Category: History

At about half way in the course of the Second World War, I shocked my family by using a foreign phrase for the first time. The word came from the dictator of a neighbouring state, Nazi Germany, our dreaded enemy. My family’s policy was to keep us children in the

(On and à propos Tibor Várady’s book Goose-Downs and History) The secret source of Humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. (Mark Twain) Lieutenant Nikola Tepić was the half-brother of Major Milan Tepić, the latter well-known for having blown himself up along with an ammunition depot at Bjelovar to prevent

A Story Found in the Family Archive THE OZNA This story is about the criminal trial of István Tóth. I found the mould-ridden case documents on a bottom shelf in the garage. They stated that Tóth, a farmer, was born in Hódegyháza (today Jazovo in Serbia), a village about 10

A Review of Michael O’Sullivan’s New Book* In December 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor, then 18, set out from Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople. It was the first year of Nazi power in Germany, and the last days of the old romantic era there and in the former Habsburg

Memoirs of an American Immigrant in the Soviet Union Excerpt* Mary Halász (1921–2016) was born in Lelesz, a Hungarian village in Zemplén County, that became part of Slovakia, following the transfer of northern Hungary (i.e. Slovakia and Sub- Carpathian Ruthenia) to Czechoslovakia as a result of the 1920 Treaty of

In my 2016 essay for Hungarian Review, “Black Land”, I mentioned the coal camp once owned by my Hungarian grandfather, Stefan Révay (in the US he became Steve Revy). The place was called “Thirteen”; an unlikely name (in American folklore, thirteen is the most unlucky number). As of when I

In my 2016 essay for Hungarian Review, “Black Land”, I mentioned the coal camp once owned by my Hungarian grandfather, Stefan Révay (in the US he became Steve Revy). The place was called “Thirteen”; an unlikely name (in American folklore, thirteen is the most unlucky number). As of when I

In our corner of the world that is Central Europe, there is no shortage of ghost towns and villages. History here has been rather munificent in meting out decay and destruction, not only to individuals and their communities but sometimes to entire settlements. From Pripyat next to Chernobyl to the

In our corner of the world that is Central Europe, there is no shortage of ghost towns and villages. History here has been rather munificent in meting out decay and destruction, not only to individuals and their communities but sometimes to entire settlements. From Pripyat next to Chernobyl to the

Transylvania and aristocracy – if these two words bring anything to mind beyond the long-gone centuries of the Principality of Transylvania, then it is perhaps The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklós Bánffy, three volumes relating the history of the region, titled individually in English: They Were Counted; They Were Found Wanting;