Kunmadaras is a large

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok,

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the 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 a ...

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 rural ...

. 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 – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

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 The Kunmadaras pogrom was an anti-Semitic pogrom that took place shortly after the Second World War in Kunmadaras, Hungary. The pogrom took place on 22 May 1946. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, four Jews were killed. The riot began ...

) inspired by a

rumour A rumor (American English), or rumour (British English; see spelling differences; derived from Latin:rumorem - noise), is "a tall tale of explanations of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in p ...

that they were murdering and consuming ("making sausages out of") children. Two Jews were killed and fifteen 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 Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, ...

, was stationed at Kunmadaras until 1990–91, whereupon it was withdrawn back to the

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

region and disbanded.

Population

In 2001 the inhabitants of the village declared themselves as 95% Hungarian and 5%

Romanis The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic Itinerant groups in Europe, itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have Ro ...

References

External links

* in Hungarian, English and German
Kunmadaras Motorsport

Airphotos of Kunmadaras

Кунмадараш - Russian ghost town on the Great Plain (2010.06.23.)
{{Authority control Populated places in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County