Béla Ivády

Béla Ivády was born on 20 March 1916 in Budapest, in a middle-class family (his father was also Minister of Agriculture from 1931 to 1932). After graduating from the Ludovika Academy, he was commissioned as a cavalry gunnery lieutenant in 1938.

In 1944 he was commander of a battery of the 2nd Cavalry Artillery Division. In July 1944 he was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Sword, and at an unknown date he was also awarded the Governor's Commendation of the Sword. From October 1944 he fought in the Hungarian theatre of operations, and in December 1944 he was transferred to the 1st Cavalry Artillery Division, but his ranks here cannot be reconstructed. In early December 1944 the batteries of the division were deployed on the southern edge of Csepel on the eastern side of the road to Tököl. On 24 December, the division was to have been relocated to Budaörs, but the order could not be fully carried out due to the Soviet advance. Temporarily, they took up positions near the forks of the Balaton artificial road, and at the end of December the division moved to the Pest side. According to recollections, orders to fire on populated areas were already being sabotaged. The artillery headquarters was located at 16 Döbrentei út on the Buda side. In mid-January, each battery moved to Buda, the artillery battery's headquarters at the Zöldfa Restaurant (Krisztina Square), one battery took up a firing position at Naphegy Square and the other at the Castle, not far from Dísz Square. Between 7 and 8 February, many of the artillery regiments in the area of the College of Physical Education were transferred to the Soviet troops. Ivády was not among them, but he did not take part in the breakout. He was taken prisoner of war on 12 February 1945 and returned home in 1947. His life after that was typical of the Christian middle class: he was dismissed from the professional staff, employed by the horse-breeding department in Pest County, then took a job as a sheet-metal worker and later as a machine operator. In 1951 he was deported. In 1953, although the deportation was lifted, he was banned from Budapest and had to move from Budaörs to work as a locksmith at the Ventilation Works. After 1956, he was again dismissed and downgraded on spurious grounds. According to a description he wrote at the time, "during the counter-revolution, they formed a counter-revolutionary group with like-minded people. They used maps to see how foreign troops could come to Hungary." He then worked as a manual worker in a workshop of the BKV, from where he retired in 1977. He applied for rehabilitation in 1990.