Commemoration of the martyrs of the Hungarian War of Independence

Since 2001, we have been commemorating October 6th as a National Day of Mourning, remembering the events of 1849 when, as a reprisal following the suppression of the 1848–49 War of Independence, Count Lajos Batthyány, the Prime Minister, was executed in Pest, and thirteen high-ranking officers of the Hungarian War of Independence were executed in Arad.

In memory of the martyrs, the national flag was raised with military honours, and then lowered to half-mast at Kossuth Square today. A solemn wreath-laying ceremony took place at the Batthyány Mausoleum in Budapest’s Fiumei Road Cemetery. 

Due to an official visit abroad, on behalf of Katalin Novák, Major General István Kun Szabó, the Chief of Staff of the Office of the President, laid a wreath at the monument commemorating the martyr Prime Minister.