As an American of Hungarian origin I hope that the USA Swim team will succeed in Budapest at the upcoming 2017 FINA World Aquatics Championships. The competition will start this weekend and lasts two weeks. I also wish good luck to the Hungarian team. To be honest I would have been happier if Hungarian-born Katinka Hosszú would compete in US […]
Elza Brandeisz is a deeply religious Hungarian woman. She is a member of The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hungary. On November 12, 1995, the Holocaust organization Yad Vashem in Jerusalem recognized Ms. Brandeisz, as Righteous Among the Nations, a person who risked her life to hide Jews during World War II. Among others, she hid George Soros. Elza Brandeisz was a […]
Lest our readers begin to think that I only get involved in issues pertaining to Hungary and East/Central Europe, I wanted to share some observations from a highly charged and exceptionally well attended public forum in Ottawa’s Vanier ward on the proposed move of a Salvation Army emergency shelter and social service centre to this area of the city. The […]
Zsolt Császy, a lawyer, university professor and a former spokesperson and parliamentary expert for Fidesz during the early nineties, is heading to prison in the coming weeks, after being the victim of what is widely seen to have been a show trial targeting former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and people who served in prominent positions during his government. Mr. Császy […]
July 9, 1944 Seventy-three years ago on this day the transport of Jews of Pécs, Bonyhád and vicinity arrived to Auschwitz and many were immediately murdered. On July 9, 1944 11,140 Hungarian Jewish men, women and children were loaded onto transport wagons and sent to their death. From Monor two trains with 3,065 and 3,079 Jews. From Békásmegyer-Budakalász two trains […]
Background In May 2017, the Hungarian Free Press published a three part series by one of our regular contributor’s Professor András B. Göllner. In his study, Dr. Göllner identified by name some of the hundreds of pro-Russian, alt-right bloggers who moved to Budapest, to provide fake-news copy for the big-data based cyber-operations engineered by Jared Kushner and Robert Mercer during the Trump […]
In a bizarre speech Hungary’s right-wing authoritarian strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, recently called Miklós Horthy an “exceptional statesman.” Admiral Horthy, also an authoritarian (although some called him a dictator) led his country as Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary following the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. He turned pro-Mussolini and pro-Hitler in the 1930s and […]
This past weekend marked the opening of Budapest’s annual Pride celebrations. Kriszta Székely, the 34 year old director of the Katona József Theatre, opened this year’s Pride with an impassioned and at times angry speech, in which she took to task not only the Orbán government, but the opposition too. Both the Népszava daily and the Magyar Narancs magazine published […]
My flight had just landed at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport on Saturday morning. I was arriving back in Budapest from the coastal town of Burgas (Bulgaria), after spending five insightful days exploring both the Romanian and Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, and beyond. After my Wizz Air flight landed, I made my way over to passport control at Terminal 2B. […]
My wife and I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Budapest. The city was sizzling hot, but the view of the river was gorgeous as always. Ferihegy airport is busy, the new building is already overcrowded and the season has just started. Taxi Our Frankfurt flight leaves early and we have to be at Ferihegy well before 5:00AM. How […]
