Tűzkereszt Archive Story • Collections & Personal Stories
At first there was only a photograph.
It shows the grave of a Hungarian officer somewhere far from home. A steel helmet rests above a simple wooden cross, while freshly cut evergreen branches cover the grave. Behind it stand other military graves and, rising above them, the walls of a church.
The inscription is remarkably clear: NEMES NAGY TÓTH ISTVÁN — SZDS. — 1942. VII. 16.
The original photograph survives in the Orincsay Péter Collection of the Tűzkereszt Archive. What began as an attempt to identify the man named on this cross gradually developed into the reconstruction of a short professional military career — from the Royal Hungarian Ludovika Academy in 1935 to the forests around Gluchov seven years later.
Military rank lists, a Ludovika graduation tableau, contemporary press reports, a family death notice, an official casualty card and the diary of a Hungarian field chaplain now allow many parts of that story to be brought together.
Click any photograph or document to open it at full size.
The Young Officer
A 1935 Ludovika graduation tableau gives a face to the name preserved on the grave at Gluchov.
Nagy-Tóth István was born in 1912. By his early twenties he had entered the professional officer corps through Hungary's principal military academy, the Magyar Királyi Honvéd Ludovika Akadémia in Budapest.
His portrait appears on the tableau of the academy's 1935 graduating class. The name beneath the photograph is written “Nemes Tóth-Nagy István”, one of several contemporary forms found for his compound surname.
The officers of this graduating class were commissioned as hadnagy on 20 August 1935, the traditional St Stephen's Day commissioning ceremony. Nagy-Tóth was therefore approximately twenty-three years old when he began his career as a commissioned officer.
His name later appears in the official Royal Hungarian Army officer lists for 1938, 1940 and 1941. By the summer of 1942 he had attained the rank of százados — Captain.
The Name
Contemporary records use the forms Tóth-Nagy, Nagy Tóth and Nagy-Tóth. The designation nemes indicates noble status and is not a military title. In the wartime officer indexes his name is generally listed as Nagy-Tóth István, nemes.
Family and Service
Contemporary notices from Nyíregyháza reveal details of the family behind the young officer and provide clues to his military service before 1942.
Nagy-Tóth was the son of nemes Nagy-Tóth Endre and Toldy Anna. The family lived at Árpád utca 31 in Nyíregyháza.
His father had been a senior official of the local Dohánybeváltó Hivatal, the tobacco purchasing administration. The newspaper notice published after István's death describes Nagy-Tóth Endre as the former head of that office.
The family death announcement identifies István as a Royal Hungarian Honvéd captain and records three commemorative medals: the Felvidéki Emlékérem, Erdélyi Emlékérem and Délvidéki Emlékérem.
These decorations place him within the sequence of Hungarian territorial revisions between 1938 and 1941 and show that his military career before the Eastern Front had already included significant active service.
The Eastern Front — July 1942
The date on Nagy-Tóth's grave coincides with one of the most serious anti-partisan losses suffered by the 12th Light Division during its movement eastward.
In the summer of 1942 the Hungarian Second Army was moving through occupied Soviet territory toward the Don. Units of the 12th Light Division formed part of this advance.
The rear areas through which the Hungarian formations moved were increasingly affected by Soviet partisan activity. One particularly serious encounter occurred in the wooded region around Dubovicsi — present-day Dubovychi — near Gluchov.
Historian Péter Szabó records that a detached element of the Pécs-based 38/I Battalion suffered disastrous losses there on 16 July 1942. The reported casualties were 28 killed, one missing and nine wounded.
Other historical research identifies the machine-gun company of 38/I Battalion as the formation sent against the partisans. An earlier account gives a slightly different chronology and casualty figure, demonstrating that some details of the operation remain uncertain.
One fact, however, is striking: the date recorded for the loss of Captain Nagy-Tóth is also 16 July 1942.
Research Status
The available evidence strongly connects Nagy-Tóth with the 38/I Battalion action in the Dubovicsi area. His rank of captain would also be consistent with command of a company. No document located so far, however, explicitly names Nagy-Tóth István as commander of the 38/I machine-gun company. This possibility should therefore remain a hypothesis until a personnel or unit record confirms it.
The Casualty Record
The official military record confirms the same name, rank and date preserved on the wooden grave marker.
The most important additional entry on the casualty documentation is the place of burial: Gluchov.
The name refers to present-day Hlukhiv in northern Ukraine. This places the administrative record in direct agreement with the surviving evidence concerning the Hungarian graves in the town.
