1956 in Hungary and in Canada

Hungarian Studies ${etriezv Vol. XXXV, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall, 2008) Special Volume: 1956 in Hungary and in Canada Events and Consequences edited and introduced by Nandor Dreisziger HUNGARIAN STUDIES REVIEW HUNGARIAN STUDIES NATIONAL HUNGARIAN STUDIES ASSOC. OF CANADA SZECHENYI LIBRARY ASSOCIATION (USA) VOL. 35, NOS. 1-2 (SPRING-FALL 2008) EDITOR: NANDOR DREISZIGER, Royal Military College of Canada EDITORIAL ADVISERS OLIVER BOTAR ISTVAN MONOK University of Manitoba National Szechenyi Library, Budapest GEORGE BISZTRAY THOMAS SAKMYSTER University of Toronto University of Cincinnati ZOLTAN FEJOS AGATHA SCHWARTZ Museum of Ethnography, Budapest University of Ottawa GEZA JESZENSZKY S. B. VARDY Corvinus University, Budapest Duquesne University SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER (for Hungary): TIMEA KIRALY (NSL) All correspondence should be addressed to: Professor Dreisziger, 904-1000 King St. West, Kingston, Ontario, K7M 8H3 Canada. E-mail: [email protected] Articles appearing in the HSR are indexed in: HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS and, AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE. Copyright © (2008) the Hungarian Studies Review. ISSN 0713-8083 (print, replacing 0317-204X); ISSN 1705-8422 (online) The Hungarian Studies Review is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the publication of articles and book reviews relating to Hungary and Hungarians. Since its launching in 1974, the Review has been a forum for the scholarly discussion of issues in Hungarian art, history, literature, politics and cultural affairs. Subscriptions for individuals are $19.00 per annum. Institutional subscriptions are $35.00. Membership in either of the two Hungarian studies associations includes a subscription. Visit: www.hungarianstudies.org or www.hungarianstudies.info and www.oszk.hu/kiadvany/hsr/hsr.htm (replacing: www.ccsp.sfu.ca/calj.hsr) Statements and opinions expressed in the HSR are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the journal's editors. Desk-top typesetting by N. Dreisziger. Printed in Hungary. Distributed by the National Szechenyi Library: Budavari Palota, F Epiilet, 1827 Budapest, Hungary. Special Issue: 1956 in Hungary and in Canada Events and Consequences edited and introduced by Nandor Dreisziger Articles by EMESE IVAN and DEZSO IVAN KAROLY NAGY JUDITH SZAPOR NANDOR DREISZIGER AUDREY WIPPER CHRISTOPHER ADAM EVA TOMORY MART A MIHALY Contents Preface v PART I: Denying the Revolution in Post-1956 Hungary Introduction 7 The 1956 Revolution and the Melbourne Olympics: The Changing Perceptions of a Dramatic Story EMESE IVAN with DEZSO IVAN+ 9 Teaching a Fraudulent History of the Revolution During the Kadar Dictatorship KAROLY NAGY 25 A Modern-Day Antigone: The Life and Times of Julia Rajk (a review article) JUDITH SZAPOR 33 PART II: The Revolution, the Refugees, and Canada — in 1956 and After Introduction 39 The Biggest Welcome Ever: the Toronto Tories, the Ottawa Liberals, and the Admission of Hungarian Refugees to Canada in 1956 NANDOR DREISZIGER 41 Appendices to the above: Globe and Mail editorials of 24 and 26 Nov., 1956, and John Yaremko's Report on his Mission to Austria 67 Ontario's Hungarian Community Responds to the Revolution and the Refugee Crisis: The Fund-Raising Drive (A document) AUDREY WIPPER 85 Spying on the Refugees: The Kadar Regime's Secret Agents and Canada's Hungarians, 1956-1989 CHRISTOPHER ADAM 109 Entrepreneurship: How the '56-ers Helped to Build Canada's Economy EVATOMORY 125 Remembering 1956: Invited Immigrants — The Sopron Saga MART A MIHALY 143 PART III: About Books Society as Family: The Loyalties and Illusions of Laura Polanyi LEECONGDON 155 The Catholic Church in Interwar and Wartime Hungary CHRISTOPHER ADAM 161 The Lives and Struggles of Hungarians in America SANDORZSIROS 165 Masked Ball at the White Cross Cafe: Introducing a Book about Jewish Emancipation and the Origins of the Holocaust JANET KEREKES 177 Another Look at the Early Moholy-Nagy EDITTOTH 187 OUR CONTRIBUTORS 191 Preface The present volume is a continuation of the 2007 combined (spring-fall) special issue of our journal which dealt with the background, events and aftermath of the 1956 revolution in Hungary. While this 2008 volume also deals with some of the circumstances and consequences of the 1956 developments in that country, its main focus is the Revolution's Canadian aftermath, both the immediate and the long-term. Accordingly, this volume is divided into two main parts. Part one contains articles that are a continuation of the subject of our 2007 special volume, while part two has studies dealing with the Canadian aspects of the Revolution and the coming of the refugees, as well as their post-1956 experiences in this country. Part I of this volume presents two essays, one by Professors Ivan and Ivan and the other by Professor Nagy, which deal with the subject of the denial and/or