Thousands of mourners attend funeral of former Hungarian president Arpad Goncz

The coffin of former Hungarian President Arpad Goncz is pictured during a funeral service in the Obuda Cemetery of Budapest, Hungary, Friday, Nov. 6, 2015. Goncz died on Oct. 6 at the age of 93. (Szilard Koszticsak/MTI via AP) (The Associated Press)

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Mourners attend the funeral of former Hungarian President Arpad Goncz at the Obuda Cemetery of Budapest, Hungary, Friday, Nov. 6, 2015. Goncz died on Oct. 6 at the age of 93. (Tibor Illyes/MTI via AP) (The Associated Press)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, centre right, and his wife Aniko Levai, center left, arrive at the funeral of former Hungarian President Arpad Goncz at the Obuda Cemetery of Budapest, Hungary, Friday, Nov. 6, 2015. Goncz died on Oct. 6 at the age of 93. (Tibor Illyes/MTI via AP) (The Associated Press)

BUDAPEST, Hungary – Thousands of mourners have attended the funeral of former Hungarian president Arpad Goncz, who requested to be buried with a simple ceremony bereft of the honors befitting his office.

Goncz, Hungary's first democratically elected president after the communist era, died Oct. 6 aged 93. He was buried Friday, according to his wishes, at the Obudai cemetery in Budapest, near the graves of several other veterans of Hungary's 1956 anti-Soviet uprising.

Former lawmaker Imre Mecs, who like Goncz spent many years in prision after 1956, said in his eulogy that Goncz "always knew what to do and always went in the right direction."

Goncz, who was elected to two terms between 1990 and 2000, was also a much-loved writer and translator.