Karoly a Survivor

This is the story of Karoly, a man whose family protected Katia and other Jewish refugees; Karoly was a teenage boy who was used as human-shield by Romanian 'liberators' in Hungary. After the war, he was sent to prison while Hungary was under communist control. He was committed as a political prisoner for being a member of the Independent Small-holders Party, the communist party's only serious political rival.

Under the communist regime, anyone who held authority in the community was a threat and Karoly was arrested under a trumped up charge. He was sent to Márianosztra where he was given the option of starvation or working as a miner in a forced labour camp.

Karoly worked in a coalmine until he escaped the cruel communist regime in 1956. This is the story of a man who cheated death and suffered un-imaginable privations before escaping to England to start again from nothing, a broken and mentally enfeebled refugee who rebuilt his life through hard work and determination.