Download or read book The Great Escape written by Kati Marton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “intensely gripping story” of John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Arthur Koestler, and six other world-renowned Hungarian Jews who fled the Nazis (The Washington Post Book World). In this book, New York Times–bestselling author Kati Marton tells the stunning tale of nine men who grew up in Budapest’s brief Golden Age, then, driven from Hungary by anti-Semitism, fled to the West, especially to the United States, and changed the world. These nine men, each celebrated for individual achievements, were part of a unique group who grew up in a time and place that will never come again. Four helped usher in the nuclear age and the computer, two were major movie myth-makers, two were immortal photographers, and one was a seminal writer. From a Peabody Award–winning journalist and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, The Great Escape is a groundbreaking, poignant American story and an important untold chapter of the tumultuous last century. “Describes the crossroads where art and politics meet, the perils of dictatorship and the horrors of war, all of it punctuated by the frantic struggle to create the atomic bomb. . . . Deserves a special place on bookshelves alongside Budapest 1900.” —The New York Times Book Review “By looking at these nine lives—salvaged, and crucial—Marton provides a moving measure of how much was lost.” —The New Yorker “[Marton has] a keen understanding of what it means to leave one’s country behind.” —The Seattle Times “A haunting tale of the wartime Hungarian diaspora. . . . Marton writes beautifully.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Filled with a number of wonderful anecdotes.” —Chicago Sun-Times “An engrossing book.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Budapest Exit written by Csaba Teglas and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Csaba Teglas was confronted with the Nazi invasion of Hungary during World War II, the Soviet occupation following the Allied victory, and finally with the opportunity to escape the oppressive regime during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he responded not with fear, indecision, or submission, but with courage, ingenuity, and hope. In Budapest Exit: A Memoir of Fascism, Communism, and Freedom, Teglas begins with the story of his childhood in Hungary. During the war, the dramatic changes that took place in his country intensified with the invasion of the Nazis. The Nazis' defeat after the terrifying siege of Budapest should have led to freedom, but for Hungary it meant occupation by the Soviets, who were often little better than the fascists. A twelve-year-old friend of Teglas was forced to watch the brutal gang rape of a Jewish family member by the same Soviet soldiers who liberated her from the Nazis. Despite the difficulties of life in Budapest, Teglas met the challenge when sustenance of the family fell on his young shoulders. One of the innovative ways he earned money was to employ his playments to extract ball bearings from wrecked tanks and other military vehicles that he then sold to factories. He also sold rubber rings cut from bicycle tubes to use as canning seals. Before the communists solidified their rule, Teglas obtained admission to the Technical University of Budapest, where he earned a degree despite constant interference in the University by the communists. The following years under the Stalinist dictatorship were the harshest, and Teglas and his family and friends lived in constant fear; some were even subjected to the communist jails and torture chambers. But rather than standing idly by, Teglas protested, sometimes quietly, sometimes more vocally, against the Soviet and communist presence in Hungary. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Teglas became more involved in the opposition to the communists. When it became clear that the revolutionaries were not going to succeed, he knew he had to leave Hungary to avoid retaliation for his involvement. Teglas recounts his dramatic escape through the heavily guarded Iron Curtain and his subsequent emigration to North America, where life an an immigrant presented new challenges. Teglas compares the genocide and tragedies of Nazi order in World War II and of communist rule to recent international events and ethnic cleansing in Central and Eastern Europe, including the former Yugoslavia. He also highlights the failure of the West to stop the war in Bosnia expediently and the possible far-reaching consequences of a "peace" treaty that aims to satisfy the demands of the aggressors while ignoring the rights of others in the Balkans. Even more, though, this memoir is Csaba Teglas's personal story of his youth, told from the point of view of a man with sons of his own. He found in America the freedom for which he had been searching, but he has raised his American sons to remain proud of their Hungarian heritage.

Download or read book Escape to Budapest written by Peter Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why not plan your own escape to Budapest? Budapest is still a relatively undiscovered gem. The Hungarian capital is listed as the second most beautiful city in the world. Hungary's economy has been the fastest growing in Europe for the past five years.Budapest is also a more affordable destination than most with plenty to see and do. It also lacked a single travel book until now. You can also move there, like the author and his wife. It's all in this book. How to renovate an apartment. Make new friends. Hidden places to visit. Cultural highlights. The story of Budapest coffeehouses. The Grand Hotels of Budapest. Great restaurants. Why the city is booming. How to become a part of it. From handling eccentric neighbours to controlling a renovation project by email, and exploring the complex history of this city - two lost world wars, two communist revolutions, the Holocaust, the Battle of Budapest, Hungarian Uprising and Prime Minister Orban's reformist government - there is so much to learn.This is where Emperor Marcus Aurelius defended the Roman Empire from the barbarian hordes. Where Mongol tribes - whose bizarre language is still more difficult to learn than Japanese - first pitched their tents a thousand years ago. The story involves quite a few crossovers with Oxford University where the author studied, and economic and political insights into modern Hungary, a magnet for non-EU immigration, rather contrary to its misleading reputation. Budapest is full of surprises. Read about them here.

