A Catholic memorial service for George Oláh, Nobel Prize Winning Hungarian-American chemist was held on September 19 at the Fiumei Road Cemetery. His final wish was to bring his ashes to Budapest and the eulogy was given by Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. I had been in contact with Oláh for a decade or so. To my surprise on […]
Just five months ago Iran and Hungary signed an agreement to expand nuclear cooperation between the two countries. The deal was inked by Ali Akbar Salehi, the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and Zsolt Semjén, the Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister. Mr. Semjén, a former Catholic theologian, was very excited about the nuclear deal with the Islamic state […]
János Esterházy (1901-1957) was an ethnic Hungarian Slovak politician, a devout Catholic and member of the pro-Hitler Slovak Tiso parliament during World Wat II. Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest and leader of Slovakia was convicted as a World War II criminal and hanged in 1947. Esterházy enthusiastically supported Hitler, Mussolini and pro-Hitler Miklós Horthy, Hungary’s ruler. After WWII he was […]
On the evening of July 7 2017, 35-year-old William Charles Morva was executed by lethal injection in the State of Virginia. Although Morva was a Hungarian citizen and the Hungarian Embassy asked for clemency, Virginia’s Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe did not spare his life. Morva’s lawyers claimed that he was delusional when he killed two men during a prison escape […]
An open letter was published on the website of the American Hungarian Federation addressed to me. (Read here.) The letter questions my comment related to Colonel Ferenc Koszorús in the August 24 article, “Hungary’s Ambassador blames Obama’s influence on State Department for poor relations.” According to the American Hungarian Federation’s website Colonel Koszorús is a Hungarian Hero of the Holocaust […]
The Hungarian government recently recalled its ambassador to the Netherlands after the Dutch Ambassador to Hungary, Gajus Scheltema, drew parallels between the government’s efforts to “create enemies” and those of the Islamic State group. In an interview Scheltema also criticized Hungary’s treatment of asylum-seekers and the government’s campaign against philanthropist George Soros. Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders distanced himself from his […]
On June 21, 2017, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the Hungarian nation was able to survive in the 1920s and 1930s due to “some exceptional statesmen like Regent Miklós Horthy.” Never before did the Hungarian Prime Minister identify pro-Hitler Horthy, who served as Hungarian head of state from 1920 to 1944, as an “exceptional statesman.” The attempt to […]
On August 28, at the invitation of Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin will visit Budapest to take part in the opening ceremony of the World Judo Championships. Bilateral meetings are also planned and the University of Debrecen will award Mr. Putin the title “Civis Honoris Causa” – Honorary Citizen of the University in […]
Fili is the nickname of the Children’s Philharmonic Orchestra from Szentegyháza (Transylvania, Romania). The orchestra and choir recently toured Canada to honor the country’s 150th anniversary visiting seven cities and giving 11 concerts. The musical group was founded 35 years ago in the ethnic Hungarian-speaking community and gained fame under the direction of Sándor Haáz. In the last decades the […]
The newly appointed Hungarian Ambassador, László Szabó, has put the blame squarely on the US State Department for the poor relations between the two countries. According to Ambassador Szabó the State Department has a major problem: “The vast majority of the staff members of the US State Department, where tens of thousands of people work, still have ties to the […]
