In the Tierpark Haag in Lower Austria, a box with documents from the Hungarian Hussar division, had been slumbered among the hooves of the forest animals for decades. The content could write a new capital of Hungarian-American war history, historians are convinced.
It is considered a sensational find that has also attracted a lot of international attention: in the zoo, the former castle garden of Salaberg Castle, original documents from the Hungarian Royal 1st Honvéd Hussar Division were found. In May 1945 this was stored in the castle with 10,000 men. “The documents have been considered to be for decades now, exactly 80 years after the end of the Second World War,” says Lukas Michlmayr, mayor of the Mostviertel community.
In the beginning, a heavily weathered, pressed wooden breast had been traced, which could originally be used as a field choice box. Military historian István Szebenyi and his team had detected them with a metal detector. There were diaries, commands, cards and position reports that document the dramatic in recent weeks of the Hussar division.
For years it was searched for
“A find of this dimension is an absolute rarity,” says Szebenyi, who had been looking for these documents for years. They knew about their existence by a letter from 1948. In it, a former division of the division of his niece wrote that the documents in the park of a castle were buried with a wasteland deer and Ridderzaal on the eastern bank of the Enns. The description was exactly on the castle of Salaberg.
A legend becomes a reality
The content of the box also makes a legend reality. A friendship between the Hungarian Colonel Malanotti and the American General George S. Patton would have ensured that the Hussar division was not delivered to the Soviets.
The first evaluations of the documents clearly indicate the contacts of the two. “If the entire content is confirmed, a completely new chapter of the Hungarian-American war and memory history is written,” Szebenyi is convinced.
It is open to those who belong the find. The community, the state of Austria or the Hungary? “We are left to the state archive,” says Michlmayr.
Source: Krone
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