February 25th – The commemorative day for the Hungarian victims of communism
The Hungarian parliament has pronounced every year’s February 25th as the commemorative day for victims of communism. On this day, 1947 the occupying soviet authorities has unlawfully arrested Béla Kovács, the main secretary of the Független Kisgazdapárt (Independent Smallholders’ Party), and carried him to the Soviet Union. The congressman, deprived from his immunity, have spent the next eight years in prisons and labor camps. The imprisonment of the politician has become the symbol of the ignorance of the democratic rights, as it was regular during the half-century party state regime. His fate has become the example of whom we can count as the victims of the communism.
In East-Central Europe almost one million people has lost their life due to the dictature, famine, forced labor camps and executions sentenced after the show trials. But the full number of the people has been mentally or physically crippled by this system’s everyday reality is way higher. Everybody, who has been interrogated, tortured, excluded, imprisoned or pursued for their group or religious affiliation is a victim. Everybody, who has lost the opportunity of the free action.
Last May, in Zalaegerszeg, under the Mártírok str. 5, the Memorial of the Victims Of Communism has opened their gates. The 80 square meter exhibition space placed in the original spot, enriched with interiors, and professional materials. The visitor can get to the basement floor through the ground floor gate and the duty officer’s office, where the visitor can find a fully furnished cell, a room for documentary screening, a memorial room, and a torturing-interrogating room.
