Wreaths and flowers were laid by the mayor and representatives of civil organisations at a plague at his birth home in Kadar street in the capital's district 13. Wreaths were also placed at a plague at the home where he lived in the same district with his wife since 1935. The event was attended by his 97-year-old wife, Fanni.
A similar commemoration with wreath-laying was also held at Radnoti's tomb in the Fiume street cemetery, where amongst others the president of the Hungarian Writers' Association and the director of the Petofi Museum of Literature remembered the poet in speeches.
Radnoti was born to an assimilated Jewish family. He published his first volume of poems in 1930. He married Fanni Gyarmati, who inspired his love poetry, in 1935. He served as forced labourer first in 1940 then again in 1942. In the next year he converted with his wife to Catholicism.
In May of 1944 Radnoti was taken to a labour camp in the town of Bor in eastern Serbia. In October of the same year, fleeing fascist troops dragged along the sick and exhausted labour camp inmates up to the western Hungarian village of Abda, where the guards escorting the forced march shot Radnoti together with his 22 associates.
His body and last poems, written in the Bor camp, were found in a mass grave in Abda.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: MTI
