Hungary commemorating victims of Soviet labor camps
700,000 deported, 300,000 never came back
13 May, 19:15
(ANSA/AP) - BUDAPEST - Hungary this year is commemorating the estimated 700,000 civilians and soldiers taken away 70 years ago to the Gulag, the forced-labor camps of the Soviet Union. Maria Schmidt, a historian and director of the House of Terror Museum, says about 300,000 of the deported never returned and the topic was taboo during the communist era which ended in 1990. Schmidt says the Gulag memorial year called attention to "the fact that the suffering of the Hungarian people did not end with the end of World War II." Karoly Miklosi, an 88-year-old Gulag survivor who sells his autobiography out of a briefcase at a Budapest train station, says he wrote the book for his family but thousands of teachers have bought it to use in schools. (ANSA/AP).
