“We will defend the cause of Polish and Hungarian freedom in all circumstances”, Minister of Defence Csaba Hende said on Sunday, at a commemoration held on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Limanowa on Jabloniec Hill, near Limanowa, Poland.

“History and the thousand years of friendship between the two countries teach us that neither of the two nations can be free if the other is not free”, he added.

“We are living the days of the great powers’ power politics again”, the minister said, adding that we do not know what the future brings, i.e. where the the war going on east of us, the fleet movements in the Baltic region or the continuous provocation of NATO’s common airspace will eventually lead; we do know, however, that we can count on one another”, Minister Hende said.

As sister nations and members of NATO, Poland and Hungary can rely on each other in the future too, the minister underlined, adding that this cooperation is based on common interests, common security as well as the shared values of freedom, the rule of law, mutual respect and human dignity.

Hungarians and Poles have recently organized a number of programmes to commemorate the victorious Battle of Limanowa fought in World War I. On November 28, the Limanowa memorial foray set off from the heroes’ monument in Várpalota. Following the approach routes used in World War I, the horse riders’ team visited several monuments in the past weeks, and at the end of their journey on Sunday, they laid the heroes’ wreath at the memorial site of the Battle of Limanowa.

The programme series closed with a re-enactment of the battle on Jabloniec Hill, following which Csaba Hende and Deputy State Secretary of the Polish Ministry of Defence Maciej Jankowski laid wreaths on the renovated monument.

During the Battle of Limanowa fought between November 28 and December 18 1914, the Austro-Hungarian troops halted the advance of the Russian forces attempting to break through towards Krakow, and pushed them back behind River Dunajec. Located on Jabloniec Hill near Limanowa, military cemetery No. 368 is the final resting place of Austro-Hungarian, Polish and Russian troops killed in action.

On the centenary of the battle, the Hungarian Ministry of Defence and the Lesser Poland Voivodeship Office spent some HUF 15 million on the restoration of the cemetery.

(MTI, Ministry of Defence)