News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Forgotten POW of 53 Years Freed

Date: August 13, 2000

Reminiscent of Japanese soldiers who lived in caves for 25 and 35 years, South Korean POWs held by North Korea for 40 sum-odd years, another face comes from the shadows and proves that survival is possible.... even after 53 years.

It was 1947, a bitter February, when the train stopped and a young man was abandoned to what would become a half-century locked away in a Soviet psychiatric facility.

The man, Hungarian national Andras Andreyevich Tamas (oddly reported with a Russian patronymic name by the press), is now 75. But 53 years ago he was a young soldier who was amongst the nearly 150,000 Hungarians who either died or went missing when the German troops they supported were overrun by Stalin's forces during World War II. Enroute to a Siberian prison camp, the mutterings of a battle-fatigued man, speaking only in Hungarian, Tamas was deemed to be insane and left at the hospital when the train halted in the town of Kotelnich.

From that time forward, his Magyar sounded like gibberish and he was determined to be an incurable. Because he was unable to communicate with staffers, he lived-on in a twilight of memories from his 1940's homeland. After 15 years he recovered enough to carve in the workshop, walk and do minor odd-jobs... clinging to his mother-tongue and never learning Russian, ultimately remaining in psychological and social isolation for half a century. It was not until 1997 when a Hungarian decended Russian officer had a chance meeting with Tamas (through hospital officials) that his dialect was recognized as Hungarian. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry then sent a doctor, and after spending considerable time with Tamas, it was certain that the lost mystery prisoner was a Hungarian national held all these years in a Russian hospital.

Tamas, suffering health problems and an amputation several years ago, was returned to Hungary on Friday. While his health is assessed the waiting list for 'adoptive' families grows. A man of 75 years and limited abilities, it is unknown whether he has any surviving family. However, since news of his identification and captivity surfaced, more than 20 Hungarian families have offered to open their homes and 'adopt' him, hopefully to live his remaining years in peace, comfort and in the hiomeland that he never forgot.