A cemetery for Hungarian soldiers who died in the Second World War will be established in Arad after Romania did not accept that the cemetery should be located in Székelyföld, the Transylvanian Hungarian daily Krónika wrote in its Wednesday issue.
As Krónika recalled: previously, the possibility of creating a hero's cemetery was also considered in two Hungarian-majority Maros county settlements, Jobbágytelké and Mezőpanit. However, instead of these, the Romanian side proposed Arad.
Transylvanian Hungarian newspapers reported last week that representatives of the Hungarian Ministry of Defense - Military History Institute and Museum, the Office for the Cult of Romanian Heroes (ONCE) and the Arad municipality discussed the possibility of establishing a shrine in Arad.
The municipality of Arad offered a plot in Alsótemete next to the A1 highway. Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian soldiers who died in World War II are already resting in the aforementioned cemetery. According to the plans, the Hungarian national defenders who fell in the battles around Torda in the fall of 1944 will find their final resting place here. The remains of the soldiers were exhumed almost six years ago from the new Jewish cemetery in Cluj-Napoca, the plot of which was given a different purpose.
The elders of Székelyföld, who were spoken to by Krónika, expressed their regret that the military cemetery will not be established in their settlement.
Jobbágytelke administratively belongs to Székelyhodos village. Ottó Barabási, the mayor of the village, said: years ago, the visual plan for the Jóbbagytelk military cemetery was completed, which included a small mausoleum in addition to the soldiers' graves. Later, however, plans were made to create a cemetery in Mezőpanit, which is in the neighborhood of Marosvásárhely. Here, a much more modest construction plan was prepared than the serf plot.
Lieutenant-Colonel György Nagy, the military and aviation attaché of the Hungarian Embassy in Bucharest, told Krónika that the two locations in Maros county only came up in the form of proposals. "The Romanian side proposed a third location, Arad, according to the international agreement, the final decision must be made by the locals. Since a Hungarian community lives in one region as well as in the other, I think it is not relevant where our heroes are buried," said the military attache.
His superior, Colonel László Kiss, also believed that the move away from the impasse in the case should be evaluated. The Romanian side has been delaying solving the problem since 2012.
The leaders of the Military History Institute and Museum in Budapest requested an area of nearly a thousand square meters, half of which seems to have already been secured, but according to László Kiss, who investigated the site, there is also the possibility of expansion. The Hungarian authorities are planning to bury the remains of hundreds of Hungarian soldiers in the future military cemetery in Arad. These would be collected from several neglected graveyards. The bones exhumed in Cluj-Napoca in 2015 are currently in the Mezőpanit cemetery, in labeled bags, awaiting transport and eternal rest, reports Krónika.
MTI
Front page image: Illustration - Úz-völgyi military cemetery / Photo: Magyar Hírlap/Róbert Hegedüs