misrepresentation of the 1956 events during the so-called Kadar era (1956-1989) in Hungary. The third paper, a review article by Professor Szapor discussing the life of Julia Rajk, deals with the subject of one woman's efforts to keep the memory of the pre-1956 repression in Hungary alive and to alleviate for as many individuals as possible the post-1956 persecution of the Revolution's victims. The papers in Part II deal with diverse aspects of the impact on Canada of the Revolution — and of the coming of the refugees. The first paper, by myself, sets the scene and elaborates at length on the historical background to the reactions in this country to the Revolution in Hungary and the subsequent refugee crisis in Austria (and, to a lesser extent, in Yugoslavia). The next paper is a partly eye-witness account of an aspect of the Hungarian- Canadian community's response to the Revolution, while the two following articles discuss the fate and activities of the refugees in the decades after 1956. The last paper in this section contains the reminiscences of one '56-er, a member of the Sopron School of Forestry that in 1956 was admitted to Canada, students and faculty as a whole, so that the former could complete their studies, in Hungarian, at the University of British Columbia. This Part II of our present volume is the bulkiest, both in terms of the number of articles it contains and in terms of volume. Taking this into consideration, this collection of essays can be called the "Canadian volume" in our two-part series. But this anthology of papers can be called "Canadian" for another reason as well: a great majority of its authors are Canadian citizens or, at least, they have had training at Canadian universities. A third part of this 2008 volume contains review articles or extended book reviews, some of which are not closely or not at all related to the theme of the 1956 Revolution. Our journal may not have a regular issue until the end of the decade and for that reason we thought that there should be a section in this volume in which the book reviews that had accumulated in recent years are included, rather than delaying their publication for a few more years. Nandor Dreisziger PARTI Denying the Revolution in Post-1956 Hungary: An Introduction Nandor Dreisziger The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was crushed in November of 1956 by Soviet troops. Over the next few months the regime of Janos Kadar con- solidated its power. The regime lasted till the collapse of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe in 1989. Throughout this period, and especially during its early phases, the memory of the Revolution was wiped from the Hungarian nation's collective recollection. Its events and ideas could not be discussed, or were distorted by the regime's propaganda machine. An aspect of this treatment of the events of 1956 had been discussed in a study that appeared in the 2007 volume of our journal: in Professor Beverly James' essay "Early Cinematic Representations of Hungary's 1956 Revolution." In part I of this volume we return to this theme. In a study entitled "The 1956 Revolution and the Melbourne Olympics: The Changing Perceptions of a Dramatic Story," Professor Emese Ivan, in collaboration with her sports-historian father Dezso Ivan, outline how during the Kadar regime the events of the Revolution, in particular as far as the Hungarian participation in the Olympics of 1956 were concerned, were first suppressed and then presented in a falsified way. Only with the passing of communism in Hungary could the country's public get to know the real story. This paper is followed by Professor Karoly Nagy's survey, entitled "Teaching a Fraudulent History of the Revolution During the Kadar Dicta- torship," of the perversion of the Revolution's history that was presented in the school textbooks published in Hungary from the 1950s to the 1980s. The last section in this part of our volume is a lengthy book-review of a biography of Julia Rajk who was the widow of Laszlo Rajk, one of the most notorious victims of the Stalin era purges in Hungary. Rajk's connection to the Revolution was a post-humus one. It was his exoneration and public re- burial in early October that, according to some historians, unleashed the chain of events that lead to the outbreak of the Revolution a little over two weeks later. The injustices committed by Hungary's regime against Rajk, and later against his persecuted widow, are ironic in-so-far as both were devoted — and in the case of Laszlo, also ruthless — communists. Though loyal to the ideology to the end, in the Kadar era Julia Rajk struggled against the regime's policy of falsifying history, especially as far as her husband's historical role was concerned — and also in the case of many other victims of the regime or, in many instances, their surviving relatives. The Kadarian brainwashing of Hungary's people ended in 1989.

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