András Toma (5 December 1925 – 30 March 2004) was a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in 1944, then discovered living in a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

psychiatric hospital A psychiatric hospital, also known as a mental health hospital, a behavioral health hospital, or an asylum is a specialized medical facility that focuses on the treatment of severe Mental disorder, mental disorders. These institutions cater t ...

in 2000. He was most likely the last prisoner of war from the Second World War to be repatriated. Because Toma never learned

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and nobody at the hospital spoke Hungarian, he had apparently not had a single conversation in over 50 years, a situation of great interest for the fields of

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior. ...

and

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

Early life

Toma was born in 1925, in the village of

Újfehértó Újfehértó (Yiddish, ) is a small town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. History By 1920, the Jewish population had reached 1,303 people, 11% of the total population. On 17 May 1944, the ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. He lived in the

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

of Sulyánbokor, near

Nyíregyháza Nyíregyháza (, ) is a city with county rights in northeastern Hungary and the county capital of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg. With a population of 118,001, it is the seventh-largest city in Hungary and the second largest in the Northern Great ...

, where he worked as a blacksmith's apprentice. He had two younger half-siblings through his father, a brother named János and a sister named Anna, who were 12 and 18 years younger than him, respectively.

Military service

He was drafted into the

Royal Hungarian Army The Royal Hungarian Army (, ) was the name given to the land forces of the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946), Kingdom of Hungary in the period from 1922 to 1945. Its name was inherited from the Royal Hungarian Honvéd which went under the same Hu ...

in October 1944, during

WWII World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, and he served in an artillery regiment. Later that year, while fighting near

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

, Toma was captured by Soviet forces, and was transported to a

prisoner of war camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, ...

east of

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. Following the closure of the camp in 1947, he was transferred to a mental hospital in Kotelnich, where he was diagnosed with

psychoneurosis Neurosis (: neuroses) is a term mainly used today by followers of Psychoanalytic theory, Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been Repression (psychoanalysis), repressed. In recent history, the ...

. Since those in hospitals were removed from prisoner of war lists, Toma was lost to Hungarian authorities. He was declared dead in 1954. Toma lived in the hospital for the next 53 years under the name András Tamás, where he was unable to communicate with others due to his inability to speak

. In 1997, a

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

n doctor who spoke Hungarian visited the hospital, and identified him as Hungarian. On 11 August 2000, Toma arrived back in Hungary where authorities attempted to identify him. 82 families came forward, thinking he was their missing relative. On 16 September 2000, he returned to his hometown of Sulyánbokor, where he was reunited with his siblings; they were later confirmed through DNA matching. Since he was never discharged, Toma was promoted to

sergeant major Sergeant major is a senior Non-commissioned officer, non-commissioned Military rank, rank or appointment in many militaries around the world. History In 16th century Spain, the ("sergeant major") was a general officer. He commanded an army's ...

by the Minister of Defense, and since his military service had been continuous, his decades of accumulated unpaid salary were paid in full. Toma, then aged 74, moved in with his

half-sister A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raise ...

Anna, who cared for him until his death in 2004. He was buried with military honours.

Early life

Military service

References

Further reading