A lyukas zászló hung on Leonardo da Vinci Street in central Budapest. (Nov. 1956) Credit: Fortepan.hu / Colorization: Patrick C. Leech On October 23, 1956, university students in Budapest, Hungary organized a march in solidarity with the anti-Soviet events in Poland. The students were joined by workers and other residents of Budapest and eventually over 20,000 people …
As my time in Budapest comes to an end, I find myself returning to some the places with special meaning, one of which is the “Shoes of the Danube Bank” Memorial. I find this simple memorial quite moving, and despite the inhumanity of its historical antecedents there is something deeply human about the place. Along …
Continue reading Jane Haining, Stolpersteines, and Bearing Witness
Early this week I travelled to Debrecen (in Northeastern Hungary) to present at a conference at the University of Debrecen. The conference went well, I met great scholars and received immensely helpful feedback on my research. My trip began at the Nyugati Pályaudvar (Western Train Station) in Budapest. It is a striking structure build by Gustave Eiffel …
One of the most common complaints I have heard about historians is that they do not simply “tell what happened” they bring their own interpretations to the past. In some ways that is correct, yet it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding about the past. In prior posts I described the role of memory and …
One of my favorite moments when teaching history is when a student realizes the way a specific event in the past directly affects them. The American Historical Association is fond of the phrase “Everything has a History.” Yet this disconnect between past and present is rather foreign to Hungarian culture, a notable example of this …
Continue reading The Treaty of Trianon (1920) & the Memorial of National Unity (2020)
Patrick C. Leech 