From Battlefield to Exile: The Displacement, Diaspora Experience, and Tragic Death of Lieutenant Colonel László Pokorny and the Hungarian Military Exile Community in the United States, 1945–1975

This study investigates the displacement, diaspora formation, downward social mobility, and identity preservation of Royal Hungarian Army officers who emigrated to the United States between 1945 and 1975, using Lieutenant Colonel László Pokorny (1905–1975)—commander of the 1st Parachute Battalion and recipient of the Gold Medal of Valor—as a central case study. The study integrates four theoretical frameworks: diaspora theory (Safran, 1991; Cohen, 1997/2008), forced migration models (Kunz, 1973; Zolberg et al., 1989), status inconsistency and capital loss theory (Lenski, 1954; Bourdieu, 1986), and material culture in collective memory (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986; Nora, 1989). Employing a mixed-methods design that combines digital prosopography, archival research, cross-archival record linkage, and oral history, the study draws upon the Katonahőseink military casualty database, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Joint Distribution Committee Archives, the Hungarian National Archives, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Prosopographical analysis of 2,212 records from the Katonahőseink database revealed that the officer cohort was dominated by company-grade officers (79.82%), with field-grade and general officers exhibiting a 58.13% non-fatal outcome rate. January 1943—the Don Bend catastrophe—was identified as the peak casualty period (525 recorded loss events). Chi-square analysis demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between rank and loss type (χ² = 21.54, p < .001). Critically, Lieutenant Colonel Pokorny was absent from the casualty database, a finding consistent with his documented survival, emigration, and eventual death as a building caretaker in New Jersey in 1975. The study confirms that the Hungarian military exile community conforms to Cohen’s victim diaspora typology and Safran’s six diaspora characteristics, that the 1945 cohort constituted anticipatory refugees (Kunz, 1973) as distinct from the acute refugees of 1956, and that material culture—particularly regimental artifacts such as the consecrated 1st Parachute Battalion flag preserved by Pokorny—served as a primary mechanism for identity preservation in exile. This study contributes the first systematic prosopographical analysis of the Hungarian military exile cohort and offers a replicable methodological framework for studying other displaced military communities.