Category: History

Back in elementary school, Yours Truly was spoon-fed the dictum that history was an exact discipline, a concatenation of specific dates and, for the most part, intolerant of idle chatter – a set of hard facts to abide by. Entering grammar school, the same Yours Truly was astonished to learn,

After putting things off time and time again, it was about three years ago that I started reading the files in the archives of my father and my grandfather. My grandfather finished legal studies in Budapest in 1889, and opened his law office in Becskerek in 1893. The office has

We are in the midst of a revolution in sexual and romantic tastes unlike any other in history, a social experiment being performed on children and teenagers, captured in a powerful, poignant scene in the recent British documentary InRealLife, about the effects of the internet on teenagers, directed by Baroness

In the latest in Hungarian Review’s series evoking the tragic events of March 1944– April 1945 in Hungary, I have selected testimonies that focus on what happened in June– July 1944. While Regent Horthy did not resign, for the reasons discussed in our May issue, following the 19 March occupation

My connection with Czernowitz runs deep. I can even gauge it by eye: approximately two metres. The cemeteries of this city host the remains of my aunts, my grandmother, my father and my elder brother. Even today my bride, now my widow, alas, and my cousin still live there. I

On 19 March 1944, the day Germany occupied Hungary, I was barely more than two years old. Yet that fatal juncture of Hungarian history turned into an almost personal memory for me and became ever more firmly etched in my mind as years went by. Many in our family and

As a teenager I was fascinated by Upton Sinclair’s World’s End, translated into Hungarian under the title Letűnt világ (“A World That Disappeared”). It was published in 1940, when Hungary was still a “non-belligerent”, hoping to protect its traditional political and social system both from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

The grown-ups in my family felt about Hungary much what Talleyrand had felt about the ancien régime in France, that only those who had lived in the old days knew what douceur de vivre was. The grown-ups provided plenty of evidence, what’s more. I have in my possession a photograph

The American Hungarian Federation, representing a cross-section of the Hungarian American community, strongly supports historical accuracy, completeness  and  integrity.  The  Federation  applauds  Hungary  for sponsoring Holocaust memorial events during the 2014 memorial year just as it was glad to see Hungary mark the Raoul Wallenberg Commemorative Year in 2012 –

The importance of this book(1)exists because of its double merits: its narrative and its documentary contents. Not always is there such a concordance between the character of an author and his reminiscences. Szent-Iványi was a young diplomat whose intelligence and integrity was remarked by some of the highest Hungarian statesmen