‘In the end, Ferenc Fiala’s story resists simple moral judgment, revealing how ideology, ambition, and personal conscience could collide in deeply unsettling ways—yet it also forces us to confront the fact that, despite his acts of rescue, he remained a committed Nazi to the end.’
‘It is a fact that if there are enigmatic figures in 20th-century Hungarian history, Kálmán Rátz is certainly among them.’
‘Even in 2015, when the PiS government came to power, individuals with communist pedigrees were still numerous within the less visible but essential layers of state administration, the judiciary, the economy, NGOs, and the media. Today these networks are returning…The goal is clear: to maintain control over social and state institutions regardless of electoral outcomes.’
On 23 August, Europe observes the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. The European Network Remembrance and Solidarity’s (ENRS) campaign ‘Remember. 23 August’ highlights intergenerational trauma and courage in the face of oppression, offering expert insights, short films, and educational resources.
‘There are plenty of [contemporary] artists at home who are prepared and would otherwise fit in with the trend, but as it costs a lot to bring and keep their work here, [they] cannot really be present…they would rather have it in their portfolio that their work was out in New York.’
‘The normalization of the targeting of Israel leads to the normalization of the targeting of Jews,’ State Secretary Péter Sztáray warned during a commemoration held on Holocaust Memorial Day. Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 564,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, representing more than two-thirds of the country’s Jewish community at the time.
‘Borsa first came to the attention of state security in 1960, and from 1962 onward, he became a target of internal counterintelligence under the code name “Milliomos” (Millionaire). Initially, he was monitored within the group file titled “Együttműködők” (The Collaborators), and later a personal file was opened on him.’
‘4 April was a day of paying fealty to the “Heroic Army of the Soviets” and celebrating the military force upholding the Iron Curtain. Celebrating the same army that plundered its way through our homeland, and the system that was born from it, be it already watered down by the 70s and 80s: it was a holiday that never quite fit into the organic Hungarian tradition.’
‘The final assessment in terms of the policy of appeasement would be that at the diplomatic and political level, the allies did indeed achieve their goals of buying time, mobilizing, as well as isolating Germany in the first months of the war from either Japan or Italy. They made Germany dependent on Soviet resources to sustain short-term operations, and pushed its economy on the brink of collapse.’
‘In recent years, articles mentioning this aspect of her life have almost exclusively referenced “Xavér” in this context. While we do not intend to question this moral judgment of her activities as an informant, it is important to recognize that before she became “Xavér”, Benoschofsky was also a victim of the Rákosi regime. Her arrest and interrogation left behind a chilling 284-page dossier.’
At a time when public debate is increasingly polarized and superficial, Hungarian Conservative remains committed to depth and independent thought.
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