Building community and connection, keeping the memory of 1956 alive, engaging the next generation of Hungarian Americans, advocating for the interests of the Hungarian ethnic communities in Europe and building bridges between Washington and Budapest: this is the mission that Andrea Rice Lauer and HACUSA tirelessly pursue.

The 1956ers were mostly young and eager to prove their worth…A child immigrant, George Szirtes is now a well-known British poet, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. A young medical student who was offered a place in Oxford’s famous Merton College after his arrival, later became one of the world’s leading molecular cardiologists. György Radda went on to head the British Medical Research Council, and on his retirement in 2000 the Queen made him a Knight of the British Empire.