An extraordinary life blessed with unshakeable faith, dedicated to selflessly serving the community: meet Dr. István Horváth, a pillar of the New Brunswick Hungarian American community, and his family.

‘I know that if I ask God for something, I will eventually get it. But that doesn’t mean my prayers are only for asking. There are some who feel that being Catholic is only about asking and they are disappointed when they don’t receive what they prayed for. But it doesn’t work that way. I say a long prayer every night to give thanks for all that I have,’ says István Horváth in a profound and moving conversation with our Diaspora correspondent.

An in-depth interview with Dr. Judit Tamás, who arrived in America thirty years ago as a kindergarten teacher, and after moving to North Carolina, founded the Carolinas Hungarian Group, organized camps for Hungarians for twenty years, and later launched the popular Online Hungarian School, which she has been running for fifteen years. Nowadays they have 250–300 students from 50 countries.

‘When I heard the saying, “Survivors carry the credentials of the forever silenced”, it really touched me. Due to the values instilled in me by the Hungarian scouts and the Piarists, as well as the American attitude of giving back, it slowly emerged as a conviction that I had a responsibility to help others who were less fortunate.’

‘Knowledge is yours, but if you keep it to yourself, that’s the end of it. On the other hand, if you pass it on to others, you’ll not have less, while others will have more,’ says Judit Kerekes, professor of mathematics and founder of the first Hungarian summer university in the United States.

An in-depth interview with Lél Somogyi, son of c-founder of the Hungarian Association, outstanding scholar and Horthy era government official Ferenc Somogyi, about his father’s legacy, his professional career, his family, and his contributions to the Hungarian American community, not the least as the Secretary-General of the Árpád Academy.

Zsolt Jakabffy answered God’s calling twice: first, when he became a pastor, and then when he moved to California from Transylvania, with the mission of helping the local Hungarian community preserve both their Christian faith and their Hungarian identity. An interview with the reverend who is also the principal of the Hungarian Sunday school,

‘It’s very interesting to see to what extent we can acknowledge the fact that diaspora life automatically implies linguistic and cultural assimilation. There’s a growing geographical dispersion; mobility is very characteristic in North America…In 2018 we finally started to talk…about how we see the community, what our strengths and weaknesses are, what we can learn and what challenges we face.’

An in-depth interview with German teacher Gergely Tóth, who went to the University of Berkeley, California 26 years ago for a doctoral program, then soon became immersed in local Hungarian community life. Since then, his voluntary work has extended from making oral history interviews to photographing objects and markers on four continents and collecting archival material of the Hungarian diaspora.

‘We’ve been approached much more often by local American organizations to present Hungarian culture to various schools or other groups as part of a larger, multicultural performance. These collaborations have been so invigorating for our whole team that we’ve come to the conclusion that this could be the path for us. This was one of our missions in the first place: to open up to others.’