BUDAPEST - The last prisoner of the Second World War may be about to return home - 55 years after it ended.
A 75-year-old Hungarian, long believed dead on the Russian front, has been found alive in a Russian mental hospital. The man has lived the past 20 years unable to have a conversation with anybody, because he speaks no Russian, and nobody at the hospital speaks Hungarian.
When it emerged several weeks ago that a mysterious Hungarian who had lost his memory was living in the Kotelnich psychiatric hospital, 480km east of Moscow, Dr Andras Veer, director of the Hungarian National Psychiatric and Neurological Institute, travelled to Russia to examine the man.
In an interview with the Hungarian Vasarnapi Hirek newspaper this week, Veer said he believes the man is Andras Tamas, a Hungarian captured by Soviet troops in 1945, and transferred the same year from prison camp to a hospital, where one of his legs was amputated.
Veer says Kotelnich Hospital's admission records for the mysterious Hungarian in 1947 match the recently discovered papers for the transfer of Andras Tamas from the prison camp two years before. But the man at the centre of the mystery cannot confirm his identity. He is suffering from memory loss, and has no clear recollection of what happened to him in 1945.
In fact, he can barely speak Hungarian any more, according to Veer. The psychiatrist says Tamas told him the last Hungarian-speaking patients left the hospital 20 years ago. The psychiatrist said being among Hungarians would bring his memory back.
Since the mystery patient's picture was first shown on Hungarian television, several families have called in, saying they recognise him. But details of Tamas' life before 1945 remain unclear.
The Hungarian Embassy in Moscow has officially requested the Russian authorities to allow Tamas to return to Hungary. For this tragic veteran, the war may finally be over.
- INDEPENDENT
Wartime isolation comes to end for mystery Hungarian
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.