A statue commemorating Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti in Bor, Serbia, has been vandalized, prompting the Hungarian National Council of Vojvodina (MNT) to file a police report, according to the Hungarian news site Index.hu.
MNT President Árpád Fremond announced the incident in a Facebook post, saying the organization had urged the relevant local authorities to clean and restore the statue as soon as possible.
‘Respect for culture, history, and human dignity must not become a victim of any agenda. Miklós Radnóti’s life and work, as well as his tragic fate, form part of our shared European heritage, and his memory connects us,’ the politician wrote.
Hungary donated a statue of Radnóti to the Serbian mining town of Bor in 1979. However, the 600-kilogram (1,300 pounds) bronze monument was stolen in 2001. A replacement statue was erected in 2004 in memory of the poet, and it has remained in the eastern Serbian town ever since.
Radnóti was taken to Bor in June 1944 as a forced labourer during World War II. Later that year, while imprisoned at Lager Heidenau, he and around 3,200 other prisoners were forced to march westwards towards Germany as Soviet troops and Yugoslav partisans advanced.
During his captivity in Bor and the subsequent forced march, Radnóti wrote some of his most famous poems, including ‘Postcards’, ‘The Seventh Eclogue’, ‘Letter to My Wife’, and ‘Forced March’. He was murdered in November 1944, shortly before the end of the war.
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