Hello everone again!!


    Could anyone please point me in the right direction. I wish to
configure my system a 486/66 running win95 to use Hungarian codes and
also to use Windows and Word in Hungarian. Any info would be
appreciated.


    Thx

    Attila

Could anyone share some insight on some really good travel fares for
march/April to Budapest, Hungary via Edmonton, Canada?


 Thx

    Attila

Hello everyone!


    Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I am new to the
internet and I was wondering if some seasoned pros could help me.

I need info on Business in Hungary and employment with an English
background though I speak Hungarian fluently. Also I need info on
quality servers or pages related to these topics. Lastly, is there any
good Hungarian chat boards and or other newsgroups related to Hungary?
Thank you very much in advance.


    Attila

Dear Listmembers -

At 14:17 23/10/96 +0000, Frank Aycock wrote:
>First of all, I want to thank everyone who has been providing the
>fascinating information regarding the events of 1956.  For someone
>who was a two-year-old American not of Hungarian (or even Central
>European) descent, this has been wonderfully enlightening and
>enjoyable.  I would truly relish the opportunity to sit with all of
>you in one room and listen as you discuss your first-person accounts
>of the events of that time!

I want to echo these sentiments. It is wonderful to read first-hand accounts
of people who actually participated in the events of that time.

BTW, I was 7 years old, non-Hungarian, living in Easton, Pennsylvania. The
56 Hungarian Revolution made a big impression on me at the time, especially
the romantic, heroic, and tragic image of the students standing up against
the Soviet tanks.

There was a refugee who settled in Easton. His name was *Tornalyay* and I
believe he was a Reformed Church minister. We understood he had been
mistreated by the Communists before he fled Hungary. I wonder where he is now?

Nagyon tisztelettel,

Johanne




>
>
Johanne L. Tournier
e-mail - 

I don't have much time to get into a long discussion here, so I
will only make some comments from a non-historian's point of view.

On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Eva S. Balogh wrote:

> >On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Eva S. Balogh wrote:
>
>         I don't know whether you can call it pro-Habsburg bias but I
> maintain that the Habsburgs didn't keep down Hungary economically because
> they either disliked the Hungarians or because they wanted Hungary to supply
> the rest of the empire with agricultural goods. As we know very well,
> Hungary even today is quite capable of not only to feed its own population
> but also there is plenty for exports.

  I doesn't really matter what the intentions were. What matters is
the results.  Why should the  Habsburgs be guilt  free just because
they didn't know (if they didn't) what their policy is going to do.
Everybody else under the sun is  being blamed for just about every-
thing. What is the reason to exempt the Habsburgs?

>         Nationalist historians normally mention the introduction of an
> internal customs barrier between Hungary and the rest of the empire (1754)
> as proof that Hungary was kept in a colonial status. However, one must find
> out why the central government decided to introduce such measure.

  Here goes the bias into operation.  When must  one find out ... ?
Does this apply always, seldom, or never?  I don't see  the critics
of the Hungarian Government ever  mention the war in Bosnia and the
embargo on Yugoslavia as contributing factors in Hungary's economy.
It is much easier to blame Horn,  especially if one hates him.  But
at the end,  if we want to be fair,  both are responsible for their
"rule".As soon as you are willing to apply the same yardstick, Eva,
I may stop arguing.

>
>         But the Habsburgs' severe economic policies were not the only factor
> inhibiting economic development in Hungary in the eighteenth century.
>
  Again. Whose policy was it and who implemented it.  If it was the
Habsburgs', then they were, are, and will be responsible for it. It
is true that the crown had help, but ... .

> >> already made up his mind about Hungary's development a long time ago and
> >> every historian who doesn't seem to agree with him [which means practicall
y
> >> everyone when it comes to economic development] is simply careless, biased
,
> >> dogmatic, or simply ignorant.

  This sounds very much like you, Eva, as others see it.

  The Habsburgs may have been the "good guys", you will have a very
hard time convincing me.  But why should we judge them by different
criteria than anybody else?
                             Amos

Fly down to LA then take Lufthansa to BP.

