PITIFUL SCENES

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1934, Page 5

PITIFUL SCENES

n FAMILIES HERDED OVER BORDER INTO HUNGARY. 3 (United Press Association—By Electric 'leiegrupn—Copyright;. BUDAPEST, December 6. There are pitiful scenes on the s border, where thousands of men, wor men and children, carrying valuab.es i cn their backs, have been herded all night, 'across ;the. frontier inio Hunf gary, under police escorts. The deportations follow upon an order made - by the Yugo-Slav Government for the ) expulsion of Hungarians and others. ; Scenes reminiscent of the Balkan war s were witnessed at Szeged sta- ; tion, where numbers of Hungarians, mostly farm workers, many of whom cilose Jugo-Slav nationality after the : war, crowded the waiting rooms, res- • taurants and goods sheds, many sitti ing on hastily packed bunches. Weeping mothers see-ked news of missing children and youngsters deprived of • their parents toddled aimlessly about. The Hungarian •authorities sent eight infants to a creche, and sent to a hospital, a boy whose le g was broken when a gendarme threw him into the train. Eight hundred refugees were accommodated at a school house, where a soup kitchen was improvised. T(ke first refugee trains have arrived at Budapest from Szabadka, Zombor and Ujvidek, four hundred families were ejected from Zombor and 1500 from T'lVidek Fresh transforts arrive hourly. Those expelled include Swabians, Croats and Catholic Serbs. One old farmer says: “We were rounded up like cattle. Though I have Worked there for thirty-five years, and have paid -all m v taxes my wife and myself have had to leave the country with only the clothes in which we stood. Even our Serbian neighbours wept when they were con- j ducting us to the station.” Another farmer, declared that the Serbian gendarmes, burst in his door J !, t midnight, with their rifle buttsThey turned him out of his bed, and hustled on his clothing, hut refused to allow him to feteli his two children ' from across the road,' where they were staying with ibis mother-in-’aw. The Hungarian Government lias not i received any repl r to its protest re- ] p’wrlin v the Yugo-Slav expulsions. A Cabinet meeting has been called to : discuss relief measures. The semi-official paper “Orai Uj- < sag” expressed the opinion that the ; expulsions by the Yugo-S’av Govern- , meet are a revenge for the Marseilles 1 assassinations. - ■«* , The fugitives declare that the , VnEro-Sh'via. Govern men 1 intends to £ excel twenty-thousand Hungarians. The fugitives complain that the Vucro-Slnv frontier guards robbed tbeir houses before expelling the inmates.