Shameful story. It was better to forget it – these are comments from Italians about a place as beautiful as Paradise, and which was the hell itself for the soldiers of the k. u. k. army, for several thousand Hungarian infantrymen and officers among them. The Asinara Island, the Island of Donkeys at North-Eastern Sardinia, that was known as one of the most strict prison islands of the world after the two wars, is still cannot be fully visited. Due to its enclosedness and undisturbedness, the remains of one of the deadliest death camps of the World War I remained undisturbed – and undiscovered.
Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in one of the camps of Asinara
It is not surprising that silence surrounds Asinara. And we, Hungarians? We do not even know what we should not speak about. For example about that during the military operations against Serbia in 1914, many were captured in the first hours, and wandering from deplorable camp to camp they reached the transit camp in Nis with good luck. There were about 85 000 men, mostly simple peasants and bourgeois from many nations of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. When the Central Powers set Serbia on fire for the second time, making several hundred thousand soldiers of the enemy and 1.5 million civilians escape in panic, epidemics had raged in the Balkans for months. Thousands of dead bodies lied beside of the roads at the sites of earlier attacks, typhus and cholera spread quickly like the wind, whole villages extinct, like during the time of great medieval epidemics. After the Serbian army stuck in a cauldron and collapsed at Kosovo Polje, 35 000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners – the remnants of the 85 000 prisoners – started their way to south-west marching to Albania mixing into the civilians’ car and cart convoys and the lines of soldiers. They were urged with riffles and had nearly no supplies. Through the mountains with an altitude of two thousand meters, wobbling on mule tracks, struggling through the Albanian land. And at the end of this death march they were shipped by cattle transporting steamers to Sardinia – and new Hells.
The ruins of a chapel made by the prisoners of war, Asinara
(Photo: Gábor Margittai)
It cannot be imagined even based on the description of diaries, what happened to this group of prisoners in the valley of the Black Drin (Drini i Zi), in the area of Elbasan and in the marshes of the River Vojusa. The crew spent most of the nights under the open sky, hundreds were frozen to death by dawn. The rotten carrots scraped here and there were taken away from the weak, the comrades tore each other's clothes, and even some cases of cannibalism have also been reported. Many fell from cliffs, starved to deaths. It happened that, in an Ottoman cemetery, the prisoners made a fireplace and a shelter from grave stones, or 1500 people spent a night in a shed of fifty horses, standing, stepping on each other’s feet.
From the 35 thousand men shortly only 20 thousand stayed alive. They vegetated on Asinara Island, between Corsica and Sardinia, for a while, then were transported by ships first to France then to the Draconian severe legions of Algiers and Tunis. Afterwards they scattered perhaps to jungles of Congo, in the Cape or the coal mines of Madagascar. Many thousand Hungarian farmers, Hungarian teachers for the public, Hungarian minor bureaucrats, who, perhaps, in peacetime were not given the opportunity to travel to Pest once in a lifetime.
Old bridge in North-Albania, near to Skhodra (Photo: Gábor Margittai)
Gábor Margittai and Anita Major researched the story of the Asinara camp and ordeal of the prisoners herded here. The pair of authors have been travelling in the Carpathian Basin and continents far away to investigate the forgotten reminiscences of the Hungarians. The aim of their last pioneering work was to recover the story of calvary of the k. u. k. prisoners of war by field and background research – following the several thousand kilometre long route of the death march by car, on foot and sea for the first time in the world. As the result of the modern expedition – arching over nations and former enemies, but focusing on Hungarian prisoners of war – they aimed to save intellectual memories and artefacts. And to show what happened to the nature and communities along the route in the past hundred years.
Anita Major (R) and Gábor Margittai (L) with Prof. Marinella Lőrinczi in Sardinia
(Photo: Péter Ney)
The articles on the topic were published in the press, in the second largest daily paper of Hungary. Our goal, in part, was to raise the Hungarian relics of death march from the family archives. Our summons had an unexpected outcome: prisoner diaries, photos, military documents, pieces of art were sent to us. These materials were unknown to the scholars. The shock and emotional letters of our readers showed: the memory of the victims of World War I lives in the Hungarian society, deeply suppressed as every great sadness.
The Hungarian prisoner, Árpád Szabó' s card sent from Asinara in 1918
The Outer Hungarians Minority Research and Media Provider Ltd. undertook a pioneer work: to reveal and document the story of this k. u. k. army - following the route of the death march on road, by foot and on the sea. The modern expedition - overarching between nations and one-day enemies, but focusing to the Hungarian prisoners of war - aims at saving intellectual and material memories. The produced photo and film material - which are built upon the contrast between the heavenly beauty of the scenes and the hellish suffering, and between past and present -, supplemented by archive footages and never published parts of personal diaries, after the opening in Budapest (December 2014), have been brought as a multimedia wandering exhibition to other Hungarian towns and villages. One of our most important aims is bringing the exhibition along the exhibition rooms of the countries on the route of the death march. The aim of the exhibition: raising a worthy monument for Hungarian prisoners of war who were either declared as missing in action or died anonymously. The exhibition also aims to show the landscapes and people who were eye witnesses of the events! We can offer the exhibition - because of its modern approach, message, and role in strengthen the identity - for student classes, for example as an irregular history lesson.
