
Toma was transported to a Soviet POW camp and then had to undergo a horrifying 21-day train voyage in a boxcar stuffed with human cargo. Many of his comrades died in transit. Toma slept on their bodies.
Toma ended up at Kotelnich, more than 600 miles east of Moscow, in 1947. He was suffering from “psycho-neurosis” and put in a mental hospital. Thus he was removed from the prisoner of war lists, and thus Toma was lost to Hungarian authorities and declared dead in 1954. But he wasn't dead. In the mental hospital his Hungarian was mistaken for gibberish or an invented language by a mental patient. He didn't learn Russian either and had no-one to talk to. But that changed in 1997 when a Hungarian-speaking doctor from Slovakia visited the asylum. And thus he was discovered. He was flown home in August 2000.
He was reunited with family members that were confirmed through DNA matching. Since he was never discharged he was promoted to sergeant major by the Minister of Defense and received unpaid salary in full. He lived with his half-sister until his death in 2004 and he was buried with military honors.
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RUSSIA: HUNGARIAN WWII POW TO RETURN HOME