Consecrated Crosses and Gravestones in Kőrösmező

The first burials in the heroes’ cemetery (as it is referred to in sources of the age) date back to October 1914, when the dead were buried here of the militia battalion that was the first to counter the Russian incursion in September. During the Great War, more than 320 Austrian, Hungarian and German soldiers were laid to rest in the graves marked with small concrete crosses.

The majority of Hungarian losses comprised the soldiers of the imperial and royal 101st infantry regiment of Békéscsaba, which fought in defence of the millennial borders. Headstones were erected again in the cemetery in 1941 and 1944.

Next to the WWI plot a new part was established to bury soldiers who fell after the declaration of war on the Soviet Union and from 1944 April onwards in the battlefield of Galicia. In August 1944, another plot has to be opened due to the increasing numbers of those who were transported here and died in the local field hospital.

Last autumn a ceremony with wreath-laying was held to consecrate the replaced crosses of 1914–18 and the restored headstones of 47 soldiers resting in a WWII plot.

The present ceremony – at which the part of the cemetery established in the second half of 1944 is inaugurated – is held to commemorate the soldiers killed in action during the fighting for the direct foreground of the Carpathian Mountains and the area of the Tatár- (Yablonitski) Pass. Thus, as of the end of May, another 37 consecrated crosses and gravestones mark the final resting place of 46 Hungarian soldiers fallen in World War II.