Introduction

Cultural navigator, editor and travel writer Andrew Princz of ontheglobe.com. Photo Michael Slobodian

When I first came to Hungary to work on Canadian-Hungarian cultural exchange projects over a decade ago, I was welcomed to the home of Magda Újfalussy, a woman whom I came to admire. She offered me a bed among beautiful paintings and furnishings in the comfortable attic of her villa. A recent graduate of art history, I appreciated those things as the beautiful as her family relics that were drawn from another life.

There was a small painting depicting a Hungarian marketplace; another showing the early morning sunrise on the great Hungarian plain; and a stunning 19th century romantic masterpiece of a woman, butterflies daintily hovering around her.

The Hungarian landscape was different from what I knew. After all, I was brought up immersed and loving the Group of Seven’s depictions of the vast rugged landscapes of Canada. And yet here I was connecting to the world where my parents spent their youth, under very difficult circumstances. Here I met a world imbued with a turbulent history and an unfamiliar landscape. Nevertheless, I felt at home in Hungary, and more than a passive observer.

Magda’s beautiful animal-loving daughter Dori affectionately cared for her exotic turtles that wandered in and out of a little pond in the center of their garden, as her elderly, half-blind dog Guszti barked incessantly. Characters came and went, talking politics as we drank pálinka and home-brewed wine from Lake Balaton. We laughed, and enjoyed each other’s company.

Magda would tell me stories of her family, and she spoke lovingly about her father who had been a lawmaker in pre-WWII Hungary. Magda lived in the very same villa that he had built, which at the time of her youth was an estate. Over time, the property was truncated as it was nationalized by communist Hungary. Her father was a critic of the regime and was jailed for long periods during her childhood. An intelligent and sophisticated woman, Magda was nevertheless denied a higher education by the regime, no doubt the result of her family background.

Reflecting on her story one evening, I noted the irony of how my own father, who was a poor man, was afforded the university education that she was denied. Magda replied with what I perceived to be a worldly generosity. “Yes Andrew,” she said, “in all good there is bad. And in all bad there is good.”

I relate this story because as I came to know more about the polarized nature of Hungarian society, the more I appreciated Magda’s attitude, outlook, and generosity of spirit.

The tragic history of Hungary in the last century has left the country scarred to this day. Magda’s, my parents’ and grandparents’ generation was hewn with inequality, injustice and a good dose of downright horror. Until one day, in a spontaneous act, Hungarians had had enough. As you will read in these stories, people expressed their point of view in face of the regime in their own ways, be it individually and communally, politically and personally. On that historic day fifty years ago, Hungarians tried to change the course of their lives. The demonstration that began on October 23, 1956 ended up being an all-out revolt against the Soviet domination of Hungary. The freedom gained, however, was numbered in days.

Hungarians remember to this day the unanswered pleas for help to the Western powers during the uprising of 1956. On November 4th of that year, in the dying moments of the revolt, a desperate radio broadcast was made from a makeshift emergency station set up in the Hungarian Parliament building. Under attack from an invading Soviet miitary machine, a reporter sent the last known message to the outside world: “Our time is short. The facts are known. Help Hungary. Help the Hungarian nation, writers, scientists, workers, farmers, intellectuals. Help, help, help.”

According to reports, recorded music interrupted the broadcast at 8:01, followed by a deathly silence. The world did not answer the call, many lives were lost, and in the end Hungarians lived under Soviet rule for decades. Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped the country – almost 40,000 to Canada – while countless others were murdered, families were separated and freedom slipped away.

These injustices weighed in on people’s personal lives and families. As the torch of the passes to the current generation, these wounds are still healing and true reconciliation is unfortunately still unachieved. I remember one day trying to bring together a few journalist friends of very different political orientations to the Central Coffee House in Budapest. The scene soon became embroiled in bitter debate, and ended with the group disbursing, unable and unwilling to communicate or sit at the same table. All of this was in mind when last year I undertook the challenge of seeking out the stories of then-Hungarians who started their lives over in Canada a half-century ago, while their family members stayed behind in Hungary.

As my father, uncle and grandmother were separated by an ocean for at least a decade, I knew that so many other families must have experienced a similar divide. Brothers and sisters, mothers and their children, were separated. The stories contained in the following pages are the result of a trip that I took earlier this year with Hungarian photographer Katalin Sándor across both Canada and Hungary. The purpose of our mission was to tell these peoples’ stories from their perspectives, a half century later; to bring them back to their youth and try to piece together the spontaneous decisions that they made. In Canada we travelled from Montreal to Toronto, Brandtford to Mississauga, Calgary to Vancouver, and ended in sunny Victoria. Upon our return to Hungary, we crisscrossed the country from Budapest to Szigetmonostor, Debrecen to Écs.

In these pages we have tried to reunite these people, if only for a short time, by reconstructing moments of their lives through memory. Our goal was not an exercise in historical documentation, but more to obtain an impressionistic account of two individuals and how they remember one of the most determinate moments in their lives.

I hope that you will get, as I did, a sense of what it was like to live in Hungary during the chaotic, emotional, and transformative 1950s. You will learn how these people reacted to the events of October 1956 in very different ways, and how quickly-made decisions would affect their personal destinies. These are ordinary people, who lived through an extraordinary moment in history. Some gained, others lost. A few were indifferent, many were forced to act. Some were heroic while others were pragmatic. Some just looked out for themselves.

I cannot impart how much emotion was involved in putting together these texts, both for me and the people who shared their stories with us. I feel as if some of these people are now part of my extended family. I, and future generations, am indebted to them for their generosity in sharing their experiences that they had so much difficulty experiencing themselves.

Budapest, October 6, 2006
Andrew Princz