Category: VOLUME VI, No. 1

EDITORIAL NOTE

As the whole world knows, Hungary and Europe this winter mark the anniversaries of two great cataclysmic events – the first fighting of the 1914–18 war and the final fighting of the Second World War. One hundred years ago Hungarian troops in the Habsburg Army were holding fast in what

CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE NEW WORLD DISORDER

Today it is apparent that the over-optimistic words of President G. H. W. Bush delivered exactly eleven years before the attack on the World Trade Center, announcing a New World Order, recalling the unfulfilled promises of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, were expressions of an illusion. Writing in the very

UNDER WESTERN EYES – PERCEPTIONS OF THE HUNGARIAN ECONOMY

The performance of a national economy can be explained by a variety of “hard” production factors such as the size and quality of the labour force and the amount of capital. Adam Smith regarded land and other natural resources as a third factor of production but their significance has greatly

BLONDES: A TALE OF BEAUTY AND HUMOUR

In Europe, the Americas and parts of the Middle East, all countries with at least some blonde population, blondes are universally seen as the most beautiful and desirable of all women. It is easy to demonstrate this. Yet at the same time “dumb blondes” are the subject of many hundreds

THE HAUNTED HOUSES OF JOSIP BROZ

MIRACULOUS TANGERINE TREES (On the thirtieth anniversary of a photo exhibition) Here is a quiz question for you: which island in the Adriatic is a habitat for the elephant, the ostrich, the zebra, the antelope and the like? No need to think too hard, for the question is of the

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART II

The Germans that survived the carnage at Dobogókő and Pilisszentkereszt scattered in the frost-stiffened Pilis forest. Most of them were captured by the Russians and the wounded locked up in a school room in Kesztölc. The Russians covered the floor with straw and the wounded lay there. The air was

IN NAZI CAPTIVITY – CHAPTER FROM A MEMOIR IN PROGRESS

The Margit Boulevard Military Barracks was the headquarters of an Arrow Cross detachment of the Hungarian military police operating in collaboration with the Gestapo. “You talk. We write”, said the wrestler. I stood there as the three men who arrested me sat with pen and pencil in hand staring at

DURING AND AFTER THE SIEGE OF BUDAPEST (1944–1945)

In 1944 the youngest member of our family was the one and a half year old Csilla, then came Ágnes (10) alias Gigi, Judit (12), and finally myself (13). My mother was 39 at the time, my father László Németh, 43. My father had a medical degree, and prior to

CLASSIC HUNGARIAN POEMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Gyula Illyés (1902–1983)RIVERS, FJORDS, SMALL VILLAGES…  Waterloo, Wagram, Mohi – what were they Before their mild and empty names were filled With keenings, and a thousand deaths went sailing Away to shell the overcast? Unskilled We were in you, in fjord, hamlet, field And equable river. And your fate incurred