77th anniversary of the Disaster on the Don
January 14th, 2020A pro-government author describes the soldiers of both Hungary and the Soviet Union who fell in the Second World War as ordinary citizens who had no choice but to fight far from their homelands.
The Second Royal Hungarian Army was virtually annihilated by the Soviet counter-offensive after the Battle of Stalingrad. A mere 60 thousand of its 200 thousand men made it home. The Battle of the Don Bend (January 12 through 15, 1943) is considered one of greatest tragedies of Hungarian military history.
In Magyar Nemzet, Attila Borsodi describes how he has managed to overcome his hostile feelings towards the Soviet soldiers who drove the Nazi troops out of Hungary and brought tremendous suffering to her civilians, then enabled and maintained the Communist regime with their presence until 1990. What helped him reach such equanimity, he writes, was the realisation that those who are buried in Hungarian soil are also victims, and his hope that the grave of his own grandfather, who was reported missing in Russia in 1942, may perhaps be taken care of by unknown Russians. The tens of thousands of Hungarians who fell in the war never wanted to fight on foreign land, he writes, but had no choice. Exactly the same is true, he admits, for the Soviet soldiers whose graves are rightly taken care of in today’s Hungary.
Tags: history, Russia, World War Two