Dear Mr.Vice President, Memorial Day, 2010
Your, now infamous, speech in Brussels some days ago to EU dignitaries has been singularly insensitive and insulting not only to Washington,D.C. but to the fallen heroes of the United States armed forces who had given their lives to protect freedom in this land and securing freedom in many other lands.
This is part of what you said:
“As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the “capital of the free world.” But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.”
Neither Washington nor Brussels are the “freedom capitals of the worlds”. The United States, as the land of freedom, from the Civil War to the present day war in Afganistan,can only make that claim.
Ever since this Administration took office White House speech writers have tried to outdo each other to openly question American exeptionalism, particularly in the quest for freedom at home and abroad. Your speech in Brussels, was a particularly sad and inappropriate example of that just days before Memorial Day. Not far from Brussels lie the vast beaches of Normandy where large US sacrifices paved the way for a prosperous and free Europe, for a free Brussels today. No concentration of modern day institutions or colorful history can make a “claim to that title.”
You refer to “some American politicians and American journalists” as you so unabashedly attempt to ingratiate yourself with your hosts, while belittling all in the United States. But explain your claim and the motivation for it to the survivors of concentration camps, the millions of war displaced, the East European refugees as they have risked their lives to escape to freedom, the Muslim victims of genocide in the Balkan, the desperate boat people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the present day Cuban refugees. Do you believe that any one of these freedom yearning people had visions of the capital of Belgium as the “capital of the free world.”?
You owe an apology, most of all the people of the United States for your unfortunate remarks about Washington, D.C. symbolizing the land, as well as an apology to freedom loving people everywhere.
Sincerely yours,
Monday, 31 May 2010
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Part 4 of my book,Without Illusions, an immigrant's journey
Part 4.
Soon the boys’ worries were somewhat relieved when in an hour of waiting, a much bigger military car approached and what looked like an officer of some rank approached and motioned them to get into the car.
For the next hour or so they were driving across farm roads, then onto a highway and by the time dawn was breaking, the car was approaching the town of Subotica. Just before the WW2 broke out in this part of the world the town was called Szabadka and belonged to Hungary, Peter was taken by his father there on an exciting motor train from Baja when we was little. He remembered the lunch they ate at the Szabadka railway station and that his dad ordered a dessert that they both liked so much they asked the chef for the recipe and taken it home. The dessert was called Aranygaluska and became a favorite in their household from that time on.
How long ago was it, when the whole family, the three boys and the parents sat at the Sunday meal, 8 or 9 years? And when again, if ever, will they sit at that table, all five of them?
The car came to a stop at what looked like the local police station and they were taken to an office where they could take some of their wet clothing off and spread them out on chairs in front of the stove. They had been offered hot tea and cigarettes. Shortly a man appeared to take notes of their impromptu visit to the Republic of Yugoslavia, speaking fluent Hungarian he told them they are not the first Hungarian “refugees”, as he called them, to seek asylum in Yugoslavia, some six hundred have crossed over in the last 10 days or so.
More are expected, so much so that there is no more room in this small town for them and they will be transported shortly to another place designated as a refugee camp.
How I became a “refugee”, Peter had asked himself. The revolution that exploded just three weeks before was centered in Budapest and the bigger cities. The smaller towns and villages witnessed mostly sympathetic demonstrations and sent food and medicines and other immediate aids, as best as they could to the capitol. The local high school students that graduated in the spring of 1956 and were rejected by the strictly controlled universities and colleges were still in Baja that fall and enthusiastically joined the local factory workers and students. They marched together to the nearby army barracks and begged the conscripted young soldiers to join the revolution and discard the hated red stars on their caps and uniforms. When they had successfully persuaded the reluctant and frightened conscripts to join, they then marched with them to the next army barrack, where some professional soldiers were stationed. Soon the weapon magazines were opened and anyone who wanted, found some weapon and ammunition, so now the small town had its instant revolutionary army, and named themselves National Guard.
Peter, now in possession of a Russian made machine gun, had reported to the Mayor’s office, in the center of the town Revolutionary Committee and received his only official assignment. Somebody instructed him to go to the main square and supervise that all the students who regularly commuted from the nearby villages by bus are to be properly returned to these villages, as there was tremendous confusion, everyday life became chaotic.
Schools soon closed and the students were all on the streets. One evening Peter joined a group that went to the town’s main park, where Stalin’s much hated statute was erected right in the middle of it. The enthusiastic group had uprooted the statute following the example of the destruction of the immense Stalin statute in Budapest, carried it to the nearby canal and had tossed it in from the bridge.
It was difficult in the calm of a small town to follow the bloody fight that was ongoing in Budapest. Many had wanted to get to the capitol 16O kilometers to the North, but there was no transportation, no trains running.
Following the fourth of November attack on Budapest by some 3000 Russian tanks, Soviet armored vehicles and tanks had arrived in Baja as well. Senior high school students and some others just out of the local high school had planned an attack on the few tanks and armored vehicles that were stationed on the strategic squares in town. Some had hid in the square of Toth Kalman, in the attics of apartment houses with their light weapons, mostly machine guns and rifles. The attack was to begin precisely at 6 PM one evening, somebody was to start firing and then all would join in. It must have been divine intervention, as was acknowledged by all later, that no one had started firing, no one dared to begin the shooting. The armored units would have caused a blood bath against the totally inexperienced students, probably killing many innocents in the apartments below, too.
The news of the fighting youth in Budapest, then, became even more heroic and tragic to the population of these small towns.
