Gulag memorial year

New museum and library is being built on site of former internment camp

Daily News Hungary

The government is allocating 500 million forints for building a museum and library on the site of a former internment camp in Kistarcsa, near Budapest, a ministry of human resources official said on Tuesday.

The memorial site, to be completed by autumn 2018, is being built as part of the Gulag memorial year, said deputy state secretary Bence Rétvári.

The site of a defunct factory in the centre of town was used as an internment camp from the late 1930s to 1960. During the second world war, Adolf Eichmann organised the detention and transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz from the camp. After the downfall of the 1956 revolution, several thousand political prisoners were kept there in inhumane conditions, Rétvári noted.

Rétvári called upon citizens to share memories and offer objects connected to the camp to the museum.

As we wrote before, the reconstruction works in the area of the legendary Eger castle gets into a new phase, also the second and third phase of the Castle of Diósgyőr’s renewal received the final permission.

Minister inaugurates communism victims monument in Budapest

Budapest (MTI) – Bence Rétvári, state secretary at the human resources ministry, attended the unveiling ceremony of a monument erected to pay tribute to Hungarians deported to the Soviet Gulag from Budapest’s 19th district, on Friday.

In his address, Rétvári said that violence and humiliation were at the core of communism, an ideology which was “no different from any other totalitarian regime; national socialism and international socialism or communism have the same core.”

Rétvári noted that some 800,000 Hungarians were deported to the Soviet Union right after the second world war.

Photo: MTI

Gulag must always be remembered, says state secretary

Budapest, February 20 (MTI) – One must never forget the fate of those deported to Soviet forced labour camps of the Gulag during and after WWII, the state secretary for Hungarian communities abroad said on Monday.

János Árpád Potápi launched a series of programmes before the official ending of the Gulag memorial year on February 25, a memorial day of martyrs of communism, in the House of Hungarians in the Buda Castle.

According to researchers, the number of Hungarian civilians taken to Soviet camps was between 700,000 and 1.1 million, he said.

Hungary trailed only Germany and Japan in terms of the proportion of those taken to the Gulag within the whole population.

February 25 is observed as a memorial day of martyrs of communism since 2000, under a parliamentary decree. On this day in 1947, leader of the Independent Smallholders’ Party Béla Kovács was illegally detained and deported to the Soviet Union.

Public installation inaugurated in Budapest to mark Gulag memorial year

Budapest (MTI) – The forcing of millions of innocent people into Gulag labour camps was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the deputy mayor of Budapest said on Wednesday at the inauguration of a public installation made for the Gulag memorial year.

An estimated 800,000 Hungarians were deported to the forced labour camps in the Soviet Union during and after the second world war, and nearly 300,000 died on the way or while imprisoned in the camps, Alexandra Szalay-Bobrovniczky said. The survivors were forced by the secret services to stay quiet after returning to Hungary, she added.

Photo: MTI

The public installation set up in Budapest’s City Hall Park has already been on show in Szombathely and Pecs and will travel to Debrecen. The Gulag memorial year runs until Feb. 25.