö-Hatvan-Miskolc. Witnesses testified that these trains consisted of sealed freight cars or cattle trucks. There were usually from 20 to 35 wagons on each train, although sometimes there were less. These trains carried nothing but deportees, from 30 to 70 in each wagon. During the journey, the captives received scant supplies of food and there were no adequate sanitary facilities. Men and women all travelled together. Each wagon was guarded by Soviet troops and the engine-drivers were Russian.

727. Many of the prisoners threw from the trains hastily-scribbled notes appealing for help and giving their names and addresses, so that their families could be notified. These messages were picked up by railway workers and other Hungarians, who arranged that as many as possible reached their destinations. One witness told the Committee that, out of seventeen messages thrown out of a train by himself, no fewer than eight reached his family.

728. After a while, the Soviet authorities experienced difficulty in running deportation trains as far as the frontier, since railway workers went on strike and freedom fighters were sometimes able to stop the trains and liberate prisoners. In some places, as happened on 15 November outside the frontier station at Záhony, the rails were removed from the track. To an increasing extent, therefore, the Russians began to make use of trucks. One witness testified that he and 150 other people had been taken from the town of Veszprém in western Hungary to the USSR in seven trucks, each guarded by four Russian soldiers. Another witness reported that he, together with eight others, had been taken to the Soviet Union from the city jail at Nyiregyháza, near the Russian border, in two Russian Red Cross cars. In one case a witness stated that the deportees were forced to travel, in bitterly cold weather, without coats in open trucks.

729. When the freedom fighters stopped a deportation train, by removing the rails or by setting the signals, heavy fighting usually took place before the captives were liberated. In one case, however, the Russian guards fled without fighting. One of these liberation exploits took place while the train was still in a Budapest station, while the Committee also heard reports of the liberation of deportees close to the Russian and Romanian frontiers.

730. Most of the deportees were captured by Soviet troops, but some were seized by formers members of the AVH. Some witnesses stated that, while being held in Hungary, they had been physically maltreated on a few occasions by Russian soldiers, but particularly by members of the AVH. Some were

submitted to lengthy interrogation by AVH agents during which they received harsh and inhuman treatment. One witness reported that, before being taken to the USSR, he had been beaten by an AVH officer, until he signed a confession that he was a counter-revolutionary. Those who were found to be carrying arms were beaten; often they were not given food and were threatened with execution. In some cases, a pretence was made that execution was imminent. One witness was placed against a wall by soldiers, who then fired all round him. Witnesses testified about several cases in which women were abused. One witness was told by the soldiers that he would be sent to forced labour in the USSR, while others were told that they would be sent to Siberia. It is noteworthy that witnesses stated that, with a few exceptions, they had been much better treated by Soviet officers and soldiers after they arrived in the USSR, where there were fewer troops of Mongolian origin.

D. EXPERIENCE OF DEPORTEES IN THE USSR

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731. The eight witnesses who stated that they had actually been deported were all taken at first to a prison in the town of Uzhorod, in the Transcarpathian region, about 25 kilometres from Záhony, the frontier town. Other deportees were reportedly taken to the prisons of Mukacevo and Kolomea in the same district. The prison in Uzhorod had been built at the time when the area was part of Czechoslovakia. It had been emptied of its former prisoners to accommodate the deportees, the first of whom seem to have arrived on 7 November. One witness said that it was already crowded by 10 November. One said that forty-two people were confined in a room large enough for about fourteen and one witness was locked in a room with other people, in which there was not enough space to lie down. According to the guards, Uzhorod was a place of assembly, and trains carrying deportees went further eastwards, while more deportees arrived from Hungary. It was estimated that the prison, after it was filled up, held at least 2,000 persons, all of whom were believed to be Hungarian.

