Excellent Professional Relations Between Hungarian and German War Grave Care Experts

Szöveg: Vivien Takács | 2017. május 23. 9:00

On Wednesday, 17 May a delegation from the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) paid a visit to the MoD Institute and Museum of Military History (MoD IMMH), Budapest.

The German and Hungarian delegations discussed cooperation in war grave care. In answer to our question, MoD IMMH Commandant Col. Dr. Vilmos Kovács outlined the organizational transformation of the field of war grave care. As he said, in 2016, war grave care was transferred to the IMMH. “From that point on, I think all conditions are met here for the undisturbed research work of our excellent war grave care experts who receive direct support from our historians, museologists and archivists."

The colonel added that early this year, the MoD IMMH launched the program “Military Remembrance". Besides war graves, this program is also dedicated to the memorabilia of military history, and covers the period from the 1848–49 memorial sites to World Wars I and II up to 1956 to provide a scientific background to paying tribute to our soldier heroes. We were informed that by 2018, the centenary year of the end of World War I, a database will have been completed which contains the names of Hungarian soldiers who were killed, wounded, captured or went missing in the Great War, as well as a wealth of further interesting data that may be of primary interest to families in Hungary. The commandant revealed that more than one million names and datasets have already been processed to date, and also told us about the procedures to be followed when the mortal remains are found in Hungary of a non-Hungarian soldier who fought in World War II. As he said, there is a protocol for this event, an important element of which is the notification of a partner organization in the relevant country.

“I am very proud that the professional relations between Hungarian and German war grave care experts have been developing for years now", Secretary General of the German War Graves Commission Daniela Schily told us. We were informed that official cooperation started in 1993 on the basis of an intergovernmental agreement, but the historical facts show that active cooperation between the two organizations has been going on since the 1960s, and primarily since the end of the 1980s. “Starting from the end of the 80s, Hungary allows us to exhume and identify our soldiers who fell in Hungary, and bury them in cemeteries", the Secretary General said.

War grave care provides Hungarian and German young people with opportunities to get to know each other besides doing joint war grave care work", Daniela Schily said. She revealed that joint exhumation is currently going on in the area of a third country. “Earlier we exhumed those of our soldiers who died in military operations, but from now on, our collective work will expand with searching for the gravesites of those who died in POW camps", the Secretary General emphasized.

After the discussions, the German delegation visited the museum.