Ottawa’s Saint Paul University was the site of the opening day of a conference organised on the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of the vast majority of Hungarian refugees to Canada and in the year of the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation. Mike Molloy, President of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, opened the conference by reading the greetings from Ahmed Hussen, […]
This three-day conference (October 21-23, 2017) explores Canada’s involvement in the central issue of our time: the global search by refugees for a safe home in light of this country’s history of immigration and nation-building. Recognizing Canada’s 150th celebrations and also the 60th anniversary of the arrival and settlement of 38,000 Hungarian refugees during 1957, this conference uses their example […]
One of Hungary’s national political weekly magazines, Figyelő, was bought by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s former adviser and government historian Mária Schmidt on Monday. While Ms. Schmidt promises to keep publishing the weekly, it is all but certain that the publication’s critical, independent voice will be gone. Figyelő will almost certainly follow the fate of the online publication Origo, or […]
(Excerpt from my journal of my visit to ‘witness” Hungary’s 60th celebration of the 1956 uprising.) Being a writer, artist, you can’t help but see the symbolic significance in everything. It’s the blessing and the curse. It’s cloudy, gray and raining as I step out of the Franz Liszt airport. Its name has been changed only recently. It used to […]
Hungarian political philosopher G. M. Tamás is a prominent, refreshing and thought-provoking public voice in Hungary on contemporary politics, socio-cultural issues, as well as the politics of memory surrounding the twentieth century past. This article was originally published in the London quarterly, International Socialism, N° 152 (Autumn 2016), pp. 111-116 and was re-published in LeftEast, the East European socialist web journal. With the […]
On October 23 about 300 of us were eagerly waiting for Willie Brown at the Green Room of the San Francisco War Memorial Center. The elegant hall has a gorgeous wraparound balcony with a magnificent view of San Francisco City Hall. The bar was packed with California wines, tasty hors d’oeuvres and we were all dressed up to hear Willie, […]
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 […]
Hungarian Ambassador Bálint Ódor published a piece entitled “A Hungarian Tribute to Canada” in a publication called National Newswatch. In this piece, Ambassador Ódor writes: “Canada is a nation that understood the message of 1956 clearly, and also extended helping hands to a large number of Hungarians who were forced to flee their homeland…By its rare display of heroism and […]
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 […]
Historian Krisztián Ungváry was physically assaulted and bloodied by supporters of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in front of Parliament, as the nation remembered the sixtieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Mr. Ungváry’s sin was that he, along with hundreds of Hungarians, blew whistles out of protest during Mr. Orbán’s speech. The prominent historian of twentieth century Hungary was punched […]