732. In general, the treatment given to deportees in the Soviet prisons was better than that in the Hungarian prisons, The building used for their detention at Uzhorod is of modern construction. Food and general conditions improved, and were much better at the end than in the beginning. Deportees were not tortured, nor were they obliged to do forced labour. Some of the prisoners were confined to individual cells. One witness said that many of these were students and other intellectuals, who were considered to be a dangerous influence. Others were divided into groups and placed in collective cells, men and women being separated. They were taken from the cells only for interrogation or for exercise in the prison yard. Witnesses testified that the Russian guards, many of whom spoke Hungarian, showed sympathy and friendliness towards the prisoners. The Committee was told that Russian people employed in the prisons of Uzhorod and Stryj smuggled messages into the prisoners' cells, which gave them encouragement and news of what was happening in Hungary. Some of them also forwarded letters from the prisoners to relatives and friends. The guards and prison personnel also gave them news about the situation in Hungary and in the USSR. Thus, they learnt that students had been demonstrating in Leningrad and Kiev. According to witnesses, some of the deportees who were sent to the prison at Stryj were told by the guards that a large number of Polish prisoners had recently passed through the prison, and one witness stated that he had seen the words "Poznan 1956" carved on a bench in one of the cells.

733. Witnesses testified that teams of Russian officers and members of the Russian secret police, NKVD, interrogated the prisoners both at Uzhorod and Stryj. In some cases, the interrogation was conducted only by members of the secret police. Apart from routine questions on their personal history, the prisoners were repeatedly asked about their activities during the uprising. In the opinion of the witnesses, the principal purpose of the interrogations was to obtain information about the causes and organization of the uprising, about foreign assistance the Hungarians were thought to have received and about conditions in Hungary before the uprising. It was the impression of the witnesses that the interrogations were not aimed at determining the guilt or inno

6 Hungarian: Ungvár.

cence of individual prisoners, but rather at finding out why the Hungarian people rose in arms and how they had succeeded in doing so. Prisoners asked several times why they had been deported and under what law they had been brought to the Soviet Union. The answer was always that the Kádár Government had asked the Soviet authorities to take this step.

734. There were women among the prisoners. The majority of deportees were young people, many of them not more than sixteen and some even younger. There were also some elderly persons, one a sixty-two-year-old farmer, who did not know why he had been deported, another a sixty-seven-year-old leader of the Independent Smallholders Party. The majority of the deportees in the prison seem to have been soldiers or freedom fighters. There were said to be a number of high-ranking officers and, among these, some members of the delegation which had been arrested with General Maléter, the Minister of Defence, at the Soviet Army Headquarters, at Tököl, on the night of 3 November. These officers had been brought to Uzhorod by plane. Many of the prisoners were workers and some witnesses estimated that about 20 per cent were students. The Committee received the names of a number of Hungarians whom witnesses declared that they had seen personally in Russian prisons, but the Committee feels obliged not to make these names public. Among them were members of Parliament, high-ranking officers, professors and members of Revolutionary and Workers' Councils from various parts of Hungary. Included among these names submitted to the Committee was that of the stationmaster of one of the Hungarian frontier towns.

735. According to the witnesses, when the deportees arrived at Uzhorod they were usually photographed, full face and profile, and they underwent preliminary interrogation. They also received various injections and, in some cases, all hair was shaved from head and body. The guards told them that this was in preparation for their journey eastwards. One witness explained that his group was placed in a train heated by stoves. The group was told that they were going to an extremely cold area and that they would receive food and water only every second day. However, this train went no further than Stryj, some 136 kilometres from Uzhorod, and the Committee has no evidence that deportees were taken beyond this point. Russian guards told the deportees that they were held up because the students in Kiev were demonstrating; other trains carrying prisoners, they declared, had already passed through to the east. Some of the other witnesses were also taken to the prison at Stryj.

736. Of the eight deported witnesses questioned by the Committee, one had succeeded in escaping with five friends. The other seven witnesses had been returned to Hungary between 19 November 1956 and 5 January 1957. It was not always clear why these particular prisoners had been repatriated. One, however, was returned in a group of thirty young people all, with one exception, under sixteen. Another witness was a member of a Revolutionary Council in a town of Eastern Hungary. He was sent back with all the members of the Council, because the workers in that area went on strike, demanding their return. Some witnesses believed that their release was connected with the protests against deportations in Hungary itself and the discussion of this matter in the United Nations. The witnesses were sent home in small groups and mostly by truck. After their return to Hungary, they were kept in Hungarian prisons for periods varying from a few days to several weeks. They were interrogated by the recreated state security police and, in some cases, roughly handled before being released. Their decision to escape from Hungary arose from the fear of further arrest.