In the subsequent days amidst the news of the evolving tragedy of the revolution, only the disappointment and the anger remained with the people. Small groups of agitated people filled the little town’s main walking street, mainly to exchange any news that may have come from the capitol. One such evening in the early days of November and after the Soviet invasion of Budapest, Peter was suddenly accosted by one of the well known communist sympathizers in Baja. He had cynically asked Peter where he had hid his recently brandished machine gun.
While this incident did not leave his thoughts, the decision to leave the country was not due to this. But all of this seemed very far and quite meaningless in the light of his present situation in Yugoslavia.
Soon the boys’ worries were somewhat relieved when in an hour of waiting, a much bigger military car approached and what looked like an officer of some rank approached and motioned them to get into the car.
For the next hour or so they were driving across farm roads, then onto a highway and by the time dawn was breaking, the car was approaching the town of Subotica. Just before the WW2 broke out in this part of the world the town was called Szabadka and belonged to Hungary, Peter was taken by his father there on an exciting motor train from Baja when we was little. He remembered the lunch they ate at the Szabadka railway station and that his dad ordered a dessert that they both liked so much they asked the chef for the recipe and taken it home. The dessert was called Aranygaluska and became a favorite in their household from that time on.
How long ago was it, when the whole family, the three boys and the parents sat at the Sunday meal, 8 or 9 years? And when again, if ever, will they sit at that table, all five of them?
The car came to a stop at what looked like the local police station and they were taken to an office where they could take some of their wet clothing off and spread them out on chairs in front of the stove. They had been offered hot tea and cigarettes. Shortly a man appeared to take notes of their impromptu visit to the Republic of Yugoslavia, speaking fluent Hungarian he told them they are not the first Hungarian “refugees”, as he called them, to seek asylum in Yugoslavia, some six hundred have crossed over in the last 10 days or so.
More are expected, so much so that there is no more room in this small town for them and they will be transported shortly to another place designated as a refugee camp.
How I became a “refugee”, Peter had asked himself. The revolution that exploded just three weeks before was centered in Budapest and the bigger cities. The smaller towns and villages witnessed mostly sympathetic demonstrations and sent food and medicines and other immediate aids, as best as they could to the capitol. The local high school students that graduated in the spring of 1956 and were rejected by the strictly controlled universities and colleges were still in Baja that fall and enthusiastically joined the local factory workers and students. They marched together to the nearby army barracks and begged the conscripted young soldiers to join the revolution and discard the hated red stars on their caps and uniforms. When they had successfully persuaded the reluctant and frightened conscripts to join, they then marched with them to the next army barrack, where some professional soldiers were stationed. Soon the weapon magazines were opened and anyone who wanted, found some weapon and ammunition, so now the small town had its instant revolutionary army, and named themselves National Guard.
Peter, now in possession of a Russian made machine gun, had reported to the Mayor’s office, in the center of the town Revolutionary Committee and received his only official assignment. Somebody instructed him to go to the main square and supervise that all the students who regularly commuted from the nearby villages by bus are to be properly returned to these villages, as there was tremendous confusion, everyday life became chaotic.
Schools soon closed and the students were all on the streets. One evening Peter joined a group that went to the town’s main park, where Stalin’s much hated statute was erected right in the middle of it. The enthusiastic group had uprooted the statute following the example of the destruction of the immense Stalin statute in Budapest, carried it to the nearby canal and had tossed it in from the bridge.
It was difficult in the calm of a small town to follow the bloody fight that was ongoing in Budapest. Many had wanted to get to the capitol 16O kilometers to the North, but there was no transportation, no trains running.
Following the fourth of November attack on Budapest by some 3000 Russian tanks, Soviet armored vehicles and tanks had arrived in Baja as well. Senior high school students and some others just out of the local high school had planned an attack on the few tanks and armored vehicles that were stationed on the strategic squares in town. Some had hid in the square of Toth Kalman, in the attics of apartment houses with their light weapons, mostly machine guns and rifles. The attack was to begin precisely at 6 PM one evening, somebody was to start firing and then all would join in. It must have been divine intervention, as was acknowledged by all later, that no one had started firing, no one dared to begin the shooting. The armored units would have caused a blood bath against the totally inexperienced students, probably killing many innocents in the apartments below, too.
The news of the fighting youth in Budapest, then, became even more heroic and tragic to the population of these small towns.
In the subsequent days amidst the news of the evolving tragedy of the revolution, only the disappointment and the anger remained with the people. Small groups of agitated people filled the little town’s main walking street, mainly to exchange any news that may have come from the capitol. One such evening in the early days of November and after the Soviet invasion of Budapest, Peter was suddenly accosted by one of the well known communist sympathizers in Baja. He had cynically asked Peter where he had hid his recently brandished machine gun.
While this incident did not leave his thoughts, the decision to leave the country was not due to this. But all of this seemed very far and quite meaningless in the light of his present situation in Yugoslavia.
Saturday, 13 March 2010
I have serialized my book, here is Part 3...
Meeting my first Soviet soldier,in my hometown in Hungary.
“The Red Army had occupied Baja in March of 1945 without any resistance, since the only southern bridge over the Danube had been bombed by the allies some 2 years prior to that, so the town had served no strategic importance to the retreating Germans. A 7 year old kid probably could not understand the nuances of whispering and worried adults’ conversations while they were huddling around their radios, listening to broadcasts about the ongoing war. However, I still remember the striking contrasts between what my father believed about the approaching Red Army and what our neighbors did.
The prevailing opinion was that these soldiers were an uncultured, pillaging and unmerciful bunch of thugs, better to be afraid of and avoid them, if possible.
