The Refugee Issue in Szolnok After the First World War

Abstract

By the autumn of 1918 the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy that had lost the war was on the verge of disintegration. The nationalities of the former empire declared their intention to secede one after another. Between the autumn of 1918 and 4 June 1920, the society of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Mo-narchy experienced a series of traumas, including occupation by foreign troops, shrinking territory, the Red Terror, the Romanian occupation and requisition, the White Terror and, finally, the Treaty of Tria-non. After November 1918, the Hungarians fled inland to escape the invading Czech, Romanian and Serbian armies. This marked the beginning of the first mass migration in Hungary’s 20th-century his-tory. It is a feature of every war that civilians flee from enemy troops to more sheltered parts of the count-ryto protect their families and their own lives. In my study I will write about people who fled from the occupied territories to the central parts of Hungary, and who lived in wagons, describing both the nati-onal situation and the situation in Szolnok. In the case of Szolnok, I will show how the city’s adminisration did or did not deal with the situation of the refugees who started to arrive in the autumn of 1918 and used the city as a transit station until the autumn of 1919. The different regimes – the Károlyi government, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Horthy regime that emerged after the fall of the Commune – all had different attitudes towards refugees. In this study I will also discuss the history of the former Royal Hungarian Midwifery School of Oradea, which began operation in a new building as the Royal Hungarian Midwifery School of Szolnok in 1926. I will also present the activities of the National Office for Refugee Affairs. The issue of refugees was a complex and complicated challenge for the city as it involved a wide range of political and social problems, such as housing and health issues.