In August 2000, the world was shaken by extraordinary news – at Budapest airport, a man long thought to be dead landed. András Toma, a 73-year-old elderly man in a wheelchair, was returning home after 53 years spent within the Soviet psychiatric system. His story is one of the most shocking tales of forgotten victims of World War II.
A Boy from Rural Hungary
András Toma was born on December 5, 1925, in Újfehértó, a small town in eastern Hungary. His childhood passed peacefully in the countryside, where he completed six years of elementary education. Nothing foretold the tragedy that was to come.
Everything changed when András turned seventeen. In 1943, he decided to join the Hungarian army. The recruitment application included the approval of his parents, Etelka and András Sr. Their slightly smudged signatures, preserved in the archives, are the last trace of a normal life for the young Hungarian before the catastrophe of war.
From that point on, András fought on the Eastern Front against the Red Army. Fate led him all the way to near Kraków, where in 1945, just before the end of the war, he was captured by Soviet forces. He was only nineteen and could not have known that he would return home as an old man.
The Hell of Prisoner-of-War Camps
The transport to the POW camp near Leningrad lasted three weeks and was a living nightmare. Young András slept on the bodies of fellow prisoners who died during the journey through Ukraine and Belarus. With a trembling voice, he later recalled being forced to bury the corpses of fellow inmates.
Total language isolation heightened the trauma. There was no one around András who spoke Hungarian, and he himself did not understand Russian or German. This inability to communicate deepened his sense of loneliness and helplessness.
He spent twenty tragic months in the camp. The prisoners were severely malnourished, the wounded left without medical care, and diseases claimed many lives. Every morning, there were fewer people alive than the day before. András spent hours lying among dead companions, waiting for someone to remove the bodies. These experiences broke the young man’s spirit.
A Mistake That Erased Half a Century of Life
Nervous breakdown became inevitable. In January 1947, András was taken to a military hospital in the village of Tarasowsk, over a thousand kilometers east of Leningrad. Fate cruelly mocked him, as it was at that time that the Red Army began releasing Hungarian POWs to return home.
His name was mistakenly entered as András Tamás. This seemingly minor bureaucratic error made him an „outsider” to both his family and the Hungarian authorities. After two weeks in a field hospital, due to his poor mental state, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital administered by the NKVD in Kotelnich.
The preserved admission card paints a depressing picture. It described a man in an extreme state of exhaustion, suffering from delusions, eating little, not sleeping at night, and refusing to take medication. He would cry and not answer questions.
His clothing consisted of a thin jacket, an old, torn ushanka hat, and various thin felt boots. Psychiatric hospital patients were automatically struck off prisoner-of-war lists. Officially, András Toma ceased to exist.
Return After Half a Century
In 2000, Hungarian television broadcast news about the discovery of a Hungarian, captured during the war, in a Russian psychiatric hospital. Anna Gabulya, watching the news, could not believe her eyes. The man whose family had long mourned was, all this time, living just a few thousand kilometers from home.
On August 11, 2000, András Toma landed in Budapest. His return became a national event, but the sight that greeted the Hungarians was shattering. Through the glass doors of the airport, they pushed a wheelchair carrying a gaunt, hunched old man. He was missing a leg and teeth. He was terrified of the crowd of journalists, the flashes of cameras, and the noise.
András Toma was recognized as the last prisoner of World War II. He was 73 years old and had spent more than half his life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, forgotten by the world. His story is a painful reminder that some war wounds never heal, and a bureaucratic mistake can erase an entire life.
Autor
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.