On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Attila Julius Hertelendy wrote:

>    Could anyone share some insight on some really good travel fares for
> march/April to Budapest, Hungary via Edmonton, Canada?
>
>
>  Thx
>
>     Attila
>

At 07:14 AM 10/25/96 -0300,Johanne/Janka wrote:
>It is wonderful to read first-hand accounts
>of people who actually participated in the events of that time.
>
>BTW, I was 7 years old, non-Hungarian, living in Easton, Pennsylvania. The
>56 Hungarian Revolution made a big impression on me at the time, especially
>the romantic, heroic, and tragic image of the students standing up against
>the Soviet tanks.
<snip>
>Nagyon tisztelettel,
>
>Johanne

        Thank you, Johanne. I am blessed with a very good memory in general
and I have many, many stories from those weeks. Considering that I lived at
the corner of Kiskorut and Rakoczi ut (for those less familiar with Budapest
geography, it is really the heart of the city) at the time I witnessed a
considerable segment of the revolutionary events. Rakoczi ut--an important
thoroughfare--was very heavily damaged due to the activities of the Soviet
tanks which decided to pick the corner of Kiskorut and Rakoczi ut, right in
front of our building, as the place from where they began to demolish the
neighborhood quite successfully. Our own building was also heavily damaged.

        And a little Hungarian lesson. You cannot say "nagyon tisztelettel."
If you want to embellish "tisztelettel/respectfully" the only adjective you
can add is "o"szinte/sincere" as in "o"szinte tisztelettel."

        From all the news reports it seems that there were no great
upheavals but the celebration was muted. Only a few hundred people showed up
at the designated sights.

        Eva Balogh

At 08:25 AM 10/25/96 -0400, Amos wrote:

>  I doesn't really matter what the intentions were. What matters is
>the results.

        Don't you think that the Hungarian nobility, who, unlike their
colleagues elsewhere in the empire, refused to pay taxes and let only the
Hungarian peasantry carry the burden are somewhat responsible for that
particular state of affairs? The great leaders of the nation, the members of
the Diet who refused to budge!

>         Nationalist historians normally mention the introduction of an
> internal customs barrier between Hungary and the rest of the empire (1754)
> as proof that Hungary was kept in a colonial status. However, one must find
> out why the central government decided to introduce such measure.
> Here goes the bias into operation.  When must  one find out ... ?

        I find your reasoning a bit odd. If you had been Maria Theresa or
Joseph II, what would you have done? Let the Hungarian nobility enjoy their
tax free privileges or tried to do something to change their minds.
Obviously, the disadvantages of the customs reform on the state of their
"beloved fatherland" didn't change their minds. Thus, I blame the Hungarian
nobility's selfishness for the state of affairs.

>>         But the Habsburgs' severe economic policies were not the only factor
>> inhibiting economic development in Hungary in the eighteenth century.
>>
>  Again. Whose policy was it and who implemented it.  If it was the
>Habsburgs', then they were, are, and will be responsible for it. It
>is true that the crown had help, but ... .

        This is again a distortion. The fact was that Hungary at the
beginning of the eighteenth century was terribly badly off--due to the
Turkish wars and the Rakoczi Rebellion. Thus, Hungary by that time was
economically way behind Bohemia-Moravia and the Austrian provinces. Thus,
the customs barrier *alone* wasn't responsible. It most likely aggrevated an
already bad economic situation. That's all.
>
>> >> already made up his mind about Hungary's development a long time ago and
>> >> every historian who doesn't seem to agree with him [which means
practically
>> >> everyone when it comes to economic development] is simply careless,
biased,
>> >> dogmatic, or simply ignorant.
>
>  This sounds very much like you, Eva, as others see it.

