Commemorations Held for the Don Disaster in Several Places

Budapest (MTI): Several commemorations were held on January 12 for the 72nd anniversary of the Don breakthrough. The Second Hungarian Army – which contained two hundred thousand soldiers – was almost completely destroyed in Don in World War 2 within days.

In the Buda Castle Assumption Church, Military Bishop Laszlo Biro presented military ordinary commemorative Mass. Zoltan Orosz, Deputy Chief of Staff spoke in the Ministry of Defense Military History Institute and Museum remembering the deceased Hungarian soldiers.

In Szekszard, the city government, the Military Tradition Branch National Association of the Hungarian National Guard and the Szekszard Organization of the Defense Traditional Association held memorial with wreathing, in collaboration with the Babits Mihaly Cultural Center, MTI said.

In Szeged, the Csongrad County Government and the county government office held a joint commemoration. The event was closed by wreathing this year as well.

According to MTI, memorial candles were lit for the memory of the victims of World War 2 and the Don catastrophe of the Second Hungarian Army in Hajduboszormeny.

In Pakozd, local leaders of the historical churches commemorated in an ecumenical event at the Don Memory chapel.

The Second Army was sent to the Eastern Front on German claim, on the basis of intergovernmental agreements. The armament and the equipment of the 207 thousand people who were marching to the front was incomplete and outdated, MTI says.

The Hungarian forces joined the battle on June 28 1942 and they reached the Don on July 7. The exhausted troops went to protection there through the 208 km stretch between Pavlovsk and Voronezh. The 40th Soviet Army began to attack in the minus 30-35 degrees cold from the Uriv bridgehead on 12 January 1943, and they 8-12 miles deeply impacted the Hungarian defense the same day. There are no precise figures about the losses at Don. The Hungarian Army lost 93 500 – according to other sources, 120 thousand or 148 thousand people, the exact number of the fallen and the captured cannot be determined.

based on the article of MTI
translated by BA

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mti.hu/