The only exception voiced, characterizing the “liberators” so was my dad’s. He had advanced to the Red Army, too, his basic humanistic belief of decency and honor in everyone, particularly since our town prior to the Russians’ advance had been full of the soldiers of the Werhmacht who had set up camp in the town’s marketplace and had been peaceful with the civilian population.
So optimist that he was, my father could hardly wait, so that after months of waiting and uncertainty he could finally take a long walk in the center of town, albeit now under the “protection “of a different occupying army.
He had shaved off with great care his beard of many months that made him look much older and respected, and in his freshly ironed suit and trademark, colorful bowtie he would have made a dashing and impressive figure on the soldiers of the Red Army.
So that any soviet troops , even from a distance would judge dad to be a peacefully walking , unthreatening gentleman , he got me scrubbed and dressed with similar care, much to the vehement protestations of my mother, that “ for God’s sake don’t take the kid to those wicked Muscovites!”
Using the logic that during the previous night, as the Russians were moving into town, we had not heard even a single gunshot, father remained undeterred that Baja was “visited “by well meaning and peaceful soldiers. What’s more, any journalist worth his salt should feel his duty to rush to the scene and record events with the reliability of the eyewitness.
My father desperately tried to sell all this logic and reasoning to my mother, even though just weeks before that he was contemplating of fleeing Baja for the West, as did some of the families in the neighborhood , expecting the worst from the soviet “liberators”.
So, as a final act of insurance for good will, father decorated his cigar pocket with a silky handkerchief. Always a careful dresser in those days, but even more of a zealot for personal hygiene! The rigors of cleanliness he made sure were adhered to by his children come war or hell. Just as an example, my older brother and I became acquainted with the taste of ordinary house soap during the war, as neither bath soap nor toothpaste was available , so the morning and evening wash-ups were followed by vigorous tooth brushing with horrible tasting, homemade soap rubbed on our toothbrushes!
So the impeccably dressed gentleman took the hand of his clean scrubbed son , carefully threading the chain of his cherished pocket watch into the left pocket of his vest and with determined steps took off on our street in the direction of the center of town. The sleepy looking soldiers lying about on top of the armored car right on the first corner of our street were, a bit reluctantly, returning my father’s enthusiastic waving of hand. Most probably they were so surprised by the sudden appearance of this representative of the decadent West with his child that their sleepy gawking did not result in any action, but kept silently witnessing the parade.
Little further up the street two foot soldiers appeared, dirty and dusty with the famous Russian “guitars” on their shoulders. Dad cheerfully repeated the now well rehearsed greeting with the waving arm, to which he has added a striking “Welcome to our hometown” on his clean baritone voice. – He sang well, particularly after a glass or two.-
The stocky one of the two, with a somewhat oriental face approached my father, his eyes riveted to the shiny pocket watch; he then grabbed the chain and said in Russian: davai chas! While my dad did not understand the words , there was no mistaking of the intention because the soldier now decidedly pulled on the chain to which my father responded by taking several steps back onto the middle of the street, not ever letting my hand go with his left hand, and holding on to the chain of his watch with the other.
The uneven struggle could not have been going on more than a few seconds, but it seemed like eternity. I wonder whether it had occurred to my father, then, even for a second that the machinegun against his chest could have gone off, or in a lesser event its gunstock lands on his head, I don’t know.
The fact remains, that this self conscious and open-armed country writer had forsaken any common sensibility and reason, almost heroically defended his personal possession, against very poor odds while holding on tightly to my hand!
It remains a mystery at that moment that the arrival of a high ranking officer in an open jeep was God’s will or just a flick of fate.
The car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, to the point where the struggling soldier and civilian with kid in tow found themselves. In response to the officer’s loud cry the soldier let go of the watch’s chain and the sudden change in the relative opposing forces resulted in father’s falling to the middle of the street, still with kid in tow.
Terrible shouting had followed, but only from the lips of the officer as the soldier being reprimanded could only stay in stiff attention. We could not understand the officer’s apparent dressing down, but it was evident that father had escaped with watch and kid for the time being.
My dad had to realize that the neighbors’ doubts and anxiety about the approaching Red Army proved to be correct. With quick steps, still holding on to me with force, we returned to our house, where father had collapsed on the stool in the kitchen, both hands holding his face. He sat there, trembling, for the longest time, and even as a kid I understood that a whole world had collapsed in him that day.”
“The Red Army had occupied Baja in March of 1945 without any resistance, since the only southern bridge over the Danube had been bombed by the allies some 2 years prior to that, so the town had served no strategic importance to the retreating Germans. A 7 year old kid probably could not understand the nuances of whispering and worried adults’ conversations while they were huddling around their radios, listening to broadcasts about the ongoing war. However, I still remember the striking contrasts between what my father believed about the approaching Red Army and what our neighbors did.
The prevailing opinion was that these soldiers were an uncultured, pillaging and unmerciful bunch of thugs, better to be afraid of and avoid them, if possible.
The only exception voiced, characterizing the “liberators” so was my dad’s. He had advanced to the Red Army, too, his basic humanistic belief of decency and honor in everyone, particularly since our town prior to the Russians’ advance had been full of the soldiers of the Werhmacht who had set up camp in the town’s marketplace and had been peaceful with the civilian population.
So optimist that he was, my father could hardly wait, so that after months of waiting and uncertainty he could finally take a long walk in the center of town, albeit now under the “protection “of a different occupying army.
