Last summer Konrád Rigó, a 38-year-old ethnic Hungarian and the State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture in Slovakia, gave a speech on Slovakia’s National Day. Mr. Rigó, who is a member of the Most-Híd party spoke at Dunajská Streda (Dunaszerdahely in Hungarian) explaining how sons of many nations fought with the partisans during World War II. In addition to […]
Sir Karl Raimund Popper’s astute observation that “[t]rue ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it” is especially relevant to how some belittle or deny Col. Ferenc Koszorus’ action that prevented the more than 250,000 Jews living in Budapest from being sent to the German death camps in July 1944. Ignoring the historical record (e.g., […]
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 […]
I am neither a writer nor a historian, but in 1944 my father (Kálmán József) was more than an acquaintance of Admiral Horthy and has been a friend of Horthy’s Senior Aide-de-Camp, General Gábor Gerloczy. In November 1944 I was 18 1/2 years old, a labor camp escapee surviving in Budapest in a self designed military uniform and having freed […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