        Well, I'm absolutely convinced that I'm right. And, again, don't
think that I am alone with this view. Most historians see it this way with
very, very few exceptions. Lately I found a couple of young historians of
the "national" persuasion who try to argue that there was no difference
between Hungary and the countries/provinces west of it in economic
development. But the book they published is a short history of Hungary and
they give no proof for their contention whatsoever. In any case, this very
common historical overview didn't seem to reach the general public. It
didn't get to the consciousness of most Hungarians. The only thing they seem
to remember is the Renaissance palaces of Matthias, the gold mines of the
Middle Ages, the excellence of goldsmithing, etc. They want to blame
everything on the Turks and the Habsburgs.

>  The Habsburgs may have been the "good guys", you will have a very
>hard time convincing me.

        Not the good guys. They simply had a different agenda from that of
the Hungarian nobility which, after all, was the "nation" in those days. The
Habsburgs wanted to introduce a centralized absolutist system as opposed to
the kind of kingship which had been known in Hungary before 1526--that is,
that the kings were not at all powerful, but the estates were very much so.
That didn't fit into the Habsburgs' concepts as it wouldn't have fit into
the concept of, let's say, Louis XIV's either. Here you may want to keep in
mind the situation of the Polish kings and the estates and what happened to
Poland in the eighteenth century, sandwiched between two growing powers,
with absolutist central government. The Polish king was simply unable to get
enough money to get together a decent army. I am not saying that absolutism
is my favorite form of government but *given the circumstances,* which
favored this form of government, the Hungarian nobility's political outlook
was outmoded and in this particular case against the interests of the
country as a whole. One could argue, as Macartney argued in one of his
essays on the Hungarian nobility, that the Hungarian nobility although acted
selfishly inadvertedly helped the Hungarian national cause. I don't believe
that Macartney was right. Look at the Czech situation. The Habsburgs managed
to crush the Bohemian (Czech- as well as German-speaking) nobility after the
Battle of White Mountain. They ruled in Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia as
absolutist rulers. There was no diet, there was no native nobility. You
would have thought that the Czech nation (in modern terms) was finished.
Yet, the Czechs managed quite well, thank you, all through the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. They didn't lose their language, they managed to
get by the second half of the nineteeenth century a robust middle class.
This middle class became active in politics and achieved, after World War I,
an independent Czechoslovakia. In Hungary, due to the many, many compromises
between the Hungarian estates and the crown the Hungarian
aristocracy/nobility remained intact. They were the ones who became
political leaders, not just in the nineteenth century but also in the
twentieth. Was this really good for Hungarian development? I doubt it.

        Eva Balogh

CHARLES J CSIPKAY wrote:
>
> All this opinion exchange on suicide in Hungary is way beside the mark.
> Suicide is caused by depression, true enough, But depression can be
> manic-depression, which will also cause suicide, but is not necessarily
> caused by particular events traumatizing an individual, rather by genetic
> factors.  In the Hungarian case, we are not talking about that.  Rather, we
> are talking of actual mostly recurring events and situations, in which an
> individual or a nation is totally impotent.  When the Nazis came and did
> everything to eliminate the Jews, the Jews would have totally justified to
> be depressed.  In most cases, there was nothing they could do about it, and
> they went like lambs to the slaughter, which was a way of committing
> suicide, except that due to their religious indoctrination they were
> satisfied, that the Nazis will do anyway what they would not do by their
> own hands.  In Hungary, for the last five hundred years life became totally
> worthless.  Except for the privileged, who could maneuver themselves into
> positions where survival was possible, the rest of the people were
> permanently doomed.  Do you seriously think, that a Teleki committed
> suicide because the Foehn?  As far as I know, the Foehn is mainly felt in
> the Karst region of what is now, or was until recently Yugoslavia.  Did
> Dobozi kill his wife and died himself because of the Foehn?  Life in
> Hungary is just as hopeless as it was under the Communists, or the Nazis,
> or the Habsburgs, or the Turks, etc..
> So, lets go back to depression.  It has now been scientifically
> demonstrated, that there is a direct connection between intelligence,
> creativeness, and depression.  Here, in America, who hasn't seen the
> graffiti-like poster: If you don't panic, you just don't understand?  Isn't
> that clear enough?  Few Hungarians suffer from religious dogma telling them
> that they won't go to Heaven, or Nirvana, or Paradise, or whatever
> fantastic after life reward, if they commit suicide.  No.  They are
> intelligent enough to understand when it's over, or not even worth
> beginning.  Habsburgs, Horthy, Szalasi, Rakosi, Horn and Lantos, which one
> is worth living for?  The will of the Hungarian is to be independent, and
> live in a country which makes living worth while.  If this is stymied every
> step of the way, he gets depressed, and so on.  It's more than what I can
> say for Americans, who, if they would be intelligent enough to understand,
> would scamper into the ocean like lemmings.
> Sure I am still here after 82 years.  So-and-so could say that I can cope.
> But maybe I am just stupid.
>
> If you find a way to make life worth while, live by all means.  This is the
> instinct that keeps us going, but sometimes the instinct of survival is
> conquered by intelligence.  That's what makes humanity humanity, no?
>
> Karoly
>
>>One of the best esseyettes I have ever seen.  Thanks!!
>>
>>Sun Chan

