#politics Spoiler.. Sebbies father was 14, not a big war hero, and the people fighting the communists in his story were nazi aligned. Anyone ever hear of the Budapest ghetto? Yeah. That.
probably because you were nazis.. moral of the story, Sebastian, is to stop being a nazi.
@AnnetteTRemain I don't know this guy but my mom was there too at roughly 14 years old. My grandfather was imprisoned during the revolt, my grandmother was sent to the countryside, and my mom and aunt fled to Vienna. I do know that there were still some far right factions and Nazi sympathizers but they were a tiny minority after 11 years. The saddest part about that period is that it may have been for nothing. Hungary eventually returned to fascism under Orban. The lessons are forgotten...
@AnnetteTRemain or are you talking about during the war?
@hallmarc They can't gloss over the ugliness of what happened in WWII. Just like Americans can't gloss over indian wars, slavery, eugenices, american bund, klan, etc. It is what it is. Sebastian romanticizes the part about fighting for Axis.
@AnnetteTRemain didn't know about his history but just read some of it. As with everything, Hungarian history during that time is complicated. For example, there's something to be said about Horthy's govt resisting deportations all the way until 1944. That in fact probably saved part of my family (and smarts on my grandfather and great grandmother's part). We know that Hungary primarily joined the Axis to regain territory and prestige lost in WWI. But fascism was already afoot. /1
@AnnetteTRemain it's impossible to know what would have happened had Hungary tried to remain neutral or join the allies. It was extremely perilous for eastern countries. One thing I do know is that all of my relatives who survived stated that the Soviet allied govt was unequivocally worse than the Nazis (counterintuitive I know). They stripped the country of most of its private businesses and terrorized the population on a regular basis. My grandfather was picked up twice and held for days.
@hallmarc @AnnetteTRemain Indeed. I had a cousin whose wife and children were shot by the Nazis in front of him, who was imprisoned in a concentration camp, escaped only to be captured by the Russians, and said the same--that the Russians were worse than the Nazis.
@Notokay @AnnetteTRemain not that it's a competition but more than half my grandparents friends and family in their generation were killed by the Nazis, including my grandfather's cousin who was gunned down with her baby and his mother who launched herself at the man in grief and rage. My grandfather himself twice escaped attempts to send him to camps, once by bribing an officer with a worthless briefcase, crawling out a bathroom window, and jumping under a personnel truck. He died of cancer.
@hallmarc Rest in peace to your grandfather 🕊️ @Notokay