Katia and Karoly

This is the story of Karoly, a man whose family protected Katia and other Jewish refugees who were trying to escape the advance of Nazi Germany, from the west, and the advancing Russian’s ‘Red Army’ and their Romanian allies, to the east; Karoly was a teenage boy who was used as human-shield by Romanian 'liberators' in Hungary. After the war, he was sent to prison while Hungary was under communist control. He was committed as a political prisoner for being a member of the Independent Small-holders Party, the communist party’s only serious political rival.

Under the communist regime, anyone who held authority in the community was a threat and Karoly was arrested under a trumped up charge. He was sent to Márianosztra where he was given the option of starvation or working as a miner in a forced labour camp. Karoly worked in a coalmine until he escaped the cruel communist regime in 1956.