Nagy Imre Memorial Statue - Budapest, Hungary
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 47° 30.343 E 019° 02.895
34T E 353025 N 5263211
This memorial has a statue of Nagy Imre, standing on a symbolic bronze arch bridge looking towards the Hungarian houses of parliament.
Waymark Code: WMKTCN
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Date Posted: 05/27/2014
Views: 17
Nagy Imre
"He was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary after the 1956 revolution. His term ended when his non-Soviet-backed government was brought down by the Soviet invasion.
Nagy, with a few others, was given sanctuary in the Yugoslav Embassy. In spite of a written safe conduct of free passage by János Kádár, on 22 November, Nagy was arrested by the Soviet forces as he was leaving the Yugoslav Embassy, and taken to Snagov, Romania.
Subsequently, the Soviets returned Nagy to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing the overthrow of the Hungarian people's democratic state and with treason. Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in June 1958. His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence had been carried out. According to Fedor Burlatsky, a Kremlin insider, Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries."
Nagy was buried, along with his co-defendants, in the prison yard where the executions were carried out and years later was moved to a distant corner (section 301) of the New Public Cemetery, Budapest, face-down, and with his hands and feet tied with barbed wire.
In 1989, Imre Nagy was rehabilitated and his remains reburied on the 31st anniversary of his execution in the same plot after a funeral organised in part by opponents of the country's communist regime. Over 100,000 people are estimated to have attended Nagy's reinterment. The occasion of Nagy's funeral was an important factor in the end of the Communist government in Hungary."
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The Memorial
"In 1996, real estate tycoon Sándor Demján provided the funding for a statue of the hero of Hungary’s anti-Soviet 1956 uprising, Imre Nagy, to be erected between Freedom Square and the Parliament at a plaza called Martyr’s Square (Vértanúk tere). Nagy stands on a bridge over an artificial pool of water. With his back to the Soviet monument in Freedom Square, he gazes toward the looming neo-Gothic parliament building, an emblem of Hungary’s new democracy. This major tourist attraction allows visitors to mount the bridge and walk toward freedom."
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Many visitors do walk over the bridge, but because the surface is made from bronze it is quite slippery and it's necessary to hold on to the handrail.