Fallen to Tyranny: From Mauthausen to Gulag

By Thomas Z. Lajos

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• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477212714

Thomas Z. Lajos

Dr. Thomas Z. Lajos was born in Hungary. He survived the Nazi occupation and the “Soviet liberation of Hungary.” He graduated as an MD in 1956 and worked as a house surgeon in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution in October 1956. Following the defeat of the uprising by the Soviet troops, he escaped to Austria and settled in Canada and the USA. His postgraduate training in cardiothoracic surgery was completed at St. Louis and Ohio State Universities. He practiced his specialty for over thirty-five years in Buffalo and served as a clinical professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York. He and his family were greatly influenced by the tragic life and final outcome of his uncle. Fifty years after his uncle’s death, when the details surfaced about his fate, Dr. Thomas Lajos decided to record his personal memories in this book in memoriam to his uncle, Dr. Ivan Lajos.

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Contents

Preface

Part I: Gathering Clouds: Europe in 1939

Start of a Blitzkrieg

Ivan Lajos’s Education

Attacks on Ivan Lajos: His Arrest and Imprisonment in the Hadik

Part II: The German Military Occupation

Mauthausen: March 22, 1944-May 5, 1945

The Radio Interview: June 27, 1945

The Concentration Camp: March 1993

Part III: Russian Liberation of Hungary: April 4, 1945

Raoul Wallenberg: His Arrival in Budapest in July 1944 and His Disappearance in 1945

Post-War Salami Politics

Mr. Frank Gann Redward’s and Dr. Ivan Lajos’s Meetings

Under Arrest in the Soviet Control Committee Building in Budapest, June 17, 1946-September 26, 1946

NKVD Inner Prison and the Karlag

Hungarian and English Versions of the Chronological Events of Dr. Ivan Lajos’s Political Life

Map of Stalin’s Gulag

Thoughts on the Chronological Events

The Russian and Hungarian Rehabilitation Documents (1998) produced only upon the request of my brother, Dr. Laszlo Lajos

Spying

Ivan’s Fate: Hearsay and the Truth

Part IV: Addenda

Karlag: Center of Prison Camps in Karaganda, Kazakhstan

Unveiling of Dr. Ivan Lajos’s Bust in Pecs: March 19, 2002

Statement of the American Legion

Appreciative Statement of the Hungarian Government: 1999

Epilogue

Dr. Ivan Lajos’s Political Saga during and after the events of WW II

Dr. Ivan Lajos Bibliography and Publications

References

Abbreviations

Humps_of_multiple_mass_graves_new.JPG

Figure 1. Mass graves! Dr. Ivan Lajos rests in one of them with hundreds of other victims in the Gulag. Tartaul, Karaganda-Kazakhstan.

Preface

It has been over sixty years since the dreadful events described here took place. Recently obtained data revealed facts that were previously unknown. All of Dr. Ivan Lajos’s close family members have died. I am the only one alive who had personal relations with him. My sister and brother were too young to remember him. My memories still are vivid after many years. Here I intend to reveal my feelings and personal memories of Ivan to preserve the knowledge of his tense and anxious behavior during tumultuous times.

Ivan’s tragic life was too short, but his legend and soul remained with us during the brutal years of Nazi reign and Soviet terror. His initial survival in the Mauthausen concentration camp and his cruel death in the Gulag are living memories. Frequent family discussions still remind the younger generation of the brutality of those times. Younger family members seem to be more magnetically attracted to his personality than those who were the personal witnesses of his living tragedy.

His namesake, Mr. Ivan Lajos, my brother’s son, felt obliged to explore the history of his great uncle’s Gulag years, since now he is living and working in Russia. Driven by the nimbus of his great-uncle, my nephew decided to explore Ivan Lajos’s life in the concentration camp. My nephew traveled to Tartaul and managed to shed some light on the circumstances of Ivan’s tragic death in Karaganda.

Mr. Gabor Muranyi, an historian, newspaper columnist, reporter, and a Pulitzer prize winner, wrote a very objective historical book on Ivan; he spent years gathering all the data necessary to perfect the book. His book is a true historical diary, but I felt that it somewhat lacked a personal touch. In addition, I felt that a few important historical events were not fully explained. Since Mr. Muranyi’s book was published, new historical facts pertaining to Ivan Lajos’s days in captivity were obtained. I knew I could help to disclose the unexplained events of the stormy years of the war and postwar terroristic regime. Still, there are events that cannot be fully interpreted, partly because Ivan himself never talked about them and partly because of his introverted, private personality. Many explanations have disappeared due to the fact that all his memoirs and diaries vanished after his flat and his parents’ apartment were ransacked by the Nazis and communists.

I would like to mention a few of these missing points.

The full income earned by Dr. Ivan Lajos’s famous Gray Book remains unknown.

I think we untangled the mysteries of Dr. Lajos’s trip to France, his relationship to Otto von Habsburg, and Otto’s indifferent and inept attitude during the war as well as his diplomatic failure to keep Hungary neutral.

The fact that Dr. Lajos was hunted by Hitler’s Nazi regime in France explains his escape from France back home to his beloved country. His elimination threatened by the Nazis in the death camp of Mauthausen fortunately failed. The escape from there, we may say, was God’s doing and His gift.

Ivan’s dealings with the occupying Soviet authorities in Hungary seem to finally be somewhat unraveled. The events after his arrest by the Soviets were totally unknown to us and were disclosed in 1998 long after his death. The legal proceedings against him reflect the political attitude of the Soviets and Bolshevik philosophy. His imprisonments in Budapest under the Soviet authorities and later in the Gulag exemplify the Soviets’ efficient routine for eliminating unwanted people. His prolonged questioning sessions and frequent interrogations may suggest either the Soviets did not have enough proof of his spying activities or they had a hard time breaking him down with their forceful questioning methods.

It is rather unfortunate that we have no knowledge of the whereabouts of his handwritten diary. Supposedly, he left one copy with his father in the flat in which they lived. Of course, this disappeared after the flat was raided by the