The small Hungarian border village of Molnári has spruced itself up. Neat houses line the street leading down into the vast floodplain of the Mura River, an untouched, species-rich river landscape that is strictly protected today as part of a transboundary biosphere reserve and national park. Where information boards now explain the rich flora and fauna and the river invites peaceful fishing and canoeing, one of Europe’s most heavily guarded demarcation lines once ran. During the Cold War, the Mura formed the Iron Curtain to what was then Yugoslavia, leaving Molnári virtually cut off from the outside world and making it nearly impossible for villagers to access the riverbank for decades. Only an abandoned bunker, overgrown with wild greenery, recalls those times. There is also a sign indicating that a ferry service crossed to the opposite shore to Yugoslavia here until 1948.
Here, just 600 meters from the heavily guarded border with former Yugoslavia, grew up Olgi, a Hungarian woman born in 1966. She spent 23 years of her life under the communist system, a life marked by extreme contrasts between childhood lightheartedness and the harsh political reality of the regime. Today, she works as an intensive care nurse at a hospital, while her husband Sándor, who moved here from another part of Hungary, works as a paramedic.
An Unpolitical Childhood in the Restricted Zone
Anyone who thinks that the constant presence of armed soldiers paralyzed the childhood of the villagers is mistaken. "I had a very beautiful childhood," Olgi recalls. "Under that system, we didn't know that anything else existed. My childhood did not yet have any political meaning." Olgi shares that the school organized summer camps: "As a student, I got to know all of Hungary through various holiday trips." Yet the normalcy was only an illusion. Anyone wishing to drive to Molnári from the city of Nagykanizsa, 15 kilometers away, inevitably passed through a checkpoint. "Soldaten and border guards checked everyone who wanted to enter the border zone. Only those who had business here or who lived here were allowed in." Visitors had to state exactly whom they were visiting. Free movement by car did not exist.
The border dictated daily life, though people rarely spoke about it. Right by the river ran the notorious border strip: a three-meter-wide, freshly plowed and raked dirt path where any footprint would have been instantly visible. But even here, there seemed to be exceptions. Olgi remembers: "When we wanted to play by the river as children, we depended on the goodwill of the border guards. We specifically looked out for the young soldiers. If the one on duty was usually friendly toward us children, he would let us go down to the water for a short time. As children, we didn't question these rules. We were born into this situation and simply accepted it. We had simply always been forbidden to go there." On the other hand, Olgi recalls that they regularly received Yugoslav television from Zagreb at home. "Through the commercials, we knew what was available in Yugoslavia that wasn't available in Hungary."
The Trauma of the Ancestors: Deportation and Forced Labor
Behind the facade of the socialist idyll, however, lay a family trauma. In the early 1950s, at the height of the Stalinist Rákosi era, Olgi’s paternal family was brutally torn from the village. Their crime? They were deemed so-called "kulaks," the term used for wealthy peasants. "In the early 1950s, it was considered a crime if someone allegedly or actually possessed a large fortune." The regime was establishing agricultural production cooperatives (LPG) at the time. Those who refused to surrender their property were either coerced or deported.
Olgi’s family was deported to the other side of the country, to the sparsely populated Hortobágy steppe in the northeast, to perform forced labor on a farm. For several years, they had to live and work there under wretched conditions. Yet even after their release, they were not allowed to return immediately. They were initially given temporary accommodation near Lake Balaton. When they were finally allowed to return to their home in Molnári years later, they stood before nothing: their original house had been demolished, and the land now belonged to the state. Politics eventually shifted, allowing them to later buy back a piece of farmland on which they were able to build their own house in the mid-1970s. "This is where I grew up," Olgi says proudly, pointing to the neat little house.
Out of fear, the older generation remained silent about the horrors of the past for decades. "Under the socialist system, people didn't talk about it. There were no newspaper articles or reports about it either," Olgi explains.
Pork for Cognac: The Cableway Over the Mura
Despite the repression they suffered, the villagers did not lose their pragmatism. Olgi talks about a lively, illicit barter trade with relatives and acquaintances on the Yugoslav side of the river. And of all people, Olgi’s grandfather, the very man the regime had previously deported, was one of the most resourceful minds in the village. "There actually was an established cableway," Olgi says, describing the secret logistics by the river. "Pork was sent to Yugoslavia on a small boat, and on the way back, coveted goods like cognac or the cult seasoning Vegeta came to Hungary." Since the border guards patrolled on foot at hourly intervals and there were no active wire fences or fixed posts in this section, the locals made full use of their precise knowledge of the terrain. "I only know all of this from stories. But it is virtually part of our family history."
The Life of Commuters and Relations with Authority
Economic survival in the border village remained complicated through the 1960s and 70s. Because there was hardly any suitable work in the immediate vicinity, a system of "weekly commuting" became established. The men, including Olgi’s stepfather, traveled from Sunday to Saturday to distant cities like Budapest or Pécs to work in factories or mines. "The families stayed here. The women raised the children, tended to the household, and looked after the gardens." Olgi’s grandparents stepped in during the week to help raise the children while the parents earned money far away. Curiously, Olgi’s parents met in that exact setting: on the train on their way to work.
Olgi describes the relationship with the border soldiers, who were stationed in a small barracks between Molnári and Tótszerdahely, as surprisingly humane. They were mostly young conscripts from other parts of the country. Everyone knew they were just doing their job out of a sense of duty, so the villagers were always very friendly and offered them fruit." This kindness often led to deeper connections, and over the years, many young soldiers ended up marrying local women and starting families right here.”
