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March 16, 1939 – Broadcast from Radio Budapest – News – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
March 16, 1939 – News from Radio Budapest on the advance of Hungarian troops into Subcarpathian Russia and the meetup with Polish Troops at the Transcarpathian border.
In November 1938, under the First Vienna Award which resulted from the Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy prevailed on the Second Czechoslovak Republic to cede the southern third of Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia to the Kingdom of Hungary. Between 14 March and 15 March 1939, the Slovak Republic declared its independence and Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia creating the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On 15 March, Carpatho-Ukraine declared its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, with the Reverend Avhustyn Voloshyn as head of state. Hungary immediately occupied and annexed the new republic. The remnants of the Czechoslovak Army abandoned the newly formed republic and Carpatho-Ukraine tried to defend itself by local self-defense groups organized by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as Carpathian Sich. On 18 March, resistance to the invasion ended. On 23 March Hungary annexed further parts of eastern Slovakia west of Carpatho-Rus. The Hungarian invasion was followed by a few weeks of terror in which more than 27,000 people were shot dead without trial and investigation. Over 75,000 Ukrainians decided to seek asylum in the USSR; of those almost 60,000 of them died in Gulag prison-camps. The territory covered by the Governorate of Subcarpathia was divided into three, the administrative branch offices of Ung (Hungarian: Ungi közigazgatási kirendeltség), Bereg (Hungarian: Beregi közigazgatási kirendeltség) and Máramaros (Hungarian: Máramarosi közigazgatási kirendeltség), having Hungarian and the Rusyn language as official languages.
Beginning in 1939, the Jewish laws passed in Hungary were extended to the newly annexed territories, including the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia. Then in the summer of 1941, Hungarian authorities deported about 18,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia to the Galician area of the occupied Ukraine. This was done under the guise of expelling alien refugees, but in practice most of those expelled were from families that had lived in the region for the previous 50–100 years, but their legal identification was problematic due to the numerous change of status quo and the contemporary laws and regulations also did not support them to confirm their former Hungarian citizenship.
Here is that report, as given by Radio Budapest on March 16, 1939.