Download or read book Strangers in Budapest written by Jessica Keener and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Jessica Keener has written a gorgeous, lyrical, and sweeping novel about the tangled web of past and present. Suspenseful, perceptive, fast-paced, and ultimately restorative.” —Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue Budapest: gorgeous city of secrets, with ties to a shadowy, bloody past. It is to this enigmatic European capital that a young American couple, Annie and Will, move from Boston with their infant son shortly after the fall of the Communist regime. For Annie, it is an effort to escape the ghosts that haunt her past, and Will wants simply to seize the chance to build a new future for his family. Eight months after their move, their efforts to assimilate are thrown into turmoil when they receive a message from friends in the US asking that they check up on an elderly man, a fiercely independent Jewish American WWII veteran who helped free Hungarian Jews from a Nazi prison camp. They soon learn that the man, Edward Weiss, has come to Hungary to exact revenge on someone he is convinced seduced, married, and then murdered his daughter. Annie, unable to resist anyone’s call for help, recklessly joins in the old man’s plan to track down his former son-in-law and confront him, while Will, pragmatic and cautious by nature, insists they have nothing to do with Weiss and his vendetta. What Annie does not anticipate is that in helping Edward she will become enmeshed in a dark and deadly conflict that will end in tragedy and a stunning loss of innocence. Atmospheric and surprising, Strangers in Budapest is, as bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt says, a “dazzlingly original tale about home, loss, and the persistence of love.”

Download or read book DK Eyewitness Top 10 Budapest written by DK Eyewitness and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The elegant city of Budapest comprises two separate towns - medieval Buda on the Danube's western bank and modern Pest on the eastern bank. Your DK Eyewitness Top 10 travel guide ensures that you'll find your way around Budapest with absolute ease. Our regularly updated Top 10 travel guide breaks down the best of Budapest into helpful lists of ten - from our own carefully curated highlights to the best churches and synagogues, art galleries, shops and markets, parks and gardens and, of course, best places to eat and drink. You'll discover: • Eight easy-to-follow itineraries, perfect for a day-trip, a weekend, or a week • Detailed Top 10 lists of Budapest's must-sees, including comprehensive descriptions of the Hungarian Parliament, St Stephen's Basilica, Váci utca, Gellért Hotel and Baths, Margaret Island, Hungarian National Gallery, Mátyás Church, Hungarian State Opera, Hungarian National Museum and the Great Synagogue • Budapest's most interesting areas, with the best places for going out, sightseeing, and shopping • Inspiration for different things to appreciate and enjoy during your trip - including the city's iconic baths and swimming pools, family activities, sights along the Danube, and things to do for free • A laminated pull-out map of Budapest and its environs, plus six full-color neighborhood maps • Streetsmart advice: get ready, get around, be aware of your surroundings and stay safe • A lightweight format perfect for your pocket or bag when you're on the move Looking for more on Budapest's culture, history and attractions? Try our DK Eyewitness Budapest.

Download or read book Budapest Escape written by Bill Rapp and published by Coffeetown Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CIA officer Karl Baier has been running a highly-placed source in the Communist Party and Hungarian government from his post in Vienna for over a year. When he receives a warning that is source is in danger, Baier knows he will have to return to Budapest to find and rescue his agent--if he is even alive. Despite resistance from CIA Headquarters in Washington, Baier and a colleague will have to locate the Hungarian agent, overcome his reluctance and skepticism, dodge Soviet tanks, evade Red Army patrols, escape from KGB prisons, and disobey orders from Washington as they search for a way to freedom. Along the way he will discover support and betrayal where he least expected it.

Download or read book Escape Routes written by Brian McLean and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Last Train to Budapest written by Richard Pekar and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nandor Pekar escaped communist Hungary in 1956. Trained by his father to survive in SAS type fashion for years in the heart of the Zemplen Mountains; when the moment of impact arrived in 1956, Nandor ensured the Russians were faced with a well-organised, fearless populace, which improvised with amazing bravery. This is a story of revenge, patriotism, romance and violence, encompassing an emotional thrilling tidal wave with an unexpected grand finale. Following the bloody battle for freedom, moseying amongst the depression of Budapest's merciless bludgeoned core, Nandor realises there is only one chance to be free. To escape Hungary! It would be his last chance to beat the Russians, and deny them of their intentions to keep him prisoner in his own country.

