Kunmadaras is a large
village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
in
Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok,
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
.
History
The first written record of the existence of the village is from 1393. According to it the area was given to György Madaras, after whom the village was named, by
the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, the king of Hungary.
During the
Ottoman occupation the village was destroyed. In the 18th and 19th centuries the population began to increase again, and new houses and buildings were constructed. In 1811 it became a
market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rura ...
.
In 1944 the German army had a military airfield built at the edge of the village. During the
Soviet invasion of Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 4 November 1956; ), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by ...
in 1944 the Soviet air force took over the airfield.
Jewish pogrom
In 1946 there was a violent attack on Jewish Holocaust survivors (the
Kunmadaras pogrom) inspired by a
rumour
A rumor (American English), or rumour (British English; see spelling differences; derived from Latin 'noise'), is an unverified piece of information circulating among people, especially without solid evidence.
In the social sciences, a rumor ...
that they were murdering and consuming ("making sausages out of") children. Three Jews were killed and twenty were injured.
Military role in the socialist period
Between 1956 and 1991 Soviet army troops were stationed here. According to a book by Károly Vándor, this airfield was one of the military facilities in which nuclear weapons were held during the Cold War. The Soviet 328th independent Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment,
Southern Group of Forces
The Southern Group of Forces (YUGV) was a Soviet Armed Forces formation formed twice following the Second World War, most notably around the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
First Formation
On June 15, 1945, the 26th and 37th Armies (fr ...
, was stationed at Kunmadaras until 1990–91, whereupon it was withdrawn back to the
Odessa
ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...
region and disbanded.
Population
In 2001 the inhabitants of the village declared themselves as 95% Hungarian and 5%
Romanis
{{Infobox ethnic group
, group = Romani people
, image =
, image_caption =
, flag = Roma flag.svg
, flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress
, p ...
.
References
External links
* in Hungarian, English and German
Kunmadaras MotorsportAirphotos of KunmadarasКунмадараш - Russian ghost town on the Great Plain (2010.06.23.)
{{Authority control
Populated places in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County