Bela Kiraly was someone who I knew and respected as a history colleague in New York.
Kiraly was a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. That autumn I had begun my graduate studies in the history of international relations at Fordham University in The Bronx. I had a lecture course and a seminar with Professor Oskar Halecki, the leading historian of Poland and Danubian Europe. I arrived there having majored in diplomatic history at Georgetown University with the department chairman, Professor Tibor Kerekes. Kerekes also was faculty advisor of the International Relations Club of which I had been secretary and president. I had aided Kerekes in a research project on the Communist take over of East European countries, which was published by a committee of the House of Representatives. Kerekes had been the aide-de-camp of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and was present when Serb terrorists assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and his wife in Sarajevo, causing World War I. After losing an arm at the front, Kerekes became Hungarian tutor to Archduke Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the new emperor, Karl. At Georgetown, Kerekes continued involvement in Hungarian affairs including the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution.
The Revolution in Hungary followed one in Poland in which the Stalinist leaders were replaced by a former leader deposed for seeking a Polish nationalist line. The earlier Stalinist purge in Hungary had been particularly brutal. Bela Kiraly had fought in World War II against the Soviets. He was captured and escaped by foot over the Carpathian Mountains. Kiraly was made a general in 1950 and jailed for spying for the US in 1951 in the purges. In October, 1956 the former Communist leader who was restored, released all the political prisoners. Kiraly went into a hospital to recover from the imprisonment. He was appointed commander of the Hungarian National Guard and the Soviet troops were withdrawn from Hungary. But then U. S. and other powers were distracted by the invasion of Suez by French, British and Israeli forces. Soviet troops re-invaded Hungary, and Kiraly and his aides were able to cross into Austria, and then to the U. S.
At that point one of Kiraly’s aides, Major Janos Deci, joined Halecki’s seminar. One memorable episode was of Deci driving in New Brunswick, New Jersey, which had a major Hungarian population. He was stopped by a black traffic policeman and Deci began to curse in Magyar. The policeman responded in Magyar having grown up in a Hungarian neighborhood. Deci had early exposure to the nature of America. Kiraly enrolled in Columbia University and became a professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. In June, 1989 General Kiraly returned to Budapest as a special guest at the re-burial of the executed leaders of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1990 he was an elected a member of the Hungarian parliament.
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