>>  National Song by Peto"fi Sa'ndor
>>
>>  Talpra Magyar, your country calls!
>>  the time for now or never falls!
>>  Are we live as slaves or free?
>>  Choose one! this is your destiny!
>>  By the God of all the Magyars,
>>  we swear,
>>  we swear never again the chains
>>  to bear!
>>  --
>>  Pest
>>  March 13 1848

in: Petofi / English and introduction by Anthony Nyerges
published by Hungarian Cultural Foundation Buffalo New York 1973
State University College at Buffalo
                                                    ( ;-)  Sz.Z)

> Felado :  [Hungary]
> (...) Firstly, prior to 1989, people born after the
> revolution had only one available explanation of the events, namely the one
> offered by communist historians. This was taught in schools, and this was wha
t
> you could read in history books.
The assumption that people learn things primarily, or even exclusively,
through the official (and controlled) channels of information is a completely
naive one. Whatever 1956 was, it was a BIG EVENT in the life of almost every
Hungarian who lived through it. You learned about it through your family. As
someone born in 1957, I can answer Pe1ter Hidas' question "where were you
on that day" in regards to my whole family. Schools and history books have
no monopoly on information.

In fact, 1956 was the cardinal question on which the veracity of government-
supplied information was generally taken to be zero. After all, Ka1da1r was
the victor, and you just had to put up with his version of history in public.
Not in private, though.

In addition to the private sphere, there was from the early seventies an
increasingly widespread "second public sphere" (ma1sodik nyilva1nossa1g),
with samizdat publications. In regards to 1956, several alternative histories
(most importantly, the ones by Acze1l and Me1ray, and later also Lomax) were
available.

> Then, early in 1989, reform-communist Imre
> Pozsgay said publicly that the events of 1956 had actually been a popular
> uprising. This made his communist comrades react angrily, but finally the
> leader of the party, the late Karoly Grosz had to accept the term. (At first,
> the official version was that the events started as a popular uprising and
> turned into counter-revolution later on. However, this did not satisfy the
> leaders of the opposition, who had become braver and more outspoken after
> the forementioned utterance by Pozsgay).
You can't imagine the disdain and upset of the majority of the people when
Pozsgay, after a liftime in the Ka1da1r apparatus, started to cloak himself
in 56. Sure it was a popular uprising, and even more sure people didn't
want Imre Pozsgay to tell them that it was so.

> After the elections of 1990, Paliament passed a bill
> stating that in 1956 a revolution broke out, which led to a fight for
> freedom. Now you can see where all this confusion originates from.
But again, people don't get their ideas from Parliament. The confusion
originates from two sources: one is plain old ignorance, the kind we find
everywhere, like in the US where kids born after 1975 often have only the
faintest idea about the Vietnam War. The second is a particular faction of
today's ultraright trying to hijack 56, a rare moment of national unity, for
its own purposes. The "szabadsa1gharc" myth, which comes up on this list
time and again, is a key example of this.

