“If you come to Hungary, do not take our jobs,” the government billboards scream—in Hungarian—a language Syrians cannot read. “If you come to Hungary, obey our laws.” No outsiders welcome; at least not at the cost of the insiders.
In many ways Hungary is a young country. It is only a couple of decades old since the last occupiers left. Now standing on its own, it is trying to work out what it means to be Hungarian. Because it has an extraordinary history, one that is very much alive inside every citizen.
Hungary was founded as a principality in 895. It became a Christian kingdom on Christmas Day in the year 1000 under King Stephen. (Remember the line in Good King Wenceslas: “… on the Feast of Stephen …”? That’s him.)
Given its position in Central Europe, Hungary spent most of the next thousand years torn this way and that by wars and empires. In the last half of the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the second largest (after Russia) in Europe.
Then came the First World War. Austria-Hungary was one of the central powers defeated by the Allies. In the aftermath, under the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary’s borders were reduced by 71 per cent; its population by 68 per cent.
Hungarians now joke that Hungary is the only country surrounded by itself. There are sizeable Hungarian populations in all of the neighbouring states: Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria and Slovenia.
Turbulence followed. Hungary swung between Communism and Facism, initially siding with Germany in the Second World War, although Germany invaded Hungary in 1944 to ensure its loyalty. The Soviets arrived in 1945.
Nearly half a million Jews and 28,000 Roma died during the Second World War. Both of these minorities have been in Hungary for centuries. On top of which Hungary also lost nearly half a million soldiers and civilians. The Soviet era was also difficult: 150,000 Hungarians were imprisoned, thousands were executed, many were deported to labour camps, many died, many were tortured, oppositional thinking was quashed, people treated as insects to maintain Stalin’s rule.
A brief thaw in October 1956: Time magazine named the Hungarian Freedom Fighter its Man of the Year. Demonstrations across the country briefly relieved the Soviet chokehold. There were battles and the inevitable pushback. About 20,000 died in the Uprising against the Soviets.
Nearly a quarter million people left the country as refugees (many using the same routes deployed by Syrians today). Many came to Canada; they enriched the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
History is alive inside each Hungarian; all of its various versions co-exist in some mystical mashing of parallel universes. The memory of the great empire is alive alongside its eviscerated version; the 1956 Revolution is still felt; the Soviet era is fresh. Hungarians collaborated with the Nazis and the Soviets, and also pushed against them at the same time, suffering deeply under both powers. There are contradictions which are true.
It is a fractured memory; proud, self-defensive, self protective; and also caring and careful. Something was ripped from the Hungarian heart in the Trianon Palace in Versailles in 1920. Since then they see themselves more as acted upon by tyrants and others, than acting. Perhaps that is why they seek to reclaim their Hungarian heritage and identity.
Laszlo Pandy escaped Hungary to save his life. He was a free thinker, a dangerous thing in the 1940s. He was caught, tortured for many months in a house of terror in Budapest. There was to be a trial to damn him for sedition against the state. His accusers never showed; he was released and he cut a path that many others would take six years later.
Through machinations that can only be understood as God’s constant nudging, Pandy found himself with his wife in Canada in 1950, a farm worker, his body spent, his spirit low.
A saviour appeared in the form of Rev. Russell Hall, a Presbyterian minister. A deep
friendship developed, and Pandy, a Reformed Christian from a Soviet nation that still held to its faith, went to seminary to become a minister of the Canadian Presbyterian Church.
His timing was fortuitous as refugees from his homeland arrived in Delhi, Ont. Along with his wife, Piroska, they nurtured many Hungarians in the church. They had four children.
Laszlo’s son, Dr. David Pandy-Szekeres, has been a Presbyterian Church mission worker in Hungary and Ukraine for more than a decade. He was named recipient of the E.H. Johnson Award in 2001 for his outstanding missionary work.
Pandy-Szekeres has funded, founded, administered, managed and taught at many schools, daycares and seminaries. His wife, Anna, has been an instrumental part of many of these education ministries. Together they have birthed and rebirthed four Christian schools, and taught hundreds, many of whom are now pastors across Hungary and Ukraine.
Although raised in Canada, Pandy-Szekeres is very much a Hungarian, known equally well to bishops and villagers. He lives in the north-east town of Sarospatak and travels regularly to Ukraine. He is well known to border guards.
Pandy-Szekeres’s work includes teaching at and supporting the 482-year-old Sarospatak Reformed Theological Academy. It was repurposed for five decades under Soviet rule, finally reopening as a Reformed high school and seminary in 1990.
Through other programs, and along with his wife, Pandy-Szekeres has touched (just to give one small example of his wide reaching ministry) the life of a young Roma woman who is the first in her family to learn to read and write. Working in a day care (supported by and through one of Pandy-Szekeres’ various connections) and holding a baby in her lap, she proudly speaks about teaching her father to read and write, and expresses hopes she will one day become a teacher.
I was travelling with Rev. Karen Horst, moderator of this year’s assembly, along with her husband Rev. Rick Horst (a past moderator) and Rev. Glynis Williams, associate secretary of International Ministries, and herself a moderator-nominee. Our host and driver was Dr. David Pandy-Szekeres.
As PCC delegates we saw how our denomination reaches deep into the many contradictions of the Hungarian soul, via Pandy-Szekeres, from the reconstitution of ancient institutions, particularly the presence and continued work of the Reformed Church of Hungary, to the opportunities and renewed lives given to the poor, the underprivileged and the ostracized. Not for the first time, in the company of our mission workers, I felt I was watching miracles unfold.
