Deportations of Hungarians to the Czech lands

("concerning universal work duty") authorized the Czechoslovak administration to draft people into paid labor service for the maximum period of one year in order to redress some of the war damages.

[1] Under the disguise of "labor recruiting", the deportation of Hungarians from South Slovakia began to the recently vacated Czech borderlands.

[1][2] Those who could not prove that they either remained loyal to Czechoslovakia during the war, or that they took part in liberation, or that they were subject to Nazi terror, also had their property confiscated under Presidential Decree No.

[1][2] These "labor recruitings" were named by Czech historian Karel Kaplan as "internal colonizations", and according to him their "political aim... was to transfer a part of the Hungarian minority away from the Hungarian border and to destroy it as a compact territorial unit.

[1] Eventually, 40,000[3][4]-45,000[5]-50,000[2] Hungarians were deported to Czech territories recently cleared of Sudeten Germans, but also to the other areas where labor force was required.