President Ader addresses Heroes’ Day commemoration

Budapest, May 31 (MTI) – Recognising the value of lives sacrificed for the nation is crucial for its future, President Janos Ader told a commemoration of WWI victims in Vac, north of Budapest, on Sunday.

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“Forgetting about the past is a sin against ourselves; but if people cooperate and preserve memories, life will win over oblivion,” the president said in his address. “We must mourn for each single life lost to the great war”.

Meanwhile, a ceremony was held in Budapest’s Heroes Square to commemorate all soldiers who died for their Hungarian homeland.

At the commemoration, held with military honours, Istvan Kun Szabo, deputy state secretary at the defence ministry, said it was an important obligation for the Hungarian state to pay tribute to all its heroes who “died for their families, for their country, for a Hungarian cause, and for freedom”.

Kun Szabo noted that the government had renovated a number of military cemeteries holding the remains of Hungarian soldiers both in Hungary and in Russia, Italy, and Macedonia. He also voiced the government’s commitment to continuing the renovation programme.

As part of the ceremony, wreaths of commemoration were laid at the Heroes’ Monument by Constitutional Court head Barnabas Lenkovics and deputy House Speaker Janos Latorcai, and by representatives of President Janos Ader and of the government.

Similar commemorations were held in several other cities and towns across the country.

Parliament declared the last Sunday in May a national day for Hungary’s Heroes in 2001, partly reviving an 1917 law under which all towns and cities were obliged to erect monuments to soldiers who died in WWI.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters