“Every Hungarian First World War military grave and war memorial in the Carpathian Basin will be renovated by 2018”, Minister in Charge of the Prime Minister’s Office János Lázár announced on Saturday in Hódmezővásárhely during a tour of the Southern Great Plains region to mark Hungary’s 15 March national holiday.

“The Hungarian Government feels that it is its duty to rededicate the war graves and memorials of the Carpathian Basin by 2018 to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War of 1914-1918, and to pass them on to posterity in suitable form”, the Minister said at the event organised to mark the re-inauguration of the WWI memorial by sculptor Ferenc Kriván, erected in Belsőszőrhát in 1925.

Mr. Lázár reminded those present that the First World War had claimed 660 thousand Hungarian victims.

Hódmezővásárhely had a population of 66 thousand in 1916, and there was not a single family from which someone wasn’t conscripted. 15 thousand men joined the army during the first few months of the war, he noted.

This makes Hódmezővásárhely one of the two Hungarian cities of the period, together with Orosháza, from which the most soldiers were conscripted in proportion to their population, Minister Lázár said, adding that this was most probably due to the fact that both ‘Vásárhely and Orosháza were symbolic, opposition cities of the 1848 War of Independence during the post-Compromise political system of 1867-1914.

Three thousand young men from Hódmezővásárhely lost their lives on the southern Serbian front, in Galicia and in the Italian theatre of war during the 4-year conflict. The names of fifty-seven of them are commemorated on the newly inaugurated memorial, the Minister said.

“The challenge posed by the First World War required a great sacrifice from us, the people of Hódmezővásárhely. We must salute our heroes”, Mr. Lázár stressed.

(Prime Minister's Office/MTI)