Dear Grandpa Ciro,
The cemeteries will remain empty after us.
Stojan Vujicic: Belated Epitaph, 1972
Recording and documenting Serbian cemeteries in Hungary. Graves, tombstones and inscriptions on graves were registered through a survey conducted by the Serbian Institute in 65 settlements between 2011 and 2014.
Serbian cemeteries and tombstones are located in about 60 settlements in Hungary. Before the start of the project, only the cemetery in Szentendre was processed. Field work began at the end of 2011, and now the field phase of work is coming to an end, within which all graves / tombstones are photographed and recorded and the position of each of them is determined using satellite technology, i.e. a general description of the condition of the cemetery is given. Field work is expected to be completed in January 2014 (Batanya, Pomaz and Budapest). The result of this work will be a database of over 5 thousand graves and over 20 thousand photographs. The records do not include military cemeteries and cemeteries created next to camps from the world wars. The oldest recorded graves are from the beginning of the 18th century. (In Szentendre, in the portico of the Cathedral Church, there are also monuments from the very end of the 17th century, while the Budapest City Museum keeps a Serbian tombstone from the 17th century. In the temple in Srpski Kovin, there are monuments - in the floor of the narthex - from the 16th century.) The processing of the collected data, primarily tombstone inscriptions, is expected in 2014. The project is financed from the budget of the Serbian Institute, namely through the project for the arrangement of Serbian cemeteries and the project for recording the immovable material heritage of Serbs in Hungary, from the budget of the Hungarian government. So far, nearly 20 thousand euros have been spent. The initiator of the project is historian Milan Dujmov. The project was developed by Milan Dujmov, Kosta Vuković and Pera Lastić. During the development of the project, the methodology used by Dimitrije E. Stefanović during the processing of the Serbian cemetery in Szentendre. Field work is carried out by Milan Dujmov with a photographer (Marta Nagy-Salai). Satellite determination of the coordinates of individual graves is carried out by a special expert, a surveyor, using appropriate equipment.
