The toppling of the despised statue of Stalin has become one of the most emblematic scenes of the 1956 Revolution. The statue’s history goes back to 1949 and Stalin’s 70th…
In the 1980s there was a magazine called Sportfogadás (Sports Betting). Every Saturday morning, I excitedly waited for my father to come home with a copy from the newsstand. But…
Per Olaf Csongovai created a fascinating splash of color in the history of the 1956 Revolution. Born in Ankara to a Hungarian father and German-speaking mother, he held leftist beliefs…
For my 18th birthday I received a lovely bird carved from wood, a heron, from my father’s close friend Ferenc Csapó, or Uncle Feri as we called him. I always…
Doctors, in line with their Hippocratic oaths, were of tremendous help to the injured during the revolution. Twenty-nine year-old Vilmos Oláh was one of them and organized the ambulances that…
The lads of Pest threw themselves into the fight against the well-armed Soviets with loads of energy and enthusiasm, which in addition to their natural desire for freedom was also…
As the 1956 Revolution was happening in Hungary, athletes around the world were in the final stages of getting ready for that year’s Olympics in Melbourne. Hungary’s athletes had traveled…
István Angyal was born into a Jewish artisan family. At the age of 16 he was deported to Auschwitz where his mother and sister were murdered. Upon returning to Hungary,…
Anyone wishing to have a more minute grasp of János Kádar’s post-revolution reprisals should know Jenő Fónay’s story. Fónay, who had studied at the University of Economics and the Technical…
An older man with a large mustache kisses his gun. It’s an emblematic picture from the 1956 Revolution, and that man is Uncle Szabó, the legendary leader of the Széna…