Hungarian victim of Soviet secret police massacre honoured in Warsaw

A memorial plaque and the symbolic grave of Emánuel Aladár Korompay, a Hungarian-born victim of the massacre committed against Polish military officers by the Soviet secret police NKVD, was inaugurated in the Temple of Divine Providence and Pantheon in Warsaw on Saturday.

A holy mass was celebrated by Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, the archbishop of Warsaw, in honour of Korompay, a linguist and the last Hungarian lector working at the Warsaw University before WWII, and his Polish wife and three daughters.

“Emánuel Korompay and his family serve as a symbol of patriotism, heroism and Christian values,” the cardinal said in his homily. Concluding the ceremony, he blessed and placed a handful of soil taken from the site of the 1940 Kharkhiv massacre in a symbolic grave dedicated to Korompay.

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The ceremony was attended by Orsolya Zsuzsanna Kovács, the Hungarian ambassador to Poland.

Born in Budapest in 1890, Korompay joined the Polish army in 1919 and fought for Poland’s independence. He later got married to Mieczyslawa Grabas and obtained a Polish citizenship as well. He worked as lector at Warsaw University where he edited the first Polish-Hungarian dictionary. Serving as a reserve captain in 1939, Korompay was captured by the Soviet army and executed along 3,740 officers in the spring of 1940.