Levéltári Közlemények, 93. (2022)

Angol nyelvű összefoglalók

Abstracts

Márton Kiss

GRAVES OF THE HEROES

OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN BARANYA COUNTY

(1945-1949)

The Second World War (1939-1945) was a huge shock for the whole world. The issue of mourning over the hardships and losses caused by the fighting continues to have an impact on societies to this day. This is particularly true in a country where many political and historical narratives about the war dead clash. In Hungary, the number of military casualties has been relatively small, but their distribution may be worth examining. Baranya County remained out of the war for a relatively long time, with actual fighting taking place only in the second half of 1944. A major battle took place here in early 1945 (March), in which soldiers from several nations died. This is the reason that the heroic sacrifice of the Bulgarian and Yugoslav partisans become part of the Allied (American, Soviet) military memory of the county. In addition to the Hungarian soldiers who ended the war on the losing side, the German victims were not officially commemorated, although the fact of death was at least reported locally. The Communist Party, which was gaining influence in the country, tried to shift the narrative of the war from the Hungarian soldiers to the Soviet, Bulgarian and Yugoslav fighters. To this end, they also began to build a state policy of remembrance and to restructure earlier celebrations. This work, however, faced a number of unforeseen obstacles, with changes in current politics (the Soviet-Yugoslav break-up of 1948) having a significant impact on the rite of commemoration. The aim of this paper is to highlight the conflicting narratives of memory politics and to draw attention to issues of local memory. A quantified summary of the data on military casualties reported by the county administration can contribute to the knowledge of the Hungarian struggle and to a better understanding of the narratives associated with the region.

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