Miklos Radnoti

About the Poet
Miklós Radnóti was a Hungarian poet (1909-1944). In 1934, he finished his studies on the artistic development of Margit Kafka. In 1935, he married his long-time love Fanni Gyarmati (1912-2014). This was followed by a blissful newlywed period during which Radnóti taught secondary school during 1935-36 at the Zgismod Kemény. In 1940, Radnóti was assigned to a mandatory labor battalion, an unarmed military service considered a punishment for unworthy citizens, such as leftists and Jews. In 1943, he was sent to the Bor copper mines in Serbia, which supplied 50 percent of the Nazi’s wartime use of the metal. In September 1944, with Allied forces advancing, Radnóti and 3600 other laborers were forced to leave the camp on foot in two groups. Rodnóti and the others were forced to walk from Bor to Szentkirályszabadja, where he wrote his last poem in October. In November 1944, a commander and four guards of the Royal Hungarian Army executed Radnóti and 20 other prisoners due to their utter physical and mental exhaustion. Victims were buried in a mass grave. In June 1946, the mass grave was exhumed. Fanni Radnóti found a notebook of poems in the overcoat pocket that her dead husband still wore. These poems were written during his long captivity and final days. On June 25, 1946, Radnóti and the 21 other victims were properly laid to rest in the Jewish Cemetery of Gyór.