Remains of over 1,200 World War Soldiers Exhumed this Year

Graves of World War I soldiers in Veszprém, western Hungary.

This year, the remains of 1,234 soldiers were excavated and exhumed by the Domestic War Graves Conservation Department (BHO) of the Institute and Museum of Military History at 34 sites in 16 counties, the Ministry of Defense said. As they wrote, the war grave caretakers are searching for the abandoned resting places of the heroes’ dead on the basis of public reports and contemporary sources, maps and records.

Artifacts found in the graves (belt buckles, jacket buttons, weapons, identity cards, personal items) can help determine the identity of the deceased and, if the identification is successful, their relatives will be notified.

In the first half of the year, museum experts carried out an excavation in Baja: based on contemporary documents, in 1948 the Hungarian authorities buried German and Hungarian soldiers, civilians and laborers in three mass graves in the emergency cemetery of the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp in Baja. Hungarian experts exhumed 1,084 soldiers in cooperation with specialists from the German War Graves Commission (VDK).

As the remains could not be separated individually, they will be ceremonially reburied together next year at the Szentlélek (‘Holy Spirit’) military cemetery in Székesfehérvár, central Hungary.

A further 100 Hungarian soldiers were exhumed by the BHO this year across the country, and 30 Soviet and 20 German soldiers were also recovered.

The remains of foreign soldiers will be handed over to partner war grave conservation organizations or to representatives of the state concerned, in accordance with international treaties.

In March, at least 10 remains of German and Hungarian soldiers who died heroically in the Second World War were recovered from an old grave marked with a rotten cross and labelled “Unknown Hungarian Soldier” in the cemetery of Kemence, Pest County.

In May, the remains of a Hungarian soldier were found in a coffin in a war grave in the cemetery in Gyöngyös, Heves County, followed by the remains of 16 Hungarian and German soldiers in a larger wooden coffin, and a second coffin with the remains of five more German and Hungarian soldiers. In the cemetery of the village of Tiszabő, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County, the remains of three Hungarian soldiers who died heroically in the Second World War were exhumed in the first half of the year and buried in Budapest.

Via MTI, Featured image: Wikipedia