News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Hungarian POW Makes Progress

Date: September 19, 2000

Hungarian WW2 prisoner finds long lost family
Reuters Sep 18 2000 8:07AM ET  

BUDAPEST, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A Hungarian prisoner of World War Two who spent 53 years in a Russian psychiatric hospital has found his long lost family, his brother confirmed on Monday.

``I think there is no doubt he is the one, my brother -- it's almost incredible, it's very difficult to put into words,'' Janos Toma, born in 1938 and living in the tiny village of Sulyanbokor in northeast Hungary, told Reuters by telephone.

``But we need to put a full stop at the end of every sentence,'' Toma said, referring to DNA tests doctors have yet to carry out to fully prove the relationship.

Former POW Andras Tamas, or Toma as he is now being called, met his supposed brother and sister as well as two former schoolmates in Sulyanbokor over the weekend.

He seemed to recognise places he had not seen for more than five decades, people attending the reunion said.

The visit to the village near the Ukrainian border fitted a key piece to a puzzle that began during the summer when Hungary learned of a 75-year-old soldier held for five decades in a Russian psychiatric hospital and whose identity was uncertain.

The soldier's return, and the investigation by military and medical experts to determine who he was, has gripped the nation ever since. A television report aired on Sunday was the first word that the soldier's identity finally had been established.

Janos Toma said he and a younger sister, born in 1943, had the same father as the former POW, who has stayed at a psychiatric hospital in Budapest since his return to Hungary in early August.

PSYCHIATRIC DETECTIVE WORK

Andras Veer, director of Hungary's National Psychiatry and Neurology Institute, said experts managed to track down the relatives solely based on the old man's fragmented memories.

``He told us in which village he worked as a blacksmith's apprentice, where he was born and where he went to school, even the name of his teacher,'' Veer said.

He said the data led experts to a number of tiny villages near the town of Nyiregyhaza, and finally to Sulyanbokor.

``He remembered lots of things, including names and we also have the documents proving when he disappeared -- everything,'' Janos Toma said.

``As far as I know, he recognised the school and also the family house,'' Veer added.

Veer said the family had an official notice from Hungarian authorities from 1954, letting them know a relative had been taken to a psychiatric institute in Russia but that authorities had lost trace of him since then.

Veer said only a genetic test, to be conducted this week, could prove the relationship with complete certainty.

Some 60 to 70 people had claimed the elderly veteran to be their relative during the past month.

``But this was the only family which took it seriously that we intended to find the relatives through the memory of 'Andras Tamas' himself,'' Veer said.

A team of experts had been trying to piece together the old man's past via meticulous research based on long discussions with him -- but the key piece, his real name and identity, had been missing until now.

In Russian documents he was identified as Andras Tamas ever since his capture by Soviet troops towards the end of 1944. He was transferred to a hospital in Kotelnich, 700 km (450 miles) from Moscow in 1947.

He had learned only a few Russian words and barely communicated with the world over the past 53 years.

``We can't wait to have him back here, with the family and we hope he'll remember more and more,'' Toma said. ^ REUTERS@



Identity of Ex-POW Possibly Found
The Associated Press Sep 17 2000 8:17PM ET  

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Authorities believe they have established the identity of a former war prisoner who returned to Hungary last month after spending 53 years lost and forgotten in a Russian mental hospital, a television station reported Sunday.

DNA tests expected to be completed in about two weeks will remove the last shred of doubt that the man is Andras Toma, a former blacksmith's apprentice from the eastern village of Sujanbokor, TV2 television reported.

The elderly man, formerly known as Andras Tamas, returned to Hungary on Aug. 11, marking the end of a strange and tragic saga that spanned more than half a century, most of it spent in virtual isolation among people with whom he could not even communicate.

He was apparently one of the 150,000 Hungarian troops who fought under Nazi command at the Don River in 1944. According to Russian records, the man was among prisoners of war sent by train from western Russia to a prison camp in Siberia.

He seemed to be suffering from psychological problems, so guards took him off the train when it passed near the Russian town of Kotelnich and left him at the hospital, where he and his past were forgotten. For years, no one knew who he was until an encounter with a Hungarian-speaking Russian unlocked the mystery.

TV2 quoted Hungarian officials as saying that once back in Hungary, the man's memory began returning to the point that they were able to identify a village where he was believed to have been born.

On Saturday, with a crew from TV2 in tow, he was taken to the village, Sujanbokor, for a meeting with other aged Hungarians believed to have been his schoolmates. In their company, he recalled names of teachers who were working in the village whom all the others remembered.

Also on hand were two people believed to have been his siblings - Anna and Janos Toma. They will give blood samples for DNA tests, TV2 said.

``He looks just like our dad, and all the bits he said fit,'' Anna Toma said during an interview broadcast Sunday.

The Tomas were not among the 80 Hungarian families who had contacted authorities believing the man might have been a lost relative. They were tracked down instead by a team of Hungarian military officers.

As a result, Dr. Andras Veer, director of the Hungarian National Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital, told the television station that a team plans to visit five Russian mental hospitals to determine whether other Hungarian prisoners may have been transferred there.

TV2 said that Hungarian authorities believe the man was held at a prison camp east of St. Petersburg along with mostly German prisoners.