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

Imre Nagy’s grave with the traditional Hungarian GRAVE POSTS OF THE VICTIMS OF 1956

to Farkasrét and other cemeteries. After a period of storage, the monuments of artistic value were finally sold. An exhumation operation on such a scale, and the transfer and elimination of so many graves have probably never been paralleled anywhere in the world.

In the first decade of this century, The Association of Cremation Supporters was formed, but its proposals were only to be adopted decades later, because until then they were rejected both by the state and the various churches. The first cremations in Hungary took place in Debrecen in 1932 in a crematorium built to plans by József Borsos. The construction of the second such facility in the New Public Cemetery was finished by 1968. It was designed by János Pomsár and had to be expanded as early as the 1970s. As the cemeteries of the capital are all overcrowded and funeral expenses keep increasing, people are obliged to cremate their dead. In the Public Cemetery, the largest one in the country, almost 600,000 people had been buried by the end of 1944, which number has reached one-and-a-half million by now. In the 1960s, the number of funerals held here was six to seven thousand a year, but today it is between 10 and 12 thousand.

There are hardly any works of art made of bronze in the cemetery due to the fact that a large number of tombs have either been rifled or desecrated; art-works cut in stone have had a greater chance of survival. The artistically carved tombstones are mainly the work of Antal Gerenday and of the stone-cutting workshop inherited and operated by his sons.

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