He had shaved off with great care his beard of many months that made him look much older and respected, and in his freshly ironed suit and trademark, colorful bowtie he would have made a dashing and impressive figure on the soldiers of the Red Army.
So that any soviet troops , even from a distance would judge dad to be a peacefully walking , unthreatening gentleman , he got me scrubbed and dressed with similar care, much to the vehement protestations of my mother, that “ for God’s sake don’t take the kid to those wicked Muscovites!”
Using the logic that during the previous night, as the Russians were moving into town, we had not heard even a single gunshot, father remained undeterred that Baja was “visited “by well meaning and peaceful soldiers. What’s more, any journalist worth his salt should feel his duty to rush to the scene and record events with the reliability of the eyewitness.
My father desperately tried to sell all this logic and reasoning to my mother, even though just weeks before that he was contemplating of fleeing Baja for the West, as did some of the families in the neighborhood , expecting the worst from the soviet “liberators”.
So, as a final act of insurance for good will, father decorated his cigar pocket with a silky handkerchief. Always a careful dresser in those days, but even more of a zealot for personal hygiene! The rigors of cleanliness he made sure were adhered to by his children come war or hell. Just as an example, my older brother and I became acquainted with the taste of ordinary house soap during the war, as neither bath soap nor toothpaste was available , so the morning and evening wash-ups were followed by vigorous tooth brushing with horrible tasting, homemade soap rubbed on our toothbrushes!
So the impeccably dressed gentleman took the hand of his clean scrubbed son , carefully threading the chain of his cherished pocket watch into the left pocket of his vest and with determined steps took off on our street in the direction of the center of town. The sleepy looking soldiers lying about on top of the armored car right on the first corner of our street were, a bit reluctantly, returning my father’s enthusiastic waving of hand. Most probably they were so surprised by the sudden appearance of this representative of the decadent West with his child that their sleepy gawking did not result in any action, but kept silently witnessing the parade.
Little further up the street two foot soldiers appeared, dirty and dusty with the famous Russian “guitars” on their shoulders. Dad cheerfully repeated the now well rehearsed greeting with the waving arm, to which he has added a striking “Welcome to our hometown” on his clean baritone voice. – He sang well, particularly after a glass or two.-
The stocky one of the two, with a somewhat oriental face approached my father, his eyes riveted to the shiny pocket watch; he then grabbed the chain and said in Russian: davai chas! While my dad did not understand the words , there was no mistaking of the intention because the soldier now decidedly pulled on the chain to which my father responded by taking several steps back onto the middle of the street, not ever letting my hand go with his left hand, and holding on to the chain of his watch with the other.
The uneven struggle could not have been going on more than a few seconds, but it seemed like eternity. I wonder whether it had occurred to my father, then, even for a second that the machinegun against his chest could have gone off, or in a lesser event its gunstock lands on his head, I don’t know.
The fact remains, that this self conscious and open-armed country writer had forsaken any common sensibility and reason, almost heroically defended his personal possession, against very poor odds while holding on tightly to my hand!
It remains a mystery at that moment that the arrival of a high ranking officer in an open jeep was God’s will or just a flick of fate.
The car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, to the point where the struggling soldier and civilian with kid in tow found themselves. In response to the officer’s loud cry the soldier let go of the watch’s chain and the sudden change in the relative opposing forces resulted in father’s falling to the middle of the street, still with kid in tow.
Terrible shouting had followed, but only from the lips of the officer as the soldier being reprimanded could only stay in stiff attention. We could not understand the officer’s apparent dressing down, but it was evident that father had escaped with watch and kid for the time being.
My dad had to realize that the neighbors’ doubts and anxiety about the approaching Red Army proved to be correct. With quick steps, still holding on to me with force, we returned to our house, where father had collapsed on the stool in the kitchen, both hands holding his face. He sat there, trembling, for the longest time, and even as a kid I understood that a whole world had collapsed in him that day.”
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
I have serialized my book, here is Part 2.The Escape.
The three friends in the spring of 1956, by the fall their lives would change forever.
THE ESCAPE.
November 15, 1956
It has been a gray and mournful day and not only because fall was slowly accepting the inevitable approach of winter, but even the most optimistic among them was giving up hope for the miracle. It was becoming evident that no one was coming to help preserve the exuberance born on October 23; no one could stop the retribution and repression that was soon to follow.
Fall had come and the three inseparable friends were still in their hometown as neither was admitted to university. As planned earlier that day, they met on the outskirts of the town by the ancient cemetery on this dark and sad November day.
Their daily lives were already so tied to each other that it was only natural that all three would escape together and stay together, forever. It would have been unthinkable otherwise. These youthful bonds are often stronger than allegiance to family; a few years spent together seem like a lifetime.
Laszlo was waiting for the other two, his face reflecting the weight of the worry he had spent the day with. He could not forsake his parents, leaving them alone to care for an older brother, paralyzed and impaired since birth. He had his first test of adulthood that day. The other two, now sullen and worried lest they, too, will change their own minds, have hurriedly said farewell and took off into the night.
They walked in silence on the dark and wet country road. Were they aware of their decision to leave the country that night, maybe captured and interned, maybe succeeding to cross the border and never to return again? Almost certainly neither did feel the enormity of their decision. Their wet faces, the silence that surrounded them in the countryside and the steady rain that was falling only underscored their plight. However, their faces would have suggested that they knew that with each step they were changing their lives forever.