The death march – a painting made by Istvan Szasz, Hungarian painter
(mentioned as 'Saz' by General Ferrari)
This exhibition guides the visitors through the calvary of Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. And this exhibition is the part of a complex project: Gábor Margittai's book, Szamár-sziget szellemkatonái ('The Ghost Soldiers of Asinara') was published in Hungary in October 2014. A documentary (The prisoners of Asinara, 52') was shoot at the September 2014 in the island of Asinara, and at the autumn of 2015, at the time of centenary the premiere will be in Budapest. The director of the documentary is Anita Major, the writer-editor is Gábor Margittai. As far as we know, this is the first documentary of the camps of Asinara in the world.
Shooting in the 'Ossario' of Asinara (Photo: Péter Ney)
The prison camp of ‘Donkey Island’ and the death march of the Balkans shows the destruction of World War I and the tension between the nations of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy like a drop in the ocean. This collection recovers a completely unknown chapter of the Hungarian (and Austrian-Hungarian) cultural history, trying to place the forgotten ghost soldiers of Donkey Island and the story of their sufferings back to its deserved place in public memory. At the same time, to discuss the undiscussed affairs of former enemies, and by this, destroying centurial taboos – not the possibility of dialogue.
The material of exhibition:
- 48 photo and document boards, measuring 80x120 cm
- 5 magnified documents for Roll-up stands
- personal items of prisoners of war from Serbia
- objects from Asinara prison camp
- 6 pieces of art (oil paintings, portraits of Austrian-Hungarian officers) from the Niš officers camp
- multimedia content: two 7-minute video footages about the scenes of Donkey Island and the death march, and about the stations of the research expedition
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| Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in one of the camps of Asinara |
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| The ruins of a chapel made by the prisoners of war, Asinara (Photo: Gábor Margittai) |
 |
| Old bridge in North-Albania, near to Skhodra (Photo: Gábor Margittai) |
Gábor Margittai and Anita Major researched the story of the Asinara camp and ordeal of the prisoners herded here. The pair of authors have been travelling in the Carpathian Basin and continents far away to investigate the forgotten reminiscences of the Hungarians. The aim of their last pioneering work was to recover the story of calvary of the k. u. k. prisoners of war by field and background research – following the several thousand kilometre long route of the death march by car, on foot and sea for the first time in the world. As the result of the modern expedition – arching over nations and former enemies, but focusing on Hungarian prisoners of war – they aimed to save intellectual memories and artefacts. And to show what happened to the nature and communities along the route in the past hundred years.
 |
| Anita Major (R) and Gábor Margittai (L) with Prof. Marinella Lőrinczi in Sardinia (Photo: Péter Ney) |
The articles on the topic were published in the press, in the second largest daily paper of Hungary. Our goal, in part, was to raise the Hungarian relics of death march from the family archives. Our summons had an unexpected outcome: prisoner diaries, photos, military documents, pieces of art were sent to us. These materials were unknown to the scholars. The shock and emotional letters of our readers showed: the memory of the victims of World War I lives in the Hungarian society, deeply suppressed as every great sadness.
 |
| The Hungarian prisoner, Árpád Szabó' s card sent from Asinara in 1918 |
The Outer Hungarians Minority Research and Media Provider Ltd. undertook a pioneer work: to reveal and document the story of this k. u. k. army - following the route of the death march on road, by foot and on the sea. The modern expedition - overarching between nations and one-day enemies, but focusing to the Hungarian prisoners of war - aims at saving intellectual and material memories. The produced photo and film material - which are built upon the contrast between the heavenly beauty of the scenes and the hellish suffering, and between past and present -, supplemented by archive footages and never published parts of personal diaries, after the opening in Budapest (December 2014), have been brought as a multimedia wandering exhibition to other Hungarian towns and villages. One of our most important aims is bringing the exhibition along the exhibition rooms of the countries on the route of the death march. The aim of the exhibition: raising a worthy monument for Hungarian prisoners of war who were either declared as missing in action or died anonymously. The exhibition also aims to show the landscapes and people who were eye witnesses of the events! We can offer the exhibition - because of its modern approach, message, and role in strengthen the identity - for student classes, for example as an irregular history lesson.
|
| The death march – a painting made by Istvan Szasz, Hungarian painter (mentioned as 'Saz' by General Ferrari) |
 |
| Shooting in the 'Ossario' of Asinara (Photo: Péter Ney) |
The prison camp of ‘Donkey Island’ and the death march of the Balkans shows the destruction of World War I and the tension between the nations of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy like a drop in the ocean. This collection recovers a completely unknown chapter of the Hungarian (and Austrian-Hungarian) cultural history, trying to place the forgotten ghost soldiers of Donkey Island and the story of their sufferings back to its deserved place in public memory. At the same time, to discuss the undiscussed affairs of former enemies, and by this, destroying centurial taboos – not the possibility of dialogue.
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Új megjegyzések írására nincs lehetőség.