> In 1989, everyone was excited by the issue of 1956.
Yes, but not as a historical matter. What made 56 exciting was that the
regime installed by the Soviets after beating down the 56 revolution
finally showed signs of collapsing. This bought up the possibility of
getting on with the agenda of 56: national independence, neutrality,
multiparty system, a kind of participatory democracy (munka1stana1csok),
etc. Needless to say, 35 years passed and not all items remained equally
attractive. In particular, many viewed neutrality as an inferior second
choice to full-fledged allience with the West, and the attraction of
munka1stana1csok has waned, mostly as a result of people being familiar
with the actual effects of such a system in Yugoslavia. At any rate,
the relevance of 56 was its contemporary interest, not its historical
significance.

> People were hungry for true
> information. But instead of getting good history books
At the risk of insulting all the esteemed historians who read HUNGARY, people
did not in 1989, nor at any other time in recorded history, express a hunger
for history books. People who read books are a tiny minority. People who read
history books are a minority within this minority.

> Consequently, young people who failed to
> understand the events from these sources turned away from 1956. Good history
> books came too late. (Also, most of us grew tired of, and were digusted by,
 the
> (verbal) fight between various groups of former revolutionaries.)
I think the second factor is much more important than the first. An airdrop
of 100,000 copies of Fejto3's book in 1989 wouldn't have made much of a
difference I'm afraid.

> I think the situation is slowly getting better now. Forty years after the
> revolution and 6-8 years after the fall of communism, the emotional factor is
> not as important as it used to be.
Emotions are cooler because 56 has lost its contemporary relevance. Some of
its dreams are now fulfilled (there is a functional multi-party system, and
Hungary has as much national independence as a small country can ever hope
for), others are not.  Life goes on.

> Maybe one day the whole nation will be able
> to celebrate the anniversary of the events of 1956 together. Let it be.
I think it's happening. The reconciliation between Imre Nagy's daughter
and Gyula Horn (one of the few people on the dark side at the time) was a
significant step. Curiously, the biggest segment remaining outside the
general consensus is the 56ers now living in the West. Let us hope that
this will change for the better.

Andra1s Kornai

In article >,
 says...
>This red herring of "there was no alternative information available to
>Hungarians before 1989" keeps appearing as a lame attempt to exlain various
>things, despite its ridiculousness.
>First, people in Hungary did talk to each other, and did so rather freely.
>1956 was discussed probably even more than other events, at least in the
>circles where I was moving.

George, I too, can corroborate this, for in 1982 I had many interesting
discussions (usually with a friend interpreting) with lots of Hungarians
about the Revolution, the Falklands War, and other controversial matters,
completely openly in public places. Only when the when the police came by
to make routine checks on ID papers, etc, did people tellingly hush up,
but on the departure of the uniformed police, noisy and vigorous debate
resumed.

George

--
George Szaszvari, DCPS Chess Club, 42 Alleyn Park, London SE21 7AA, UK
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy * ICPUG..C=64 * ARM Club..Acorn * NWLCC

At 03:26 PM 10/25/96 -0500, Andras Kornai wrote:

>The assumption that people learn things primarily, or even exclusively,
>through the official (and controlled) channels of information is a completely
>naive one. Whatever 1956 was, it was a BIG EVENT in the life of almost every
>Hungarian who lived through it. You learned about it through your family. As
>someone born in 1957, I can answer Pe1ter Hidas' question "where were you
>on that day" in regards to my whole family. Schools and history books have
>no monopoly on information.

        I just received a very moving letter from someone from Hungary who
was born in 1960. He learned about 1956 through his parents and to this day
is completely aware of the real issues involved. Yes, although forty years
passed, all those who lived through it has passed on their memories to their
children, even if behind closed doors and windows.

>In fact, 1956 was the cardinal question on which the veracity of government-
>supplied information was generally taken to be zero. After all, Ka1da1r was
>the victor, and you just had to put up with his version of history in public.
>Not in private, though.