They only had an idea how far the Yugoslavian border might be from their home town of Baja, but these eighteen year olds did not consider that 5 or 6 extra kilometers should be a problem if their assumptions were maybe too optimistic. So they walked out of the town onto the old provincial road leading south. Within minutes they were soaked from the rain when out of the wet darkness an old milk truck appeared to slow down for them and come to a screeching stop. They were permitted to jump on the back, next to the empty milk containers and although the rain now seemed fortified by the speed of the camion, their progress towards the border had improved.
An old villager in the last village where they got off the camion showed them the approximate direction toward the border, wished them luck and hurried back into his old farmhouse. They were in the middle of huge cornfields and found the walk now excruciatingly slow due to the huge and heavy mud-boots that quickly formed on their shoes. The wet ground was almost knee deep in black mud. They have lost any sign of direction and had the feeling after a couple of hours of struggling on that they were walking in circles. There was no sign of anything resembling the border. Only little piles of what looked like tents made of corn stalks, every 100 meters or so. It must have passed midnight, when in the distance ahead they have spotted what looked like faint light and contours of a low farmhouse. They have decided to knock on the door, as their sense of direction for the border was totally lost.
The man who appeared at the door was wearing long underpants and shirt covered by a roughly made fur vest, which he was clutching with one hand. He appeared calm and friendly in spite of the late hour and the sight of the soaked and mud covered young men. They have greeted him in the only language they knew and were rewarded by a response in the same language. Did this mean that after all these hours of walking in the muddy cornfields they were still in Hungary?
"Welcome and step inside from the rain" - said the man. Inside was just one rather small, wooden beams covered space. An oil lamp was the only light that revealed what they could smell immediately entering, the presence of animals. The sight and smell of a peacefully ruminating cow, two goats and several chickens, ducks and geese. As their eyes were now getting accustomed to the light they spotted the huge earth and bricks made oven, with a large extended shelf on which various forms of humanity was spread out. Several children with curious glances, some asleep undisturbed, and their mother were examining the strangers. This sudden change from the miserable November night out there was welcome indeed and only in later years thought Peter that at that moment, if the information they were seeking from the farmer had confirmed that they were still on the Hungarian side of the border, they may have stayed with this decent farmer and his family until daybreak and then perhaps turned back and give up their objective of leaving the country. Perhaps.
As it turned out, the good man had assured them, they have been for some one kilometer inside the territory of Tito's Yugoslavia. While neither of these young adventurers had even imagined a trip to a foreign land some weeks before November 15, but if they had, this imaginary trip would have been, most certainly to some exotic European capital, certainly arriving by an international express train to an exciting railway station, perhaps arriving by taxi at a famous hotel and greeted by a polite and smiling doorman, offering help with their sizeable luggage. Instead, their first contact ever with a foreign land was a farmer in his underclothes, greeting them in Hungarian and inviting them in to his stable and home in a one-room house, encouraging them to sit on a wooden bench next to his warm oven and cow. Still, it could not have been more pleasant and encouraging.
There was no need for any explanation. By their question the farmer seemed to have understood immediately their situation and was already pulling on his rubber boots saying that he would be gone awhile and fetch the Yugoslavian border guards. If there was any concern in what would follow next it was not felt at that time since the warmth of the oven and curious looks from above the oven shelf took all their attention. The kind farmer was gone in no time at all.
And so their introduction to a foreign land was now a historical fact. Some thirty minutes later they heard the sound of a car and within a minute the farmer and two soldiers, with machine guns and shinny battle helmets appeared in the doorway. They were ushered outside with obvious gestures so quickly that they had no chance to say a word of thanks to the farmer or say farewell to the spectators on top of the oven. The rain was still falling and the dark seemed even more impenetrable than before. The boys were made to stand about ten meters from each other, hands in the air, and one of the soldiers had quickly searched them, top to bottom while the other had watched with his machine gun in the ready.
Their identity booklets were taken away.
They did not speak too much; a Serbian word here and there was all they could hear. When the frisking was over they just stood for what seemed like eternity. As their arms were getting tired they slowly let them fall down but the soldiers did not object so they just stood in the rain and waited. This was the most frightful time of their entire border crossing, since they could not imagine what would transpire next. Why are they standing like this, apart and with their backs to each other? What will they do with them? Why are they not trying to communicate with them? What will happen? During this long wait, their thoughts were focusing on every possible outcome that could come before dawn would break. They were hoping that no harm would come to them most of all since in the days leading to crossing the border Radio Free Europe was continually broadcasting about many Hungarians escaping, including to the South, Yugoslavia.
Anxious minutes followed in the dark night. Peter thought of his family, then suddenly recalled his first encounter with gun-toting soldiers. Much later he wrote down the incident with the Red Army in the diary that he continued even in the refugee camps.
To be continued.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
I have serialized my book, here is Part 1....
Without Illusions, an immigrant's journey published in 2008.
I have written it in both, my native Hungarian and English. It is a modest recollection of early impressions and stories of a young man arriving in the New World from communist Hungary after the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fight.
I will serialize here the chapters, hoping to illustrate many of the issues in today's democracies of the West, as they are being challenged by "progressive"thinking, such as the role of individual responsibility and economic and political freedom of opportunity.
Part 1.
THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION AND FREEDOM FIGTH.
TORONTO, OCTOBER 23, 1966.
On the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution and Freedom Fight, a solemn remembrance took place on the gray and stormy shores of Lake Ontario. The place, in front of the Toronto Exhibition Grounds, was the newly named Budapest Park.
