Battlefields & Locations

When Soviet forces liberated Budapest in January 1945, they discovered -- in a military cemetery on the Buda side of the city -- rows of German soldiers buried with full military honors alongside Soviet soldiers, in what appeared to be a joint burial arrangement. Investigation revealed that a Hungarian cemetery caretaker, Imre Kovacs, had been burying the dead from both sides with equal care throughout the siege, sometimes in the same grave. He had done this at enormous personal risk, as the SS had threatened to shoot anyone burying German dead in unapproved locations.