My wife Zsuzsanna saw this comment on the Denis Matyajaszek thread:

When the Kremlin turned on Hungary and Czechoslovakia, they did that with "fiendly" (sic) tanks to save the people from kapitalism. I shall nerver (sic) forget 1956,what they did to my country, Hungary!!!Posted by Tessa Hegedus on August 11, 2008 6:44 PM

Here's Zsuzsanna's reply:

Tessa, I am Magyar too, and I too will never forget what the Soviet Union did to my country. They liberated it from the Nazis and by doing so saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other anti-Nazis. Never forget that Hungary took part in Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 alongside the Nazis. The aggression was first from Hungary, not from Russia, and I say this as a Hungarian.Posted by Zsuzsanna Clark on August 11, 2008 7:08 PM

In the anti-Russian hysteria of the moment, it's important to get the facts right.

I might also add a personal note: during my time living in Hungary in the 1990s, I rented a flat from a Jewish landlord, an erudite and kindly man who became my good friend. Every year on the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Hungary he would go to the Russian cemetery and lay a wreath. Had the Russians not arrived when they did- he and his family simply wouldn't be alive. I'd like to see someone explain to him that the Soviet Army in 1945 was not an army of liberation.

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