Focus

Béla Lipták (Memory Project)

Trianon and anti-western rhetoric in Orbán’s Hungary — A Response to Béla Lipták

I am compelled to reflect on a letter written by Béla Lipták and published in The New York Times. In response to an NYT article entitled “Hungary’s Autocracy Beneath a Patina of Democracy,” Mr. Lipták argued that Hungary’s slide towards authoritarianism and the embrace of anti-western rhetoric is caused by, and is indeed justifiable due to, a deep-rooted anger and a sense […]

by · January 7, 2019 · Focus
Zsolt Császy in September 2018.

Inmate Császy — An interview with a political prisoner of the Orbán regime

We last spoke in the summer of 2017. (See HFP’s piece here and here.) At that time, you had been sentenced to two and a half years in prison and your partner, Miklós Tátrai, received three years from the Curia for the Sukoró land swap deal of 2008. When I interviewed you with Christopher Adam at this time, you came […]

by · October 26, 2018 · Focus
Eleanor Roosevelt and the refugees of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Eleanor Roosevelt and the refugees of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956

On October 23, Hungarians commemorate the Revolution of 1956. The uprising was an unplanned nationwide upheaval against the harsh Stalinist government of the People’s Republic of Hungary. It lasted from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Over 2,500 Hungarian citizens and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the hostilities and close to 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. About half of […]

by · October 23, 2018 · Focus
The shameful Hungarian occupation of Denmark

The shameful Hungarian occupation of Denmark

Hungarian troops in Denmark? In 1945 Hungary’s generals and officers continued to fight alongside the Nazis serving the Third Reich even after the war had ended in Hungary. The occupation of Denmark was one of the most disturbing adventures of Hungary’s pro-Hitler army. In February 1945 Budapest was already free. The Red Army controlled eastern Hungary and Budapest; American and […]

by · September 30, 2018 · Focus
Thank you, Senator John McCain

Thank you, Senator John McCain

As the founder and former international spokesperson of Montreal based civil rights advocacy group, The Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter, I would like to publicly pay my respects to the late Senator John McCain, who passed away this weekend after a heroic and dignified battle with cancer. Senator McCain was a Conservative American politician, a prominent member of the Republican Party, […]

by · August 27, 2018 · Focus
Daniel Berg

Daniel Berg’s letter to the American ambassador in Budapest, David B. Cornstein

Dear Mr. Ambassador, My name is Daniel Berg, and I am a Board Member of Momentum Movement, a new Hungarian centrist party. Today I am writing to you not only in this capacity, but also as a concerned dual citizen of the United States and Hungary. As a staunch believer in the transatlantic alliance and Hungarian-American cooperation, I felt it […]

by · July 4, 2018 · Focus
Photo: Shealah Craighead / White House

Spectre of Munich 1938 hangs over Singapore

Eighty years ago, British PM Neville Chamberlain went to Munich for a summit meeting with Adolf Hitler, to save the world from a military cataclysm. At the time, Hitler’s scientists were already working hard to unlock the destructive force of the atom. His „rocket men” were busy designing the first prototypes of the pilotless delivery vehicles that would pummel London […]

by · June 21, 2018 · Focus
In Budapest with me, after roaming the city. The last chestnut puré. February 18, 2011).

My mother’s death and the state of Hungarian health care

She would have turned 81 years old today, on June 20th…If they would have let her. My mother always wanted to be on the go. Even most recently, for three straight weeks, every single day, we were going somewhere. We essentially visited all of Budapest. On the last day, February 11, 2018, when I had to send her home to […]

by · June 20, 2018 · Focus
Viktor Orban reading The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray

Viktor Orbán’s greatest sin

The author of this essay is a former journalist of Lánchíd Rádió, the conservative radio station that closed days after the April election, along with the Magyar Nemzet daily. The author, a former supporter of Fidesz and Viktor Orbán, contacted us this week and asked the Hungarian Free Press to use the pseudonym “blahalujza”when we publish this piece, as revealing […]

by · May 3, 2018 · Focus
Milán Constantinovits

A conservative’s wish list for Viktor Orbán’s third consecutive government

Milán Constantinovits is a columnist whose work often appears on the conservative Mandiner news site and he is also a linguist and an author. This week, he published a type of “wish list” of areas that he would like the third Orbán government to engage in as a matter of priority. I thought about referring to these as demands. Yet […]

by · May 2, 2018 · Focus