Tibor Navracsics, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration and Justice, gave an address at the opening of an exhibition entitled “Executed cities – Poznań-Budapest, 1956 / Szétlőtt városok – Poznań-Budapest 1956 / Rozstrzelane miasta – Poznań-Budapest, 1956”.

He said that there have been turning-points in the histories of the Hungarian and Polish nations when it has been necessary to unhesitatingly and categorically declare the friendship which exists between the two peoples. The exhibition commemorates one such turning-point, capturing a moment in Hungarian-Polish friendship. He said that “It is hard to say if this is the most important moment in the thousand-year friendship, or if it is the relative recency of 1956 which makes it especially important to us.” Mr. Navracsics said that at that time the citizens of another Communist country took great risks in helping Hungarians fleeing after the events of the 1956 revolution.

The exhibition was opened by Michal Andrukonis, Counsellor at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland to Hungary. He said that the commemoration was important in the context of the two countries’ shared pasts.

The exhibition gives an account of the workers’ uprising in Poznań in June 1956 and the Hungarian Revolution which broke out a few months later. The events are richly illustrated through photographs. The thirty-two display panels were first exhibited in Poznań on 23 March 2011, on the Polish-Hungarian day of friendship.

(kormany.hu)