Peter was hearing the words of the invited civic and Hungarian community leaders, but his thoughts as those of many of the other refugee-immigrants present were back in the days of October, 1956. The bloody crush of the revolution and the subsequent Soviet occupation, the return of hopelessness and despair and for all those here in Budapest Park, their escape from Hungary. They thought of the fallen in the fights, the executed martyrs, the imprisoned and those whose lives were ruined. Their somber faces testified to the humility they felt in celebrating, freely, in this, their adopted country, thinking of their relatives and friends who remained behind barbed wire and minefields. And they were thinking of their last 10 years in their new and challenging environment.
As events proved later, in many homes of the country thousands of mostly young people, students, factory apprentices and workers were considering fleeing the country.
The compelling thought of leaving their homeland was not conceived only by the events of 1956 October. These events only made the escape to freedom a real and immediate possibility. The utter failure of the regime in the preceding years, the lies and the dictatorship that led to the revolt and the inevitable defeat that followed solidified for many to leave this land for something that was surely different and more humane to man.
Many had tried in the past, against all odds, to cross the borders illegally, a few made it, but many perished or were captured and sent to prison for trying to escape the “communist paradise”.
So the idea of leaving the homeland had come to many years before the heady days of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
The murderous circle of the tanks around Budapest brought about making these vague notions of the “Free West” an actual plan on and after November 4th. 1956.
In the ensuing days the country heroically resisted the Soviet hordes, but succumbed eventually and to many, the plan of leaving this beaten country assumed action.
The numbers are not exact but it is assumed that nearly a quarter of a million Hungarians, mostly young people, decided that their dreams of a free society can only be found to the West of Hungary and have left the country.
This story is just one of many, each unique and fascinating, yet each being a replica of many untold refugee stories in the annals of history, each being its own individual Odyssey and each followed by another and another over the years, in all the continents, over the entire history of mankind.
To be continued.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Obama's first year, a scathing review by...
Conrad Black in The National: Jan.22,2010
Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge.
The burning question after the Massachusetts Senate election is whether the administration responds by making a course correction to survive politically by jettisoning its policy core and cleaning up its methods, or 'doubles down,' as President Obama has implied, and escalates the ideological and guerrilla war for direction of public policy. This was a referendum on the Obama administration, including health care, not just on health care. Even less was it just the rejection of an astonishingly unappealing candidate, predestined to glory as a trivia question. John F. Kennedy took that seat with lashings of his father's money in an anti-Brahmin revolt against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and was reelected by 864,000 votes in 1958. In the intervening years of Teddy Kennedy, the Democrats could have won with a candidate not confined to two legs and one head. This was less a wake-up call than a Te Deum for a dying and sweaty dream.
The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and it is an old, passe leftism, that is authoritarian, deviously presented and was discredited in this country decades ago; the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become 'New Democrats.' He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.
The second of these problems seems to prevent the president from appreciating the last. The only serious domestic initiative to show for the last year is an obscene stimulus bill that has had to be defended by the spurious supposition of 'jobs saved' since, contrary to promises, unemployment has risen by over five million after it was enacted. That target could have been attained without squandering 787 billion borrowed dollars.
Current economic projections call for massive debt increases of $1 trillion a year for a decade, with huge money supply increases that will make history not only by their size but, according to forecasts, by their non-inflationary nature, accompanied by tax increases that will, also miraculously, not retard recovery from the recession. No audible sane person believes this arithmetical fairy tale, including, one dares to hope, the president himself. It is a recipe for guaranteed stagflation and currency devaluation.
The administration bought wholly into the unproved claim that carbon emissions are causing global warming, but global warming has not, for the last ten years, been happening. The president padded around the Copenhagen global warming conference trying to generate enthusiasm for $100 billion annual transfers to the Mugabes and Chavezes, as well as the Chinese (the world's largest carbon emitters), as conscience-alleviating payments for the carbon emissions of the economically advanced countries. America's fellow culprits found less tangibly burdensome expiations. So will America.
Mr. Obama must have noticed that the science and the politics were wrong, and that the arithmetic was too. The whole concept, like his promotion of renewable energy, his cap-and-trade bill, his redesignation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and his pursuit of complete nuclear disarmament, is mad. It was a worthy encore to the president's previous cameo appearance in the Danish capital, where his and his wife's prodigies managed to bring Chicago in fourth in contention for the 2016 Olympics, (out of four competing cities).
In foreign policy, engagement with Iran and North Korea, appeasement of Russia, over Georgia and missile defense, attempting to bully Israel and to deny that there was an agreement between the Sharon and Bush (Jr.) regimes over settlements, and siding with Chavez and the Castros in the Honduran crisis against constitutional democracy and America's legitimate interests, have all failed, practically and morally, at least without knowledge of indiscernible and unlikely, contrary intelligence.
There have been no initiatives to reform NATO, the UN, the IMF, all in need of modernization, and there has been a regrettable delay in launching the long-promised and necessary measures to turn the Afghan operation into a success, while the U.S. and its allies have been milling about, losing ground and taking increasing casualties.
The fumbling over Guantanamo has been another fiasco, as attorney general Holder has acknowledged that it is an exemplary prison. But Obama has been entrapped by Teddy Kennedy's unfounded identification of Gitmo with Abu Ghraib. The president's reaction to the near disaster of the panties-terrorist in the skies over Detroit began with waffling from a Hawaiian luau, and gained altitude agonizingly slowly.
No one is audibly lamenting the retirement of George W. or throwing shoes at his successor's head because he speaks in sentences, but this president is bestriding the world as a flake, cow-towing to the Mikado, apologizing for President Truman's use of the atomic bomb, criticizing Roosevelt and Churchill's uninclusive approach to winning World War II, and Churchill and Eisenhower for disposing of the pajama-clad hysteric Mohammed Mossadegh as head of Iran.