        The word "private" reminds me of a scene from the late sixties when
I was working on my dissertation at the National Archives. I gave a party
and invited a whole bunch of historians working on more or less the same
period I was. The party was a great success and, I guess, we all drank a
little too much. Because cars were not commonplace in those days I was
delivering some of the guests back home and at the house of the last one I
was invited in to have one more night cap. The husband of our famous
historian, quite tipsy by then, started yelling on the top of his lungs that
Kadar was a murderer--and the poor wife, our famous historian,  was running
around closing the windows begging him to lower his voice.

>In addition to the private sphere, there was from the early seventies an
>increasingly widespread "second public sphere" (ma1sodik nyilva1nossa1g),
>with samizdat publications. In regards to 1956, several alternative histories
>(most importantly, the ones by Acze1l and Me1ray, and later also Lomax) were
>available.

>You can't imagine the disdain and upset of the majority of the people when
>Pozsgay, after a liftime in the Ka1da1r apparatus, started to cloak himself
>in 56. Sure it was a popular uprising, and even more sure people didn't
>want Imre Pozsgay to tell them that it was so.

        Some people did think that it was a courageous act although I am
siding with Andras on this one.

>But again, people don't get their ideas from Parliament. The confusion
>originates from two sources: one is plain old ignorance, the kind we find
>everywhere, like in the US where kids born after 1975 often have only the
>faintest idea about the Vietnam War.

        Sorry, but Andras is right. Plain ignorance. My family was always
anti-communist, yet the younger generation is woefully ignorant of recent
history. They are all in college, or college graduates, yet they know next
to nothing about recent Hungarian history. One boy, who is twenty-two now,
spent a whole year in the United States a couple of years ago and lived not
very far from me. We saw each other quite often and I always made sure that
I phoned him often. A nice boy. Good-looking, speaks English very well, and
intelligent. Yet, during our discussions two things because obvious (1) he
is not interested in 1956--he heard too much about it and he is tired of it;
and (2) he basically knows nothing about either 1956 or what happened before
or after.

>This bought up the possibility of
>getting on with the agenda of 56: national independence, neutrality,
>multiparty system, a kind of participatory democracy (munka1stana1csok),
>etc. Needless to say, 35 years passed and not all items remained equally
>attractive. In particular, many viewed neutrality as an inferior second
>choice to full-fledged allience with the West, and the attraction of
>munka1stana1csok has waned, mostly as a result of people being familiar
>with the actual effects of such a system in Yugoslavia. At any rate,
>the relevance of 56 was its contemporary interest, not its historical
>significance.

        Unfortunately, the idea of neutrality is still around. I perfectly
understand that it was the only viable option--if we can talk about options
at all--in 1956. Today, the idea of neutrality equals national suicide.

>At the risk of insulting all the esteemed historians who read HUNGARY, people
>did not in 1989, nor at any other time in recorded history, express a hunger
>for history books. People who read books are a tiny minority. People who read
>history books are a minority within this minority.

        Very, very true. No, they don't read history books. It is hard for
me to swallow that most likely a very large segment of the "educated
classes" actually have never read any history book since high school days.
All those poor toiling historians at the Historical Institute in Orszaghaz
utca! For at least two decades they have been writing good history books,
and they even managed to sell them in large quantities--much larger than we
in the West ever hoped for--and yet, nobody seems to know (or don't want to
know) that Hungary was behind the West economically not just because of the
Turks and the Habsburgs when Hungarian historians have been doing a very
good job explaining all this. Why did the book-buying public do with the
books they purchased? Did they simply decorate the walls of their apartments
with them? (Well, I have a cousin who has hundreds of books, but I doubt
that anyone in the family ever reads any of them!)

>Emotions are cooler because 56 has lost its contemporary relevance. Some of
>its dreams are now fulfilled (there is a functional multi-party system, and
>Hungary has as much national independence as a small country can ever hope
>for), others are not.  Life goes on.

        This year, with some very minor upheavals of the skinheads, the
celebration wasn't marred by the kind of shrill discussions we have been
accustomed to in the past few years. At least the government and the
opposition managed to celebrate together. Mind you, now the problem is that
there is only very slight interest: only a few hundred people showed up at
the different sites, including the Flame of the Revolution, which, by the
way, I think is a great idea.

