According to the programme published on the government’s website, the central commemoration will be held at the memorial dedicated to the victims of Soviet occupation in the park bordered by Tímár utca, Lajos utca, Goldberger Leó utca and Árpádfejedelem útja in the 3rd district in Budapest.

Attendees will be welcomed by Erzsébet Menczer, President of the Organisation of Soviet-Deported Hungarian Political Prisoners and Forced Labourers, while an address will be delivered by Zoltán Kovács, Minister of State for International Communication and Relations of the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister.

On 21 May 2012 Parliament decided to declare 25 November the memorial day of Soviet-deported Hungarian political prisoners and forced labourers as this was the day in 1953 when the first group of political prisoners who survived the horrors of the Gulag could return to Hungarian soil.

According to the decision, the memorial day is about the some 800,000 Hungarians who were forcibly taken to the Soviet Union from the autumn of 1944 onward for several years of forced labour as prisoners of war or as internees, or who were banished to the prisoner camps of the Gulag for up to 5 to 25 years after World War II “with the effective assistance of the Hungarian authorities, based on fabricated charges”.

(MTI)