And instead of sending the Congress completed bills and drumming up public support for them, as legislatively successful past presidents like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan did, he just rolls a Christmas tree into the Capitol Rotunda and invites Reid and Pelosi and their vacuum-cleaner committee chairmen to festoon it with their favorite pork baubles. Stealing the Alaska Senate election with the fraudulent prosecution of Senator Stevens, (since retracted), the Minnesota Senate election with the fraudulent recounts against Senator Coleman, and the unchallenging seduction of Senator Specter as he was circling the Republican primary drain in Pennsylvania, to get 60 Democratic senators, enabled the public purchase of party loyalty, the dismissal of sincere moderates like Senator Olympia Snow, (whose furrowed brow is a mortal challenge to Botox), for a bad health care bill that is not a reform. This was not what was thought to be meant by the slogan 'Yes we can!,' is not leadership, and the people, even in Massachusetts, don't like it.
It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover, and he was ambushed by the Great Depression after seven months.
President Obama rose with astonishing speed from a more improbable sociological provenance than any of his 42 predecessors, an alumnus both of the genteel finishing school of Harvard Law and of the Chicago boiler room for hardball politicians. Neither his radical nor sleazy connections stuck to him. He deftly made an unspoken arrangement to liberate white liberal America from its guilt complex over historic treatment of African-Americans, and to banish the down-market Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons and Charlie Rangels as black spokesmen, in exchange for a one-way ticket to the White House. With this implicit, non-refundable offer in his back pocket, he almost effortlessly seemed to take the Democratic Party away from the Clintons and rode the trends, the economy, and the sclerosis of his opponent's campaign straight into the White House, with professional skill and elegance.
Withal, this president seems overwhelmingly confident, strangely detached, and, as Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's leading speech-writer, and now one of the leaders of the Obama Buyers' Remorse Movement, wrote, 'cold and faux eloquent.' He is fluent and sonorous, but rather vapid. And now, Maureen Dowd, foxy doyenne of New York Times columnists and pin-up girl of the D.C. Democratic establishment, niece of FDR's top fixer, former co-leader, with Michelle, Caroline Kennedy and Oprah Winfrey, of the Obama massed, synchronized cheerleaders, has apostacized and reviled the president as a nasty egotist. When A Democratic president has lost Ms. Dowd and the Kennedys' Senate seat, it is time to return to the drawing boards.
If the president has a Damascene rendezvous with the real wishes of the American people and turns the White House bowling alley into a cram-course charm school, he can be a popular and successful president yet. An excellent bi-partisan health care bill that really is a reform can still be had and would be hugely admired, especially after this debacle. If he wants to double down on what we have seen in the last year, he will leave the White House in a submersible in three years.
For all the claims that the Republicans are too influenced by religious zealots and country club knuckle-draggers, the administration may be in the hands of 'redistributive,' pacifistic Kool Aid drinkers. If it is, the Republicans will have to elevate their 2012 presidential candidate this year. The office may, 213 years after the retirement of George Washington, actually seek the (wo)man, but not from what is conspicuously on offer now, from either party.
National Post
Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge.
The burning question after the Massachusetts Senate election is whether the administration responds by making a course correction to survive politically by jettisoning its policy core and cleaning up its methods, or 'doubles down,' as President Obama has implied, and escalates the ideological and guerrilla war for direction of public policy. This was a referendum on the Obama administration, including health care, not just on health care. Even less was it just the rejection of an astonishingly unappealing candidate, predestined to glory as a trivia question. John F. Kennedy took that seat with lashings of his father's money in an anti-Brahmin revolt against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and was reelected by 864,000 votes in 1958. In the intervening years of Teddy Kennedy, the Democrats could have won with a candidate not confined to two legs and one head. This was less a wake-up call than a Te Deum for a dying and sweaty dream.
The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and it is an old, passe leftism, that is authoritarian, deviously presented and was discredited in this country decades ago; the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become 'New Democrats.' He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.
The second of these problems seems to prevent the president from appreciating the last. The only serious domestic initiative to show for the last year is an obscene stimulus bill that has had to be defended by the spurious supposition of 'jobs saved' since, contrary to promises, unemployment has risen by over five million after it was enacted. That target could have been attained without squandering 787 billion borrowed dollars.
Current economic projections call for massive debt increases of $1 trillion a year for a decade, with huge money supply increases that will make history not only by their size but, according to forecasts, by their non-inflationary nature, accompanied by tax increases that will, also miraculously, not retard recovery from the recession. No audible sane person believes this arithmetical fairy tale, including, one dares to hope, the president himself. It is a recipe for guaranteed stagflation and currency devaluation.
The administration bought wholly into the unproved claim that carbon emissions are causing global warming, but global warming has not, for the last ten years, been happening. The president padded around the Copenhagen global warming conference trying to generate enthusiasm for $100 billion annual transfers to the Mugabes and Chavezes, as well as the Chinese (the world's largest carbon emitters), as conscience-alleviating payments for the carbon emissions of the economically advanced countries. America's fellow culprits found less tangibly burdensome expiations. So will America.
Mr. Obama must have noticed that the science and the politics were wrong, and that the arithmetic was too. The whole concept, like his promotion of renewable energy, his cap-and-trade bill, his redesignation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and his pursuit of complete nuclear disarmament, is mad. It was a worthy encore to the president's previous cameo appearance in the Danish capital, where his and his wife's prodigies managed to bring Chicago in fourth in contention for the 2016 Olympics, (out of four competing cities).