E. ADMISSION OF DEPORTATIONS BY SOVIET AUTHORITIES

737. It has been seen that rumors of the deportations were current in Hungary soon after the second Soviet intervention. During November, reports of such deportations became very numerous and a demand that deportations should cease was one of the conditions made by the workers for ending the strike. As was mentioned above, on 20 November the Hungarian Writers' Union sent a delegation both to the Ministry of the Interior and to the Russian Command in Budapest. One of the members of this delegation testified to the Committee that the Soviet Military Commander, after admitting that one trainload of deportees had been sent to the Soviet Union, tried to persuade the delegation to have the Writers' Union intervene with the workers to end the strike. The witness stated that the Writers' Union decided to give in to what he described as "blackmailing tactics", since the writers felt that everything should be done

to help those already deported and to put an end to deportations. An agreement was, therefore, made by which the Writers' Union was to try to persuade the workers to end the strike, while the Soviet authorities promised to seek the repatriation of individual deportees about whom the Writers' Union could give information.

738. One witness, a professor in Budapest, testified that he and his colleagues had made several efforts to secure the repatriation of a number of students. According to this witness, Lieutenant-Colonel Sidorenko, of the Soviet Central Military Command, at first denied that the Russian authorities had given orders to deport anyone. If such a thing had happened, it must have been an individual action. The witness then handed him a list of names thrown from a deportation train and also told him of several fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children who had recently been brought back with heads shaven from Uzhorod and Kolomea in the Soviet Union. Lieutenant-Colonel Sidorenko then admitted that deportations had taken place, but he said that their object was to get the students away from the scene of fighting and that, once order had been restored, they would be sent home. This same witness told the Committee that he had pleaded the cause of his students almost daily in the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. On 21 January, during his last visit before he left Hungary, he was told by the Chief Public Prosecutor that he had himself discussed the matter with the Chief Officer of the NKVD in Hungary, who said that the captives would be handed back to the Hungarian authorities, as soon as their interrogation was finished.

739. Evidence from another quarter laid before the Committee came from an Assistant Prosecutor, who testified that, in November and December, the Chief Prosecutor's Office received hundreds of complaints and a list of names of people seized by the Soviet authorities. The witness and a colleague went to a town in Southern Hungary to negotiate, on behalf of the Chief Public Prosecutor, with the Soviet Commander. The latter at first denied that Hungarian citizens had been captured by Soviet armed forces, until a list of names was put before him. He then said that these people were counter-revolutionaries and that the amnesty announced by the Kádár Government did not apply to them. He refused to hand the people over to the Hungarian authorities, and suggested that the witness and his colleague were themselves counter-revolutionaries.

740. From the testimony of witnesses and from other evidence received, the Committee has reached the conclusion that, since 4 November 1956, deportations of Hungarian citizens to the USSR have taken place in considerable numbers, which cannot be accurately assessed, but which run into thousands. The Committee has no proof that more than a part of the deportees has been returned to Hungary.

CHAPTER XVI. OTHER VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL

FREEDOMS

A. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

741. Entrusted with the task of studying "the situation created by the intervention of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . . in the internal affairs of Hungary," the Special Committee, as an organ of the United Nations, directed its attention during its investigations to the effect which the Soviet intervention has had on the rights of the individual. Its examination of the decisive role played by the Soviet armed forces in Hungary in the overthrow of a régime which intended to reestablish political rights and fundamental freedoms has inevitably led the Committee to consider the effects of that foreign intervention on human rights.

742. It will be recalled in this connexion that, so far as Hungary is concerned, an uncontested contractual obligation arising from the Treaty of Peace imposes on that country, without any time limit and without any conditions, the duty to take "all measures necessary to secure to all persons under Hungarian jurisdiction, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, the enjoyment of human rights and of the fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, of press and publication, of religious worship, of political opinion and of public meeting." The General Assembly has already had occasion to be concerned with the application of these provisions. It has, by resolutions