Sixty Years Ago, A Different Refugee Crisis

by Doug Howard. My teacher, Gustav Bayerle, died in October. Watching the unfolding refugee crisis this winter has reminded me of Gustav’s experiences, sixty years ago in another refugee crisis, brought on by the 1956 Hungarian revolution. When the revolution was suppressed by the tanks and troops of the Soviet army, nearly 200,000 people left …

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base of a large statue with only feet remaining on the pedestal

The Presence of the Past in Eastern Europe

by Hailey De Jong. Eva Kiss, our Hungarian professor of Communist history, yanked down the screen in front of the classroom and projected old film footage of the violent, anti-Communist revolution in Timișoara, a large city in western Romania. It was an apt conclusion to her lecture series on the 1989 Revolution in Romania, and …

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