        Eva Balogh

In article >,
 says...
>
>At 11:09 PM 10/23/96 GMT, Agnes wrote:
>
>>Eva, don't you remember Sinkovits reciting the
>>Talpra Magyar?  And everybody reciting the chorus: eskuszunk,
eskuszunk,
>>hogy rabok tovabb nem leszunk?  I still get goose pimps (is that the
>>right word?) when I think of it!  After Nagy Imre spoke, I went home
too.
>
>        Of course, I remember. Actually I just looked at a photo (in a
>collection called *Remember Hungary,* depicting exactly that scene.
>
>        By the way, I am still wondering how large that crowd was in
fron
>the the parliament building. We were so tightly packed in that it was
>difficult to move and if you were in the middle of the crowd you
couldn't
>leave even if you wanted to. I'm sure that it had to be over 100,000.
>
>        Eva Balogh

I don't know - but there must be some official figure about it.

Agnes

At 8:59 PM 10/25/96, aheringer wrote:
>In article >,
 says...
>>
>>At 11:09 PM 10/23/96 GMT, Agnes wrote:
>>
>>>Eva, don't you remember Sinkovits reciting the
>>>Talpra Magyar?  And everybody reciting the chorus: eskuszunk,
>eskuszunk,
>>>hogy rabok tovabb nem leszunk?  I still get goose pimps (is that the
>>>right word?) when I think of it!  After Nagy Imre spoke, I went home
>too.
>>
>>        Of course, I remember. Actually I just looked at a photo (in a
>>collection called *Remember Hungary,* depicting exactly that scene.
>>
>>        By the way, I am still wondering how large that crowd was in
>fron
>>the the parliament building. We were so tightly packed in that it was
>>difficult to move and if you were in the middle of the crowd you
>couldn't
>>leave even if you wanted to. I'm sure that it had to be over 100,000.
>>
>>        Eva Balogh
>
>I don't know - but there must be some official figure about it.
>
>Agnes

The estimate of the 1956 Institute is 200,000.

CHARLES J CSIPKAY wrote:
> All this opinion exchange on suicide in Hungary is way beside the mark.

It's a relief to know that we can all stop posting rubbish now and
just read your pronouncements. Thanks, but why didn't you post this
before and save us all the trouble in the first place? You're so cruel!

> Suicide is caused by depression, true enough, But depression can be
> manic-depression, which will also cause suicide, but is not necessarily
> caused by particular events traumatizing an individual, rather by genetic
> factors.

You mean the postings on this thread that already mentioned the
possibility of this genetic factor don't count?

>In the Hungarian case, we are not talking about that.  Rather, we
> are talking of actual mostly recurring events and situations, in which an
> individual or a nation is totally impotent.  When the Nazis came and did
> everything to eliminate the Jews, the Jews would have totally justified to
> be depressed.  In most cases, there was nothing they could do about it,
and
> they went like lambs to the slaughter, which was a way of committing
> suicide, except that due to their religious indoctrination they were
> satisfied, that the Nazis will do anyway what they would not do by their
> own hands.  In Hungary, for the last five hundred years life became
totally
> worthless.  Except for the privileged, who could maneuver themselves into
> positions where survival was possible, the rest of the people were
> permanently doomed.  Do you seriously think, that a Teleki committed
> suicide because the Foehn?

Gosh, you seriously mean that Teleki didn't commit suicide because of
the Foehn Wind? Could this also mean that Judy Garland, Adolf Hitler,
thousands of prison inmates world-wide, huge numbers of gays and other
"socially criminalized" people, large numbers of war veterans, the
disproportionate numbers of comedians, etc, etc, also did not commit
suicide because of the Foehn! Far out, man!! BTW I'm sure glad that
I have not been living in Hungary (the worst place on this planet) for
the last 500 years. Phew!

<the rest of Charles' brilliant epistle snipped; it's just too much, man>..

--
George Szaszvari, DCPS Chess Club, 42 Alleyn Park, London SE21 7AA, UK
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy * ICPUG..C=64 * ARM Club..Acorn * NWLCC