Plaque unveiled to commemorate MTK's Holocaust victims

Andor Grósz emphasised that the people being remembered did a lot for MTK, for Judaism, for good and for people, and at the same time, also enhanced the reputation of Hungarian sport with their talent. “These former champions were not defeated in a competition, but by the face of the ruthlessness of history,” he said, before stating that 121 names were engraved on the plaque, including those of footballers, athletes, table tennis players and fencers, who had first been excluded from competitions, then from their club and finally from life, simply because they were Jewish.

Tamás Deutsch, president of MTK Budapest, recalled that the victims of mass murders and genocides were buried in unmarked graves on countless occasions, the bodies of hundreds of thousands of exterminated Hungarian Jews were burned in the crematoria of the death camps, and thousands were shot into the Danube river. “The survivors and we, the descendants of the survivors, therefore have a special duty to remember everyone. We cannot forget anyone and certainly not MTK's victims of the Holocaust,” explained Deutsch, who concluded his oratory by saying that the Holocaust would have destroyed MTK itself, but the club was re-established after the war and its 137-year chronicle now has more pages written from after that horrific period than before it.

The Hungarian Football Federation was represented at the event by spokesperson Jenő Sipos, who placed the MLSZ wreath next the memorial plaque.