The small Hungarian village of Vácrátót is about 25 miles NNE of Budapest. A feature there is a world-class sixty-seven acre botanical garden which includes a modern war memorial. It’s created in the genre of Emil Krieger’s 1956 Four Mourners (at the Langemark German Cemetery in Belgium) and the 1932 Käthe Kollwitz sculpture The Grieving Parents, (now at Vladslo Gerrman Cemetery, also in Belgium), each of which emphasize the tragedy of loss rather than sacrifice for victory. The Vácrátót statue depicts a family of four in traditional Hungarian folk dress, but the father is a cutout silhouette, forever gone but never forgotten. The wife is trying to wrap her arm around the husband’s missing shoulder, the infant child is trying to sit on daddy’s knee and the daughter is attempting to cuddle with the void. These little actions emphasize the horrific loss of thousands of families in two catastrophic wars. ...read more