The 125th birth anniversary of Colonel Imre Reviczky, who saved the lives of thousands
of Jewish soldiers during WWII, was marked in a commemoration held in Budapest’s Fiumei Street Cemetery.
Tamas Vargha, state secretary at the defence ministry, called the late general “one of
Hungary’s greatest heroes”, who had risked his own life to save several thousand Jewish
men doing labour service in the Hungarian military from suffering and eventual deportation
to Nazi death camps
Reviczky was made commander of a forced labour battalion in 1943. On taking his post, he
put an end to the harassment of forced labourers and ordered that they be treated equally
with other soldiers, Vargha said. The colonel also prevented the Jews in his battalion from
being deported or sent to the Russian front, the state secretary added.
Israeli Ambassador to Hungary Yacov Hadas-Handelsman said several thousand survivors in Romania, Israel, and across the world could testify to the late colonel’s courage and noble spirit, adding that the Jewish people and their state would cherish his memory.
Reviczky was made major-general after his death, and was given Israel’s Righteous Among
the Nations title.
