Memorial plaque to WWII Hungarian prisoners in Poland

A memorial plaque honoring Hungarian victims and prisoners was unveiled at the Polish memorial site established on the site of the former Nazi German death camp at Stutthof (Sztutowo) in Poland, the director of the Liszt Institute in Warsaw, Gáspár Keresztes said on Tuesday.

The memorial plaque, created as a joint initiative between the Hungarian Consulate-General in Gdansk and the Stutthof Memorial Museum, commemorates the more than 10,000 Hungarians – the majority of whom were women – who were held in the camp, Gáspár Keresztes said. Several nations already had memorial plaques at Stutthof, but the Hungarians’ was still missing, and "we have now corrected that shortcoming," the director added.

The ceremony was attended by Ákos Engelmayer, the first Hungarian Ambassador to Warsaw following the fall of communism, Miklós Mitrovits, the incoming Hungarian Ambassador to Warsaw, and Péter Kertész, the Hungarian Consul-General in Gdansk, who unveiled the commemorative plaque. A message from Marta Cienkowska, the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, was also read out.

Located in Gdansk, the Stutthof camp was originally established for the extermination of Gdansk’s Jews and Poles, and it is estimated that between 1939 and 1945, 63,000-65,000 people were murdered in the camp, including 28,000 Jews. Prisoners were deported to the extermination camp from almost every European country, totaling some 110,000 people.