Chairman of the Hungarian Revolution French-Hungarian Memorial Committee Jenő Sujánszky, Hungarian ambassador to France László Nikicser and representatives of the French Charles de Gaulle Memorial Committee marked the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Sunday.
The participants laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Jenő Sujánszky, a resistance fighter in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the head of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution French-Hungarian Memorial Committee, said the procession used to draw about a thousand participants.
"Unfortunately, there are very few of us left. There are few people alive from the Hungarians who emigrated after 1956. Fewer and fewer of us come together at these memorial events."
Sujánszky noted that for years a French band would play the Hungarian national anthem at the event - an act that required a special sanction by the French government.
For years after the 1956 Revolution was crushed, family members of those who had died would visit Parcel 301 at the Rákoskeresztúr Cemetery in Budapest, where their loved ones were buried in a mass grave, Sujánszky recalled. The police would kick up the flowers and trample on the candles they left at the graves, he added.
The Hungarian Institute in Paris will mark the anniversary of the revolution with a concert by the Béla Bartók Memorial award prize-winning folk singer Ágnes Herczku on October 23.
"Our concert's most unique songs will be those that voice the Hungarian people's sometimes bitter, sometimes ironic and sometimes delicately humorous responses to the developments of history," Herczku said on the programme, which she put together especially for the event
Herzku will be accompanied by Gergely Agócs on flute and bagpipe and Sándor Tóth D. on violin, viola and cello.
On Sunday October 26, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution French-Hungarian Memorial Committee welcomes people to a memorial mass and wreath-laying ceremony at the József Cardinal Mindszenty memorial plaque at the Hungarian Catholic Mission of Paris.
On November 4, a memorial event and wreath-laying ceremony will be held at parcel 44 of the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, the site of the symbolic mausoleum for former Prime Minister Imre Nagy and all of the freedom fighters executed after the revolution.
