Lieutenant József Reményi

The Photos of Lieutenant József Reményi – a Hungarian Red Cross (Hospital) Train from the Eastern Front to Germany József Reményi was born on July 8, 1911 in Demecser, to a shopkeeper family with five children. Having completed his studies at a school of commerce, he was employed as an accountant and economist by the Dessewffy manor of Királytelek. At the end of the 30’s, he moved to Budapest to work for the joint stock company Tungsram, as a public accountant.  In the 40’s he became a member of the Social Democratic Party. During World War II., he served on the hospital trains of the 2nd Hungarian Army fighting in the Don bend, as a manager of economy responsible for food supplies. He was an ensign in reserve, a second-lieutenant and, later on, a lieutenant. Altogether, he was sent to the front 17 times by the hospital train No. 152 and 154. He had a chance to experience the horrors of the war at close quarters, he saw the misery and famine of the Ukrainian people, the defencelessness and humiliation of the Hungarian soldiers and the inmates of the forced labour camps and the condescending, arrogant manner of the “world-conquering” Germans. (He described all the above in his diary written for his wife during his sixth and eights journey, between December 1942 and March 1943. He described the everyday events of the Don campaign and the hospital trains in detail and took several thousand pictures.)  In the last phase of the war, at the end of 1944, he was sent to Germany by a hospital train. He ended up in Austria and, later on, in Bavaria together with his wife and their daughter, Mária. The hospital train, all of its personnel and all those travelling by the train fell into captivity and were taken prisoners of war by the Americans. On October 16, 1945, his second daughter, Erzsébet, was born in the military hospital of Bad Aibling.