The remains of the soldiers, who died during the liberation of Budapest from Nazi occupation during World War II, were recently uncovered under a memorial to Soviet liberators in Szabadsag (Liberty) Square in down town Budapest during construction work.
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Although Hungarian dissidents, including individual active Christians and church leaders, suffered under Soviet domination, several of them have also expressed respect for Russian soldiers who fought for the liberation of Budapest at the end of the war.
DISSIDENTS
Many former dissidents as well as several formerly persecuted evangelical Christians and Jewish people, are in the junior coalition party Alliance of Free Democrats, which is part of the Socialist-led Government that was installed after the April elections.
The reburial ceremony on Monday, July 1, seemed part of the cabinet’s plans to have a new and closer relationship with Moscow, more than a decade after the last Russian soldier left.
Russia had strongly criticized Hungary’s previous centre right government, for what it described as “inaction” over multiple instances of desecration of Soviet memorials in Hungary.
MOSCOW
Moscow said Hungary “endangers constructive ties” by overlooking that “certain people in Hungary want to rewrite the history of World War II” when for the most part the country was a close ally of Nazi Germany before it switched sides.
Under the previous Government, thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets to remember the liberation by Russian soldiers amidst concern over anti-Semitism here.
At least 600,000 Hungarian Jews are believed to have been massacred by the Nazi’s and Hungarian fascists during the Second World War, before the liberation.
SACRIFICE
“It is a historical fact that the Soviet Union offered enormous sacrifices for peace in World War II,” said Brigadier General Jozsef Ferenc Hollos, responsible for Soviet war graves here under a 1995 inter-governmental accord.
Hollos was among those Hungarian and Russian officials attending the ceremony where the 16 dead were laid to rest in a common symbolic coffin, at a special site dedicated to Red Army heroes in a major Budapest cemetery.
170,000 KILLED
He stressed that about 170,000 Red Army soldiers were killed in action on Hungarian territory. “Therefore the Hungarian people should commemorate not only their own dead but also the Soviet soldiers,” Hollos added.
The Russian Embassy in Budapest and the Hungarian Foreign Ministry told BosNewsLife that the remains of the 16 discovered soldiers were buried after weeks of identification by experts.
