Botlókövek - Slipping Stones

A new fashion in Budapest: street stones with a memorial for Jews  killed while serving as unarmed forced labor within the Hungarian army fighting with the Nazi Army in Russia. They are calle "botlókövek" which means more or less street stones that make one slip. The left stone says: Here lived Tyroler Gyula (Julius) born 1902, killed in Ostrogodjsk while in forced labor, the 6th of August 1942.  He must have been among the 900 Hungarian Jewish civilians forced to serve the 10,000 strong Hungarian expeditionary soldiers. Osztrogozsszk is a place near the bend of the river Don where the German and allied (Hungarian and Italian) forces suffered a bloody defeat  by the attacking Red Army led by Sverlov. The detailed description of the battle - in Hungarian - can be seen in this book. My father was there and returned with frozen feet.  

The Wiki: On 13 January 1943, the Soviets began the second stage of Little Saturn, the Voronezh–Kharkov Offensive. The Bryansk Front, Voronezh Front, and Southwestern Front attacked simultaneously. The Soviet attack totally successful this time: during the Ostrogozhsk–Rossosh Offensive the Soviets rapidly destroyed Second Army near Svoboda on the Don River. An attack on the German Second Army further north threatened to encircle that army as well, forcing it to retreat. By 5 February, troops of the Voronezh Front were approaching Kharkov. Second Army's losses were made especially severe by the attitude of its commander, Colonel General Vitéz Gusztáv Jány, who forbade any sort of withdrawal, even though the neighboring German and Italian forces pulled back. Most of Second Army was encircled. They were either annihilated or succumbed to the extreme cold (-30C – -40C) while trying to escape. The 1st Armored Division was reduced to a single operational tank within a few days, and most of the personnel of the 1st Air Group died on the ground when their airfields were overrun by Soviet tanks.

During its twelve months of activity on the Eastern Front, Second Army's losses were enormous. Of an initial force of about 200,000 Hungarian soldiers and 50,000 Jewish forced laborers,^[4] about 100,000 were dead, 35,000 wounded, and 60,000 taken prisoners of war. Only about 40,000 men returned to Hungary, scapegoated by Hitler for the catastrophic Axis defeat. "No nation lost as much blood during World War II in such a short period of time."^[5]

Second Army, like most other Axis armies in Army Group B, ceased to exist as a meaningful fighting force. The German Sixth Army, encircled in Stalingrad, surrendered on 2 February 1943. The remnants of Second Army returned to Hungary on 24 May 1943.