Csernus Lukács - Triff Zsigmond: The Cemeteries of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

riographer Aladár Ballagj reports in his work Élő tanításaink (Lessons that Endure) that when he visited it as a boy this graveyard was already in a dismal condition. In the ill-kept cemetery the graves were hardly distinguishable, with broken tombstones lying scattered on the ground. Much of this stone was pilfered by builders. Rising above the pillaged tombs one cross was left undamaged with the inscription on its plinth saying: Here lies Baron Zsigmond Perényi, who had to leave this world at half past six o’clock on the morn of 24 October 1849, to the greatest pain of his inconsolable wife and only son. As chairman of a seven-member committee, he was the one who signed the declaration of Hungary’s independence on 14 April 1849, for which deed he was later hanged in the square behind the military barracks called Újépület. The new Józsefváros Cemeteries lay on the two sides of Kőbányai út in an area later taken up by Józsefváros Railway Station and the factory Ganz-Mávag.

Many a martyr of the war of independence of 1848-49 was interred in the latter, their bodies being carted off to the cemetery on garbage barrows on the express orders of General Haynau. Acting on a request made by Mrs János Damjanich, the widowed wife of the heroic general of the war of independence, the ashes of these martyrs were exhumed in 1868, to be laid to final rest in a common grave in Kerepesi Cemetery in November 1870. It was also in Józsefváros Cemetery where the parents of Sándor Petőfi, the great poet, lay buried for 33 years. The inscription on the pink headstone says no more than the words The best loved Father The best loved Mother.

Credit is due to the Petőfi Society and its secretary Tamás Szana for having the ashes and the tomb transferred to Kerepesi Cemetery in 1822. The poet’s younger brother István, his wife Júlia Szendrey and his son Zoltán were also buried here.

While the old Józsefváros Cemetery had been eliminated much earlier, the new one was in use from 1824 to 1890. Its territory was slowly built over. A stone cross stood in its place as a reminder for quite some time until it was removed to the Rezső tér church in the 1950s.

In 1846, the municipality of Pest resolved to phase out and close down the older graveyards and then establish a large central cemetery. Lands lying by the Kerepes highway and so far leased to tenant farmers were designated for the purpose, because they were at an equal distance from the upper and lower parts of the city. At the time the Rókus Hospital stood at the outermost edge of the inner

9