We don’t have Halloween in Hungary, we have All Saints Day! – states the poster. Halloween is not a desirable holiday for conservative Christian Hungary. In Hungary “Mindenszentek” (All Saints’ Day) and “Halottak Napja” (All Souls’ Day) have always been important Catholic holidays. Quite recently, in 2000, All Saints’ Day even became a National Holiday. Right wing political parties, especially […]
I was surprised. Actually, I was dismayed to see US Ambassador to Hungary Colleen Bell delivering remarks at the statue unveiling of the Budapest Lad when on Sunday October 16, the sculpture was inaugurated to commemorate the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The unveiling took place in Scott’s Circle at 1500 Rhode Island Ave, NW, Washington DC on the grounds of the […]
László Rajk, the artistic director of the Oscar-winning Hungarian film Son of Saul (2015) is scheduled to give a public lecture entitled Art and the Holocaust: The Making of Son of Saul on November 4th, 2016, at 3:00 PM at Concordia University in Montreal. The event is being presented by a number of local organizations, including the Canadian Hungarian Democratic […]
Canada showed great solidarity to Hungarian refugees in 1956/57, after the suppression of the 1956 Revolution, so this is an especially apt place to hold this commemoration–observed Ian Bradbury, founder of The Stand 2016 on the sixtieth anniversary celebration of the uprising. The Hungarian Forum of Ottawa organized the modest commemoration on Parliament Hill, in Canada’s capital city, and participants […]
Hungarian-American filmmaker Klaudia Kovacs, director of Torn From the Flag, writes about the legacy and significance of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the Hungarian Free Press, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the uprising. * For us to understand the difficulties Hungary has been going through since 1989, first we need to analyze life under Soviet occupation and […]
Elvis Presley’s final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was on January 6, 1957. CBS censors would not allow his entire body to be shown on live TV, he was seen only from the waist up. 22 years-old Elvis sang seven songs in three segments. Most memorable was his rendition of Peace in the Valley, the famous gospel song as […]
Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks is in Budapest for the shooting of his new movie “Inferno”, a sequel to the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code.” He loves Budapest and says Mexican food is fabulous in the Hungarian capital. I know his favorite Mexican restaurant, but I cannot tell you. Hanks values his privacy and I swore to the owner that I […]
In 1956 about 200,000 Hungarian refugees fled to the West–among them 20,000 “unaccompanied minors,” mostly teenagers. These kids travelled alone; many of them came from state orphanages. A great number were apprentices who participated in the fights and also peasant and poor children from the countryside. Lajos Kiss was 13 years old when he escaped from an orphanage at Dorog, […]
What a surprise! The San Francisco War Memorial Center will host the 60th anniversary commemoration of the 1956 Revolution. On October 23 the keynote speaker will be Willie Brown, the former Speaker of the California State Assembly who was the 41st mayor of San Francisco. The 82-year-old Democrat is a dynamic speaker and overall fantastic guy. I once met Brown […]
The Hungarian Forum of Ottawa is organizing an English-language talk with Ian Bradbury on Thursday, October 13th, 2016 at 6:30 PM on an international social justice initiative called The Stand. Those who follow the news closely in Canada will have come across Mr. Bradbury’s name in the media over the years. In 2015, both the Ottawa Citizen and the Toronto […]
