“We cannot give up even a bit of sovereignty”

Tamás Vargha recalled that the victims of the Don Bend had attempted to achieve the impossible under inhuman circumstances when they opposed the overwhelming Russian force.

“Innumerable Hungarian families are affected by the tragedy, and they keep commemorating the victims to the present day. We all mourn for the dead of the nation. We can only pay the debt we owe them by keeping their memory alive and paying tribute to them” – he said, adding that we have yet another obligation. We must understand the road leading to the disaster, the message of the Don Bend for the present age and the future generations. “We cannot give up even a bit of sovereignty, because this is the only way for us to ensure the peace and security of our homeland, the only way for us to be worthy of the sacrifice made by the Don heroes” – he said.

Poet-writer Zoltán Bobory – the honorary president of the Don Comradeship and Funerary Association, the one who came up with the idea of the memorial chapel – welcomed the commemorators remembering the victims of those Hungarian heroes who fell in the Don Bend in the Second World War. “There is a glass vial in the groundwork of the chapel that contains soil from the Don Bend. A handful of the blood-soaked soil there. Let us think of it, and the faith in our heart will become stronger”, he said.

“The cooperation with the leaders of Székesfehérvár and Pákozd, the churches, the Hungarian Defence Forces, POW organizations, artists and a lot of well-intentioned people has come to fruition” – said Miklós Soltész, State Secretary for Relations with the Church and Ethnic Communities at the Prime Minister’s Office. “In memory of the 50th anniversary, the Don Bend Memorial Chapel was built in 1993, and serves as a memento of the close to 100,000 (120-148,000 by some sources) compatriots of ours who lost their lives there. Its rebuilding on the occasion of the 82nd anniversary enables it to continue evoking the memory of the heroes of the Don Bend.”

Following the reconsecration of the chapel, members of the Ottokár Prohászka Boy Scout Team No. 457 kindled the memorial flames, and then placed the flowers of remembrance in honor of the heroes.