Commemoration and Pride

In his speech delivered at the closing ceremony of the 16th Don Heroes Memorial Tour, Tamás Vargha emphasized the importance of commemoration and the wrongness of the policy of silence after World War II. “Lying in unmarked graves, these dead soldiers are the martyrs of Hungary. To quote a line from Dezső Keresztury’s poem “Epitaph", »Their sacrifice is not an entitlement for doing evil. It is rather an order to do good«. On behalf of the government of Hungary, let me thank all participants who have completed the Don Heroes Memorial Tour for commemorating the Don heroes in this way and for helping us to make sure that their memory is not built from oblivion but from remembrance and kept alive in our souls", he said.

This year for the first time, the participants of the 16th Don Heroes Memorial Tour – around 300 people – simultaneously covered the different distances on five different routes. Of them, 82 completed the route along Debrecen, Hajdúhadház, Hajdúböszörmény, Hajdúdorog and Hajdúnánás, including members wearing period uniforms of the “Szent László" Division Military Re-enactment Association, soldiers of the Hungarian Defence Forces and students of the Károly Kratochvil Military Secondary School and Dormitory (Debrecen).

Gábor Berkecz, the principal of the school also accompanied the students, and gave a speech at a ceremony held during the day in Hajdúdorog. As he said, “commemoration is complemented by pride. We are proud of our predecessors and also of those soldiers, young people, students of the military secondary school and re-enactors who were marching together in these three days. We wish to pay tribute to our heroes through this physical accomplishment."

Photo: Tünde Rácz