Thirty Hungarian Graves at Gluchov
Only three weeks after the fighting, a Hungarian field chaplain visited the burial site and recorded Nagy-Tóth by name.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence comes not from an official military form but from the wartime diary of Pál Soltész, a Reformed field chaplain serving with Field Hospital No. 116.
Soltész passed through Gluchov on 7 August 1942, only twenty-two days after Nagy-Tóth had been killed. There he saw a group of Hungarian graves in a churchyard.
Soltész therefore recorded Captain nemes Nagy Tóth István together with twenty-nine fellow Hungarian officers and soldiers.
Historian Judit Pihurik later published the relevant passage from the diary. Her research identifies the manuscript in the Hadtörténelmi Levéltár as HL TGY 3555.
Pihurik also cites the Hungarian casualty reference Béke poraikra, which records Nagy-Tóth's fatal injury as fejroncsolás — severe destructive trauma to the head.
Soltész's diary also contains claims concerning the composition of the partisan force. Those statements reflect contemporary rumours and were themselves critically discussed by Pihurik. They should not be treated as reliable evidence. His direct observation of the graves and his identification of Nagy-Tóth, however, are of a very different evidential character.
The Photograph
The photograph that began the investigation can now be read as a documented view of a Hungarian wartime burial site at Gluchov.
When the photograph first entered the archive, the inscription was the principal clue to the identity of the deceased. It can now be compared with several independent sources.
The wooden cross gives the same name, rank and date as the military casualty record. That record places his burial at Gluchov. Twenty-two days after his death, Pál Soltész personally saw the Hungarian graves there and specifically recorded Nagy-Tóth by name.
The other crosses visible behind Nagy-Tóth's grave are particularly significant in this context. Soltész described approximately thirty Hungarian graves in the churchyard, and the photograph appears to preserve at least part of this concentrated wartime burial site.
Even the church visible behind the graves acquires new importance. Soltész explicitly described the graves as being in a templomudvar — a churchyard.
The helmet, wooden marker and fresh evergreen decoration suggest that the photograph was taken while the burial site was still relatively new and being maintained by Hungarian troops in the area.
From Ludovika to Gluchov
The evidence recovered so far allows the principal stages of Nagy-Tóth István's life and military career to be reconstructed.
A Name on a Wooden Cross
Seven years separate the young officer on the Ludovika graduation tableau from the name painted on the wooden cross at Gluchov.
In 1935 Nagy-Tóth István was approximately twenty-three years old and beginning the professional military career for which he had trained at Ludovika. During the following years he served through a period of rapid military and territorial change in Hungary and rose through the officer corps to the rank of captain.
On 16 July 1942 that career ended on the Eastern Front.
His parents in Nyíregyháza lost their only son. Far to the east, his comrades buried him beside other Hungarian soldiers at Gluchov. Three weeks later a passing field chaplain wrote his name in a diary. At some point during the same period, someone stood before his grave with a camera and exposed a single frame.
More than eighty years later, that photograph survives.
The investigation is not yet complete. Nagy-Tóth's exact promotion dates to főhadnagy and százados, his successive unit assignments, and his precise command on 16 July 1942 remain to be established.
But the man behind the grave is no longer anonymous.
Sources and Research Material
- Royal Hungarian Army officer rank lists, including the 1938, 1940 and 1941 editions.
- Royal Hungarian Ludovika Academy graduation material, class of 1935.
- Contemporary family death notice for nemes Nagy-Tóth István, Nyíregyháza, 6 August 1942.
- Nyírvidék – Szabolcsi Hírlap, contemporary notice concerning his death, August 1942.
- Royal Hungarian military casualty documentation for nemes Nagy Tóth István, Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum.
- Péter Szabó, research concerning the Royal Hungarian Second Army, the 12th Light Division and the losses of 38/I Battalion in July 1942.
- Historical research concerning the 38/I Battalion machine-gun company and Hungarian anti-partisan operations in the Gluchov area.
- Judit Pihurik, research on Hungarian wartime diaries and memoirs, including the diary of Reformed field chaplain Pál Soltész.
- Pál Soltész wartime diary, Hadtörténelmi Levéltár, TGY 3555.
- Béke poraikra, casualty reference for Nagy-Tóth István, as cited by Judit Pihurik.
TŰZKERESZT Digital Archive • Collections & Personal Stories • Royal Hungarian Army • Eastern Front • 1942
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