Hungarian Studies Review, 1994): 43-75; and Oliver Botar, Ed., "Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Hungar- Ian-American Politics [Documents]," Ibid., Pp
From Budapest to New York: The Odyssey of the Polanyis Judith Szapor This article is a short version of Chapter 4 of my manuscript, entitled "The Hungarian Pocahontas;" The Life and Times of Laura Polanyi, 1882-1959, to be published by the University of Toronto Press. In the preceding chapters I describe the first stages of the Polanyis' Odyssey. It included the emigration from Hungary of Laura Polanyi's brothers, Adolf, Karl and Michael, to Italy, Austria and Germany, respectively. They left Hungary, along with scores of left-wing intellectuals, during the period of right-wing repression that followed the post-war demo- cratic and Bolshevik revolutions. By 1939, both Michael and Karl had settled in England. As for Laura Polanyi's immediate family, in the late 1920s and early 1930s her children, Michael, Eva and George Strieker all studied and worked in Austria and Germany. While the latter, her youngest was completing his studies at the University of Vienna, Michael and Eva took a detour to the Soviet Union. By 1932, both had taken up positions as "foreign experts," Michael as a patent expert in Moscow, Eva as a designer, eventually working for the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in Leningrad. Although keeping her homes in Budapest — where her husband lived — and Vienna, Laura accompanied her children to the Soviet Union for extended periods of time. She was there when, in May 1936, Eva was arrested and accused with participating in a plot to assassinate Stalin. Fourteen months later, in September 1937, when Eva was released and expelled from the Soviet Union, the family gathered in Vienna, preparing to leave for the United States.
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