In Prekmurje, one of the most diverse Slovenian regions in terms of nationalities and religions, the ethnic as well as religious structure was changed bythe violence of World War II and the post-war period. Due to the holocaust the Prekmurje Jews were virtually gone, and because of the forced relocation in the post-war period the local German minority also disappeared. The wartime and post-war developments also affected the Prekmurje Slovenians and Hungarians.The interwar repression in the Prekmurje region had mostly been carried outduring the period of the Hungarian authorities, as the soldiers of the Red Army had liberated the territory by the river Mura a month before World War II ended. During the rule of the Hungarian authorities, the colonists from the Slovenian littoral (Primorska), who had settled in Prekmurje after World War I, were, besides the afore mentioned Jews, the primary target of the repression. However,the post-war period was also characterised by the repression of the communist authorities, involving, besides the deportation of the Germans, measures agains ta part of the Hungarian minority. While during World War II the victims of repression were Slovenians from the Primorska, region whom the Hungarian occupiers interned into the Sárvár camp, the post-war authorities in Prekmurje resorted to repression against Hungarians and interned them into the camp at the Hrastovec castle (near Lenart). These are the most characteristic examplesof wartime and post-war repression against Slovenians and Hungarians in Prekmurje. In the period between both world wars the Yugoslav authorities populated the hamlets with predominantly Hungarian population in the vicinity of Dolnja Lendava (today Lendava-Lendva) with Slovenians and some Croatians from Primorska, Istria, the interior of Slovenia, and also from Prekmurje, who settled the expropriated lands of former landowning nobles. After the annexation of Prekmurje to Hungary in 1941, the Hungarian authorities interned these colonists, who had not lived in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary before 31 October 1918, into the Sárvár camp in Vas County. Unlike the colonists from Bačka and Baranja, who had already been interned in 1941, the colonists from Prekmurje were taken there in 1942. It was in the middle of 1941 that the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted the Italian Foreign Ministry with the aim of extraditing these colonists to Italy as the state of their origin. However, as the negotiations were not »successful«, on 22 and 23 June 1942 the Hungarian authorities interned the colonists – whole families from Primorska and Istria, according to certain sources 587 people, and according to others 589– to the Sárvár camp. Of these 35 people died: approximately one third (23 internees) in the camp (due to hunger, cold, disease), and 12 of them in the rest of Hungary and Independent State of Croatia. Soon after World War II – on 9 and 10 July 1945 – the Yugoslav (Slovenian) communist authorities interned 558 Hungarians from the Prekmurje region into the Hrastovec concentration camp, once again whole families. According to the opinion of many Prekmurje Hungarians, especially internees, this was a retaliatory measure of the Yugoslav (Slovenian) authorities for the internment of the colonists into Sárvár. After three weeks of internment most of those who were capable to work were taken into the Sterntal camp (Strnišče pri Ptuju, today Kidričevo). Due to a breakout of typhus in Hrastovec, 31 children were sent home. The remaining Hungarian internees from Prekmurje (those located in Hrastovec as well as those in Sterntal) could return home in the end of September. The deputy mayor of Budapest at the time, Kővágó (Küronya) József, hailing from Lendava on his mother’s side, played an instrumental role in their release. On the basis of his information the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened, and this led to the intervention of the Yugoslav authorities. It turned out that neither Belgrade nor Ljubljana or Maribor had been informed about the internment of the Prekmurje Hungarians; so probably it was a local action. The precise number of Hungarians who died during internment or because of it is not yet known, but according to the research carried out among the families of the internees around ten of them died.