Every decent person who loves his Hungarian country is obliged to protest so that no one can appropriate the spirit of '56. Written by János Varga.
As someone who participated armed in the freedom struggle, as a convict, and as the president of the World Hungarian Federation in 1956, I protest against the appropriation of the holed Hungarian flag for political purposes.
I took an active part in the fighting, during the Corvin, at the age of sixteen - for which I was sentenced to 13 years in prison. I spent six and a half years out of that, they let me go home sick.
I think that gives me the right to protest.
I remember that the parade began in the afternoon of October 23, 1956 in Budapest:
here, for the first time, you could see someone cutting out the hated Rákosi coat of arms from the heart of the national flag with a knife. Since then, it has become a symbol of the '56 revolution.
No one has the right to appropriate this symbol and it should not be allowed.
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Every decent person who loves his Hungarian country is obliged to protest so that no one can appropriate the spirit of '56.
I would like to remind you that we had a vow with Mária Wittner, my comrade-in-arms and co-accused, who has since passed away, that we would cover the coffins of our deceased comrades with a flag with holes in them during the mourning ceremony.
When they let the coffin into the ground, we never buried the flag with it, but folded it up and handed it over to the relatives so that they could bury it for posterity as a relic...
This is what the flag means to us.
Featured Image: City Courier
