It's frustrating to read that this is 'a situation of great interest for the fields of psychiatry and psycholinguistics', but not any results/commentary, or even any indication that his situation was actually studied (vs. greatly interesting but ignored).
The Wikipedia page doesn't give juicy information. I think we can go to [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/19/1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/19/1</a>
How sad, to fall through the cracks in such a spectacular way.<p>There have been so many appeals for help and obvious missed-test cases posted here by people. I can only dread the number of people who will experience such horrible fates again when there is another world war.<p>Services and systems for which no user-accessible help exists, completely automated interfaces designed by people without knowledge of the end users actual use and only through public outcry is an operator directed to edit some database manually or restore someones account or access to funds.
I'm a bit surprised it does get this many upvotes. The wikipedia article is a stub. The guardian article quoted (and posted here in the comments) doesn't do a good job detailing the exact situation he found himself in. For example what (if any) mental issues he might have had to be kept in the hospital, to what degree he was intelligible when talking (even to someone speaking Hungarian), to what degree he even tried to communicate, in what way he was treated or might have been medicated, etc...<p>Without any of this information the story is a bit of interesting trivia, little more, and provides very little to discuss in my opinion. The quality of comments so far reflect this lack of substance.<p>And just to make sure: None of what I said is meant to belittle his situation from a personal/human perspective.
When my mother in law died we cleaned a lot of old stuff out of her house. She had been born in 1944 and never knew her father who had also been drafted in ‘44 when the Germans were down to drafting essential personnel (a 38 year old railroad worker in his case — same as my grandad on the opposite side!).<p>Anyway we found a trove of letters <i>her</i> mum had written to the Red Cross <i>every single month</i> from 1945 to 1963 asking about her husband, and stack of responses that said “we have no info”.<p>The last letter simply read “<his name and ID number> died in such-and-such-a-town in Siberia 1956.” There was no other info.
The Russian version of the Wikipedia page [1] shares a little bit more information on him. Particularly, that he did indeed have some conversations during his hospital time in Russia.<p>[1] <a href="https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0,_%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%88?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%BE%...</a>
How do you not learn a local language after 50 years? Were they also not talking around him?<p>I don't think I have any special facility with language, but I'm fairly convinced if I had 50 years and the right vocal abilities to make the sounds, I could learn to speak a language from another <i>planet</i> if I were immersed in it.
spider robinson had a short story, "the time traveller", based on the premise that emerging from years of that sort of isolation (i think it was ten years in the case of his protagonist) was tantamount to travelling forward in time.
I wonder what his inner experience was like those 50 years. Terry said that when your life is empty, God gives you clairvoyance to fill the void. Wonder if it was the same for this guy.
They must've done that intentionally. You can't tell me he wouldn't have been able to communicate through drawing, writing or some sort of made up sign language that he's hungarian or that he's mentally well.
Title means Prisoner of War, for anyone else tainted by modernity and thought of Proof of Work. (Here's towards hoping that PoW will rarely have to refer to the title's definition henceforth)