Miklós Steinmetz

Miklós Steinmetz (1913 – December 1944) was a Hungarian-born Soviet Red Army captain. He fought on the Eastern Front of the Second World War and was killed by mortar fire. His name was used in Soviet propaganda and a story concocted that he and fellow officer, Captain Ostapenko, had been trying to save Budapest from a long siege by negotiating a German surrender. A Soviet statue of Steinmetz on the border of Budapest and Vecsés was taken down during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A replacement was erected in 1958 and remains in Liberty Square, Pest.[1]

His parents were communists, and after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, the family fled to South America before immigrating to the Soviet Union. Steinmetz became a member of the Komsomol – the Soviet Communist Youth Organization, and then fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, becoming a captain in the Red Army during World War II.

According to Soviet propaganda, in December 1944 (during the Battle of Budapest), when Soviet forces had encircled the Nazi German-controlled Hungarian capital, he delivered the ultimatum demanding the Germans and Hungarians to surrender. He was killed before the Soviet takeover of the city, when his car ran over a mine on the Üllői avenue in Pestszentlőrinc (today part of Budapest).

References

  1. ^ Majtényi, György (2 November 2021). Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary: Villas, Hunts, and Soccer Games. Indiana University Press. p. 283. ISBN 978-0-253-05593-4.
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