The Activities of the Committee for the Preservation of Military Traditions from Turda (THHB)

The Institute of Military History of the Hungarian Ministry of Defence decided in 2000 to try to find the marked or unmarked graves of Hungarian soldiers killed in World War II. Joining this initiative, Jozsef Patakv founded the Committee for the Preservation of Military Traditions from Turda (THHB). Among other things, the aim of establishing the Committee was to discover the identity of the Hungarian soldiers that died in action in the fall of 1944 in Torda (in Romanian: Turda: in the followings, we will use the traditionally Hungarian name of the town: Torda) and its surroundings, find the location where they were buried, and erect a worthy monument to their memory. A Hungarian Soldier Graveyard was created within the Central Hungarian Cemetery of Torda, which has since become a place of pilgrimage. In addition, more then fifty sites of Hungarian soldiers’ graves were discovered and in most of the cases properly marked since that time. In 2012, Jozsef Patakv was awarded the Hungarian Gold Cross by the Ministry of Defence for his untiring work to discover the places of burial and identify Hungarian soldiers that died in WWII, and for worthily keeping their memories alive.