Malenki robot (forced labour) in the history and historical memory of the Hungarian German national minority

Abstract

The current paper is a summary of the author’s thesis work on the Hungarian German malenki robot survivors’ traumatic experiences. Hungarian German national communities were dragged off to the Soviet Union to live and work in the Stalinian labor camps after World War II, practically as slaves. Captivity was based on the assumption of collective sin of the German people. The author conducted qualitative interviews with 13 survivors who had lived in Békés County, Hungary, and returned there when they were released from the camps. The historical traumas of the German national communities – contrary to those of the holocaust survivors – remained silent stories and the victims have not received any professional support. Therefore the trans-generational impacts of their trauma have not been studied so far. It can be hypothesized that the trans-generational trauma is present in these communities as in any other groups who were victims of genocide. Social work as a culturally and socially sensitive discipline may have a major role in finding and mobilizing the resources that help reconciliation.