Katonatörténet (2015)

Katona Noémi is a 29-year-old girl who has been living in Berlin for five years and is studying history, sociology and cultural anthropology, and works for a non-governmental organization. In 2010, after the death of his grandfather, Ferenc Katona, his Wolrd War II POW journal fell into her hands . The diary was about the fate of the wound-striped private between December 1944 and October 1945. About the American and French captivity, the unbearable, humiliation, survival, camaraderie, faith, the struggle for survival, perseverance, through the eyes of a 21-year-old man. Noemi embarks on following the path of her grandfather, traversing the 9-month captivity between Mihályfa in Zala County and Bad-Kreuznach in Bavaria, trying to understand the thinking of a generation and a historical situation, and of her grandfather. Meanwhile, the words and thoughts of his grandfather and his comrades from prisoner-of-war diaries come to life, the events of the time, the torments of captivity, suffering, hunger, misery, the secrets and possibilities of survival also come to life. Among other things also the reasons for after the return of the prisoners (October 1945-February 1946) they could not talk about all this, and the cunning fears and humiliations that silenced the Hungarian soldiers fleeing home from Western captivity. Little has been said so far on the subject of Western captivity - in the light of the events of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Through the personal story of a grandfather-grandson, our film presents the important slice of history that decided the fate of many hundreds of thousands of forced military service of young Hungarians for life, in the 20th century.