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ON THIS DAY ·

Hungarian Revolution

4 Nov 1956 — Soviet tanks return to Budapest to crush the revolution. About 2,500 Hungarians die in the fighting and the repression that follows. Before the border is sealed again, some 200,000 people leave: about one Hungarian in fifty.

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Map: Hungarian Revolution, 4 November 1956
4 NOVEMBER 1956 · UPROOTED: REFUGEES IN EUROPE 1945–1960 AND INDOCHINA 1975–1990

The moment in context

In 1950 one West German resident in six was an expellee. Many were crowded into barracks and farm attics in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Bavaria. Industrial jobs lay elsewhere, and local people sometimes met the newcomers with open hostility. Citizenship gave the expellees a claim on the state, but it did not by itself give them a house or a livelihood.

From Expellee integration in West Germany, chapter 6 of Uprooted: Refugees in Europe 1945–1960 and Indochina 1975–1990 (1956).

The place: Hungarian Revolution — map and full story →

Teach this in 5 minutes

Then ask the room: How far was the integration of West Germany’s expellees the result of deliberate government policy? The argued answer is on the chapter page →

The atlas that shows it

Uprooted: Refugees in Europe 1945–1960 and Indochina 1975–1990
12 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP

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