During the great show trials of the late 1940s and 1950s, the Communists often held small ‘side trials’, which provided ample opportunity to extract and collect further compromising data and testimonies against the primary targets, as well as to conduct silent showdowns and to set the course for later trials. This is how the Archbishop Grősz trial led to the arrest and imprisonment of some 50 people, including well-known Hungarian monarchists.

As Szentendre is located only a short distance from Budapest, the town is a perfect destination for a day trip—especially during the winter holiday season.

There is a myriad of Christmas carols, some of which come and go, but there is one familiar song that has been consistently among the top favourites of everyone who celebrates Christmas—and that is Silent Night.

The Hungarian comedy The Corporal and the others features a group of Hungarian soldiers who defected and who are bound together by a common objective— to survive World War II. The humorous and entertaining movie full of unexpected twists and turns is a great comedy to watch while preparing for Christmas.

Under the housing scheme, six thousand flats were handed over to families living in wagons in Budapest alone, and nearly two hundred in country towns such as Miskolc.

A 2020 study found that snow during the winter holiday season was the most frequent in the 1930s and the 1960s, while nowadays there are significantly fewer white Christmases in Hungary. The rise in global average temperatures is most likely behind this phenomenon.

To mark the visit of the Spanish royal family in 1908, one of the most respected architects of the time, Géza Maróti, designed a monumental, yet temporary triumphal arch—the grand procession passed through this arch, then after crossing the Chain Bridge, it arrived to its final destination at the Buda Castle.

‘The reconstruction of the palace under the Rákosi and Kádár eras ruined a nearly thousand-year-old tradition, inflicting a wound on the inner strength that unites our community, on our self-confidence and on our physical heritage.’

Just as some Christians had trouble accounting for their role in the 1918 Aster Revolution and the 1919 Communist coup d’état, some Jews also had difficulty facing their former position in terms of these events.

The drama set in December 1944 under the Arrow Cross rule in Budapest presents viewers with a thought-provoking moral dilemma about the importance of human dignity.

Zadar was a Western Christian town with a rich history, and at that time it was once again under the authority of Emeric (Imre in Hungarian), King of Hungary (1196–1204), who himself had taken the crusader’s vow.

Muslims do have an incredible veneration for the Mother of Jesus, as expressed in Persian art. However, there are two ‘Marys’: the Blessed Mother of Christ, and Maryam (Miryam), the prophetess of the Old Testament.

The world-famous Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, and creator of the Kodály method was born 140 years ago on this day.

There is little political will on the part of the European left-wing parties to speak out against dangerous ideas. They often have their eye on winning the ‘Muslim vote’, and as a result, they are reluctant to engage in confrontation.

In a referendum on 14 December 1921, the town of Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary, for which it has been celebrated as the town of loyalty and freedom ever since.

The Indo-Pacific is not only a geographical region but a strategic concept as well. The stability and the prosperity of the countries in the Indo-Pacific depend on the freedom and the order in the region. The elephant in the room is China.

The majority of the refugees were intellectuals, mostly from Transylvania, followed by those from what is Slovakia, Serbia and Austria today, but there were also some who fled to Hungary from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Nativity plays and nativity scenes are an integral part of Hungarian Christmas traditions.

Hungarian Christmas markets regularly make it to the top of European rankings as the country prepares for the festive season.

It is a unique Hungarian Christmas tradition to decorate the Christmas tree with szaloncukor or ‘parlour candies’. This delicious Christmas treat is inseparable from the festive season in Hungary.

A good politician comes to power with a ‘government of his friends’ already in his mind. The book emphasizes the concept of ‘friends’, because when you want to run a government, you have to appoint people to key positions, who have to be people that you as a leader trust.

The defence mechanism of the Christian world was triggered incredibly quickly in 1241, but due to various conflicts of interest, mostly international, it slowed down just as quickly and then became totally paralyzed.

In the second part of our series, we will examine another pillar of the Coptic Church that arguably played an even greater role in the history of Christianity as a whole.

Studies have found that the belief in a supranatural being that watches our decisions encourage prosocial behaviour and therefore, contributes to large-scale societal cooperation.

Tibor Baranski saved the lives of no less than three thousand Hungarian Jews according to Yad Vashem in Israel, but the actual number could be as many as twelve to fifteen thousand.

Aversion to work was not unique to the leaders of the emigration. After a while, Mihály Révész, a social-democratic journalist in exile, had enough of living abroad and tried to get a job in Budapest. But when his left-wing friends found him a job as a manual worker, he turned it down, indignantly declaring ‘I won’t be a street sweeper’.

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka is now recognized as one of the greatest Hungarian painters who ever lived. The artist’s work, however, was discovered only a decade after he died in poverty.

The gap between reality and the striving for a pure Christian social life angered many conservative public figures in the Horthy era. In his diary, Prohászka wrote that for Hungarian men, ‘using a prostitute is like drinking a cup of coffee’.

On 23–27 November, the Vienna Book Fair featured thousands of fresh publications and hundreds of high-profile events with more than 500 authors and experts from around the world.

In this article we describe ten wonderful places in Budapest where you can relax a little in the last month of 2022.