Perhaps, the Satanic ideas of history are being implemented so swiftly because their inventors are well aware of the wickedness of their actions.

It's better to get the dirty work done as quickly as possible so that honest people have no time to protest.

This is exactly what happened today, 13 October, with the Turul statue of the castle of Munkács, which was erected for the second time. It was only early this afternoon that the city council ordered the castle museum to remove the Turul, which will be replaced by, wouldn't you guess it, the trident, an element of Ukrainian state heraldry. It took less than two hours to remove the statue. That's efficiency in a place where it takes years to fill a pothole in the middle of the city. (Just a parenthetical, quiet comment that

THE CASTLE MUSEUM DOES NOT HAPPEN TO HAVE SUCH TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT

to saw a four-and-a-half metre long, one-tonne bird off a 25-metre-high obelisk high up on a cliff face. Just in case there was any doubt that this was not a centrally ordered action in Kiev, starting with the council charade and ending with the implementation...)

For historical fidelity, let us also note,

ON THE MOURNFUL DAY OF OCTOBER 13, 2022, THE SECOND TURUL WAS ALSO REMOVED FROM ITS PEDESTAL ON THE CASTLE WALL IN MUNKÁCS.

Originally erected in 1896 as one of the seven millennium monuments, the statue was pulled down by the occupying Czechoslovak forces in 1924 and then smelted by the Red Army in 1945. The re-casting of the bronze Turul was financed by Imre Pákh, a Hungarian entrepreneur living in New York and known for his Munkácsy collection, and the Sándor Pákh Foundation. The Turul was returned to the castle in 2008.

The elderly Sándor Pákh is said to have dreamed that on his 100th birthday the Turul would return to its original place in the castle of Munkács. Whether this poignant story is true or not, the fact is that the Pákh family restored the castle in exemplary fashion, and the castle of Munkács has benefited many times over from this thanks to the surge in tourist revenues and the growing number of castle programmes.

The inner courtyard of the castle in February 2022; Photo: Péter Pomozi

In 2008, Imre Pákh was decorated by the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for his outstanding work in the field of monument preservation. Sándor Pákh died at the age of 101. He was no longer able to visit his homeland, but he could return to his ancestors with the blissful satisfaction of seeing the Turul return to the castle in Munkács. And there it stayed until the early evening of 13 October 2022.

THE TURUL WAS REMOVED WITHOUT TRACE TWO HOURS AFTER THE CITY COUNCIL'S DECISION.

Péter Pomozi Director, Research Centre for Hungarian Language History