After many years of research, a soldier returned a love letter found in an antiquarian book, written during the Second World War, to a descendant of the late couple, the Military Administration and Central Records Command of the Hungarian Defense Forces announced on its Facebook page.
It was written that ten years ago, ensign László Bukta, who was in charge of searching for war graves and registering heroic monuments at the command’s recruiting office in Miskolc, came across a letter written in 1943 and posted in Kassa by guard leader Gyula Bodnár in a book in an antiquarian. The beautiful lines piqued his interest, so he bought the book with the letter inside, and then began an investigation to find out the history of the love lines.
Guard leader Gyula Bodnár served in Kassa as a soldier of the first battery of the local motorized light artillery unit. The 22-year-old guard leader wrote the letter in 1943 in the Kassa barracks, and in his love confession to his “Marika”, he discussed his hopes that they would be able to get married after the war.
The letter was addressed to Aszaló, and the soldier from the recruitment office in Miskolc found out with the help of the local registrar that Gyula Bodnár and Marika survived the war, but the man was taken prisoner of war; they were finally able to marry in April 1951. Gyula Bodnár, who survived the World War and then also a prisoner of war, died in 1984, and not long after, his love also died. They had two children from the marriage, the younger, Anna Mária Busku Jánosné Bodnár, now works as a pharmacist in Miskolc, they wrote.
The soldier from the local recruitment office was unable to find out under what circumstances the letter ended up in the antiquarian book, nor was it revealed whether the recipient received the letter.
The command wrote in the post that the letter certifying the love of the late Bodnár couple was handed over to the descendant of the former couple eighty years later, on September 6. Anna Busku Jánosné Bodnár said that her family had not come across this letter before, only a few camp letters and postcards from her father’s wartime writings had survived, the MH Military Administration and Central Records Command wrote in its Facebook post.
(MTI, Debreceni Nap)
Photo: Kinga Szováthy honvedelem.hu
