1.5 Mil­lion Hun­gar­i­an WW1 Heroes’ Names Acces­si­ble in Unique Database

The data­base of Hun­gar­i­an WW1 heroes is freely acces­si­ble to every­one. It con­tains the names of all the sol­diers who fought in the First World War who were injured, cap­tured, or killed, with data like impor­tant dates and loca­tions (for instance, the place of bur­ial if known).

The data­base is the result of an eight year dig­i­tal­iza­tion process. In total, 1,538,818 Hun­gar­i­an cit­i­zen sol­diers’ data has been col­lect­ed and can now be accessed. It was a joint project of the Defence Min­istry, the First World War Cen­te­nary Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, the Nation­al Archives of Hun­gary, and many more coun­ty and for­eign archives, said Vil­mos Kovács, Com­man­der of the Insti­tute and Muse­um of Mil­i­tary His­to­ry. Apart from this data­base, there were numer­ous oth­er phys­i­cal projects too – 26,710 graves and 370 buri­als were renewed, and many more memo­ri­als were established.

Hun­gary can only be held respon­si­ble for World War I as any oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­try, says his­to­ri­an Balázs Ablon­czy, whose new book, “Unknown Tri­anon,” has just been pub­lished. On the oth­er hand, the bad per­cep­tion of Hun­gary in the world at the time played a role in that the treaty hit the coun­try par­tic­u­lar­ly hard. […]Con­tin­ue reading

The First World War Cen­te­nary Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee played a key role in the project’s real­iza­tion. The estab­lish­ment of this board is also excep­tion­al, and it has been work­ing on ade­quate­ly remem­ber­ing WWI for six years.

Szilárd Németh, par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary of state of the Defence Min­istry, stressed that the release of the data­base is in hon­or of the sol­diers, and “nation­al defense is the mat­ter of the whole nation.”

Bence Rétvári, par­lia­men­tary state sec­re­tary of the human resources min­istry has stressed the unique­ness of the data­base – there has not been such a large amount of evi­dence uncov­ered in any of the world’s coun­tries. He said it is of cru­cial impor­tance since all the fam­i­lies have pre­de­ces­sors involved in the war, so it’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to feel proud of their her­itage. Also, it is use­ful for research in the areas of mil­i­tary and social his­to­ry, soci­ol­o­gy, and genealogy.

Fea­tured pho­to illus­tra­tion by Fer­enc Bindorfer/Fortepan

Source: hun​gary​to​day​.hu