Midnight in the Graveyard: Remembering the Mass Murder of Roma in Wartime Hungary

In this episode, podcast host Lovro Kralj talks with Hungarian researcher László Csősz about a memorial headstone dedicated to Roma victims of wartime violence in the village of Doboz, which is in Southern Hungary. This small white headstone with inscriptions is special as it is one of the earliest known efforts in Central Europe to commemorate the genocide on Roma.László Csősz has recently led a project titled “Mapping the Genocide of the Roma in Hungary” about the history and memory of various places of life, execution sites and deportations of Roma across Hungary, during which he came across the fate of the Roma in the Doboz cemetery.At the end of September 1944, the Soviet and Romanian armies invaded the then territory of Hungary in the area of Nagyszalonta (Salonta, Romania today). The Hungarian army, with German support, temporarily repulsed the attackers, then a week later abandoned the area again. In the days between the two changes of power, dozens of civilians, who were allegedly   "in contact" with the occupying Romanian troops, were arrested, among them Roma families.On the afternoon of 5 October, as Red Army troops were again approaching, the prisoners were marched on foot to the village of Doboz. Here, the field gendarmes separated the Roma from the other prisoners and took them to the local cemetery.Shortly before midnight, the gendarmes forced the Roma to lay on the ground in the cemetery and told them that they would spend the night there. The cemetery guard was warned by the gendarmes that "new weapons were going to be tested", so no resident  should come out of their houses. After the cold-blooded preparation, they fired volleys at the unsuspecting people and then threw hand grenades at them. The bodies, which were torn to pieces, were buried by Roma forcibly taken from a nearby settlement.In 1946, a non-Roma local resident, night watchman Lajos Tobai, erected a memorial headstone over the mass grave for unknown reasons. His efforts are remarkable though: it was probably one of the first attempts to safeguard a lieux de memoire (places of memory) of the Roma genocide in Central Europe. Today, a different   headstone and a carved burial column are erected, by the local Roma minority, to commemorate the victims in Doboz. Featured guests:László Csősz is a historian and archivist who is affiliated with the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives in Budapest. He has recently led the project “Mapping the Genocide of the Roma in Hungary”. Podcast host is Lovro Kralj.László will tell the story of the Roma people who were killed in the cemetery of Doboz.Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14