Page - 809 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Strangers in the Homeland 809 be found in the village, since one forgot this, another that, [whilst] others came back to search for their relatives, who did not come back, and had to suffer death on the gallows for it. It is sad when one considers that they are also Austrian citizens and the state they belong to deals so terribly with them.’1889 The bulk of the refugees took the shortest route to the west or via the Carpathians and ended up in Hungary. They were sent further on their way. Those, however, who were actually evacuated or deported, had in any case no choice in the matter. They were robbed of their freedom of movement. The question of gathering and accommodating the refugees degenerated in the short- est space of time into the squaring of the circle. The Imperial-Royal Ministry of the In- terior had been informed by the Army High Command only in mid-September of the scope of the evacuation measures.1890 Galicia and Bukovina were part of the Austrian half of the Empire. Therefore, the Hungarian government argued that it was responsible merely for those refugees coming from the areas bordering Serbia and for the adjoining territories of Slovakia south of Galicia, then known as Upper Hungary. The Hungarian government, therefore, decreed in mid-September the expulsion of the inhabitants of East Galicia who had fled to Slovakia. It above all fought tooth and nail against the accommodation of Jewish refugees. Other transports, however, were also actually threat- ened. When a refugee transport arrived in Košice (Kaschau) at the beginning of Octo- ber 1914, the populace stormed to the railway station in order to prevent the refugees from disembarking.1891 These refugees, who came to Hungary mostly clueless and were pushed back and forth, were literally without rights and had only the option of making it to Austria or of being repatriated in the middle of a changing war situation. Subsequently, an imbalance occurred that could never again be corrected, since as a result of the war, Austria had to accommodate many times the number of refugees that Hungary had to manage. Regulatory measures that might have been able to achieve a balance foundered on the division of the Empire. It was irrelevant that Hungary then declared itself ready after the second evacuation of Kraków to take in 5,000 of the ap- proximately 90,000 evacuees (though it was not permitted that any of these be Jews).1892 Ultimately, Hungary also offered only about 30,000 refugees temporary accommoda- tion in its half of the Empire.1893 Consequently, the Austrian half of the Empire had to take care of finding alternative quarters for a million people. There could be no talk whatsoever of a ‘substitute homeland’. The Army High Command also took this into account, since the Chief of the Gen- eral Staff demanded the evacuation of civilians from the war zone, but recommended separating out those capable of work and transporting all others to Uherské Hradište (Ungarisch Hradisch) in Moravia.1894 No mention was made of Hungary. A contributing factor in the greater allocation to crown lands in the Austrian half of the Empire was also the fact that it was intended that the refugees, evacuees and forced