In foreign policy, engagement with Iran and North Korea, appeasement of Russia, over Georgia and missile defense, attempting to bully Israel and to deny that there was an agreement between the Sharon and Bush (Jr.) regimes over settlements, and siding with Chavez and the Castros in the Honduran crisis against constitutional democracy and America's legitimate interests, have all failed, practically and morally, at least without knowledge of indiscernible and unlikely, contrary intelligence.
There have been no initiatives to reform NATO, the UN, the IMF, all in need of modernization, and there has been a regrettable delay in launching the long-promised and necessary measures to turn the Afghan operation into a success, while the U.S. and its allies have been milling about, losing ground and taking increasing casualties.
The fumbling over Guantanamo has been another fiasco, as attorney general Holder has acknowledged that it is an exemplary prison. But Obama has been entrapped by Teddy Kennedy's unfounded identification of Gitmo with Abu Ghraib. The president's reaction to the near disaster of the panties-terrorist in the skies over Detroit began with waffling from a Hawaiian luau, and gained altitude agonizingly slowly.
No one is audibly lamenting the retirement of George W. or throwing shoes at his successor's head because he speaks in sentences, but this president is bestriding the world as a flake, cow-towing to the Mikado, apologizing for President Truman's use of the atomic bomb, criticizing Roosevelt and Churchill's uninclusive approach to winning World War II, and Churchill and Eisenhower for disposing of the pajama-clad hysteric Mohammed Mossadegh as head of Iran.
And instead of sending the Congress completed bills and drumming up public support for them, as legislatively successful past presidents like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan did, he just rolls a Christmas tree into the Capitol Rotunda and invites Reid and Pelosi and their vacuum-cleaner committee chairmen to festoon it with their favorite pork baubles. Stealing the Alaska Senate election with the fraudulent prosecution of Senator Stevens, (since retracted), the Minnesota Senate election with the fraudulent recounts against Senator Coleman, and the unchallenging seduction of Senator Specter as he was circling the Republican primary drain in Pennsylvania, to get 60 Democratic senators, enabled the public purchase of party loyalty, the dismissal of sincere moderates like Senator Olympia Snow, (whose furrowed brow is a mortal challenge to Botox), for a bad health care bill that is not a reform. This was not what was thought to be meant by the slogan 'Yes we can!,' is not leadership, and the people, even in Massachusetts, don't like it.
It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover, and he was ambushed by the Great Depression after seven months.
President Obama rose with astonishing speed from a more improbable sociological provenance than any of his 42 predecessors, an alumnus both of the genteel finishing school of Harvard Law and of the Chicago boiler room for hardball politicians. Neither his radical nor sleazy connections stuck to him. He deftly made an unspoken arrangement to liberate white liberal America from its guilt complex over historic treatment of African-Americans, and to banish the down-market Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons and Charlie Rangels as black spokesmen, in exchange for a one-way ticket to the White House. With this implicit, non-refundable offer in his back pocket, he almost effortlessly seemed to take the Democratic Party away from the Clintons and rode the trends, the economy, and the sclerosis of his opponent's campaign straight into the White House, with professional skill and elegance.
Withal, this president seems overwhelmingly confident, strangely detached, and, as Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's leading speech-writer, and now one of the leaders of the Obama Buyers' Remorse Movement, wrote, 'cold and faux eloquent.' He is fluent and sonorous, but rather vapid. And now, Maureen Dowd, foxy doyenne of New York Times columnists and pin-up girl of the D.C. Democratic establishment, niece of FDR's top fixer, former co-leader, with Michelle, Caroline Kennedy and Oprah Winfrey, of the Obama massed, synchronized cheerleaders, has apostacized and reviled the president as a nasty egotist. When A Democratic president has lost Ms. Dowd and the Kennedys' Senate seat, it is time to return to the drawing boards.
If the president has a Damascene rendezvous with the real wishes of the American people and turns the White House bowling alley into a cram-course charm school, he can be a popular and successful president yet. An excellent bi-partisan health care bill that really is a reform can still be had and would be hugely admired, especially after this debacle. If he wants to double down on what we have seen in the last year, he will leave the White House in a submersible in three years.
For all the claims that the Republicans are too influenced by religious zealots and country club knuckle-draggers, the administration may be in the hands of 'redistributive,' pacifistic Kool Aid drinkers. If it is, the Republicans will have to elevate their 2012 presidential candidate this year. The office may, 213 years after the retirement of George Washington, actually seek the (wo)man, but not from what is conspicuously on offer now, from either party.
National Post
Saturday, 16 January 2010
I used to be a fair cook, then I married...
and my cooking became redundant, as it were. My wife is a talented and courageous cook.Did you know that you need courage to cook really well, that venturing into unknown fields of gastronomy is full of danger, at least it's full of challenges?
So, I became a temporary bachelor in these past few weeks and having been accustomed to exceptional fair at home, I have resisted going out to eat more than necessary, which meant: cooking again.
Nothing exceptional in this, many men cook, and some are masters of the art. But I have noted after a few dinners how unintentionally international my preferences for food have become. A few examples (recipes forwarded on requests):
From top to bottom:
American cod,wild rice with mushrooms with wine sauce (Hungarian Cserszegi Füszeres)
Hungarian beef paprikash with American grits
American steak, cooked in the living room fire place (don't tell my wife, an important game was on tv)
Norwegian smoked,wild salmon farfalle with Russian vodka sauce
Hungarian bundas kenyer(aka french toast)with Canadian maple syrup
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