Young Soldiers Sent To Death Can Find Final Rest

The guests were greeted by Mayor Gergely Szabó who said that they have learned about some new details of the Second World War when György Papp, who also lives in the village, made a few historic documents public. According to the documents, in the village cemetery there is a mass grave where those are buried who died in the fights of 18 January, 1945; the people who resisted the attacks of the Soviet troops along the Margit Line. Upon the initiation of the villagers and with the help of MoD Institute and Museum of Military History, the mass grave has been unearthed and Hungarian soldiers now lay in a marked grave that bears their name.

Defence Minister Dr. Imre Szekeres underlined in his address that the history of the Hungarian people equals military history. “In the course of history there were numerous occasions when Hungarians had to take up arms to defend the country. Because of that we had very high casualties in the past centuries. In World War II, our country saw many great bloodsheds, more than one million Hungarians died in the homeland and abroad, civilians and soldiers alike. The battles lasted for more than eight months in our country and caused a huge material loss and personal casualties," the minister said.

In the area around Küngös there was one of the major fights of the world war going on in mid-January 1945. In these clashes the casualties exceeded 70 percent on both sides. One of the big sins of the Hungarian Nazis (‘nyilasok’) was that they were willing to do anything to retain their power. This is what they did when they recuited almost children in their ‘levente’ corps and sent them to the battlefields untrained and badly armed. These young men wanted to live, love, work, start a family, but were killed in action instead. Decades had to pass so that we can know about these young heroes who were buried anonymously. A few days later, in January 1945, German soldiers had also been buried in this mass grave – they were put to eternal rest in the German military cemetery of Veszprém.

"There are many memorials of the unknown soldier in the country. As of today, we have one more world war memorial that also bears the name of those resting in the grave, therefore we know whom we have to remember. Many Hungarian victims are buried abroad. We would like that our soldiers in those places were given the honour that entitles all those who had lost their lives in the battlefield. We still have a lot to do in this respect, for we may have more dead troops who were buried just like the soldiers in the Küngös cemetery. We have to find them and pay them due mortuary honours," said Imre Szekeres, who also asked the inhabitants of the village to keep the memory of these soldiers for a long time.

After the minister’s speech, Imre Szekeres and Gergely Szabó inaugurated the World War II memorial, followed by the prayers of Lutheran minister Colonel János Jákob and Roman Catholic priest Tibor Berta for the deliverance of the souls of the war heroes, and the sanctification of the memorial. The representatives of the Ministry of Defence, the Institute and Museum of Military History, the local governments of Küngös and that of the nearby villages, and the clergymen of the churches who were present laid wreaths on the memorial, and the young and old people of the village also brought many flowers.

As a closure to the ceremony, Defence Minister Imre Szekeres handed over certificates of recognition to Zoltán Rácz, the twin brother of 17-year-old levente László Rácz, who is buried in the grave, and to György Papp, who has made the documents public and initiated the construction of the memorial, a relative of Corporal Kálmán Kanász.

The ceremony ended with the tunes of Il Silentio, about which minister János Jakab said in his prayer: "These soldiers had been waiting for the last note of the horn so much, not to go to the battle but to find final rest."