He who writes the history controls the history

We've seen lots of memorials in honor of the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Revolution of 1956 against the Russians. We haven't seen any in honor of the Second World War when Hungary was aligned with Hitler. However, we found these interesting monuments in honor of the First World War. We aren't too sure about the meaning of everything. Our little pocket tourist dictionary doesn't seem to think that tourists want to translate the writing on war monuments. Even the nearby tourist office wasn't sure, but this seems to be the message. This statue seems to honor 17,464 heroes, perhaps from Sopron, who died in battle--though that number seems high since even today Sopron has perhaps 60,000 people.



The sign on this statue honors the soldiers who died "trying to preserve peace." It was Austro-Hungary that was attacked first by partisans in Sarajevo in Serbia. The world then attacked Hungary while Hungary was just ""defending itself"and "preserving peace".


This shows the royal lion representing Hungary wounded by an arrow in battle while protecting the country. (Symbols of Hungary are in its paws.) It was after WWI that Hungary was reduced to 40% of its size. A third of all Hungarian speakers now live outside Hungary in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and the Ukraine. They are still upset about this unjust reduction in size. (At least the old-timers are.) This isn't the version of WWI and its war heroes that we hear about. Like they say, "He who writes the history (and builds the monuments) controls the history."