Download or read book The Bridge at Andau written by James A. Michener and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bridge at Andau is James A. Michener at his most gripping. His classic nonfiction account of a doomed uprising is as searing and unforgettable as any of his bestselling novels. For five brief, glorious days in the autumn of 1956, the Hungarian revolution gave its people a glimpse at a different kind of future—until, at four o’clock in the morning on a Sunday in November, the citizens of Budapest awoke to the shattering sound of Russian tanks ravaging their streets. The revolution was over. But freedom beckoned in the form of a small footbridge at Andau, on the Austrian border. By an accident of history it became, for a few harrowing weeks, one of the most important crossings in the world, as the soul of a nation fled across its unsteady planks. Praise for The Bridge at Andau “Precise, vivid . . . immeasurably stirring.”—The Atlantic Monthly “Dramatic, chilling, enraging.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Superb.”—Kirkus Reviews “Highly recommended reading.”—Library Journal

Download or read book Budapest 1900 written by John Lukacs and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished historian and Budapest native offers a rich and eloquent portrait of one of the great European cities at the height of its powers. Budapest, like Paris and Vienna, experienced a remarkable exfoliation at the end of the nineteenth century. In terms of population growth, material expansion, and cultural exuberance, it was among the foremost metropolitan centers of the world, the cradle of such talents as Bartók, Kodály, Krúdy, Ady, Molnár, Koestler, Szilárd, and von Neumann, among others. John Lukacs provides a cultural and historical portrait of the city—its sights, sounds, and inhabitants; the artistic and material culture; its class dynamics; the essential role played by its Jewish population—and a historical perspective that describes the ascendance of the city and its decline into the maelstrom of the twentieth century. Intimate and engaging, Budapest 1900 captures the glory of a city at the turn of the century, poised at the moment of its greatest achievements, yet already facing the demands of a new age. “Lukacs’s Budapest, like Hemingway’s Paris, is a moveable feast.” —Chilton Williamson “Lukacs’s book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city’s history.” —The New York Review of Books “A reliable account of a beautiful city at the zenith of its prosperity.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Budapest Diary written by Susan Rubin Suleiman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-04-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1993, after the fall of communism and the death of her mother, Suleiman returned to Budapest for a six-month stay. She recounts her ongoing quest for personal history, interweaving it with the stories of present-day Hungarians struggling to make sense of the changes in their individual and collective lives. Suleiman's search for documents relating to her childhood, the lives of her parents and their families, and the Jewish communities of Hungary and Poland takes her on a series of fascinating journeys within and outside Budapest.

Download or read book Vera and the Ambassador written by Vera Blinken and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vera and the Ambassador is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels. Both a behind-the-scenes peek at the operations of a U.S. embassy in a post–Cold War former Soviet satellite and a personal story of a refugee's escape and triumphant return, Vera and Donald Blinken's dual memoir openly details their challenges, setbacks, and victories as they worked in tandem to advance America's interests in Eastern Europe and to restore a former Soviet satellite state to a pre-communist level of prosperity. Hungary in all its cultural glory and historical anguish lies at the heart of this dramatic and deeply personal story. Born in Budapest just prior to World War II, Vera was only five years old when the Germans invaded in 1944. In a harrowing account, she describes how she and her mother managed to survive the atrocities of the war and, in 1950, narrowly escape Soviet-occupied Hungary for the freedom and opportunity of America. Making their way to New York, Vera settled into her adopted country with an indomitable spirit, a vow to become the best American she could be, and a hope of finding some way to give back as a show of gratitude for her good fortune in surviving the destruction of the war. That opportunity came in 1994 when her husband was appointed ambassador to Hungary by President Clinton, just five years into the country's tentative transformation from a command economy and totalitarian government into a market economy and fledgling republic based upon democratic ideals. A former investment banker, Donald might have lacked foreign service experience, but his skills as an administrator and his willingness to try innovative ideas, combined with Vera's knowledge of Hungarian language and culture and her outreach to the Hungarian community, helped them deal head-on with a variety of challenges, including a collapsing economy and the threat of a slide back toward the old ways of communism, and a brutal civil war that raged across the country's southern border in the former Yugoslavia. Replete with colorful characters from the streets of Budapest, humorous scenes at the ambassadorial residence, and accounts of tense high-level diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to Hungary's vote to join NATO, Vera and the Ambassador shows how the Blinkens helped chart a new course for American diplomacy in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, it is also the story of how Hungarians came to see them personally, and memorably, as their Vera and their ambassador.

Download or read book Vanished by the Danube written by Charles Farkas and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany's invasion of Hungary in 1944 marked the end of a culture that had dominated Central Europe from the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. In this poignant memoir, Charles Farkas offers a testament to this vanished way of life—its society, morality, personal integrity, wealth, traditions, and chivalry—as well as an eyewitness account of its destruction, begun at the hands of the Nazis and then completed under the heel of Soviet Communism. Farkas's recollections of growing up in Budapest, a city whose grandeur embraced—indeed spanned—the Danube River; his vivid descriptions of everyday life in Hungary before, during, and after World War II; and his ultimate flight to freedom in the United States remind us that behind the larger historical events of the past century are the stories of the individual men and women who endured and, ultimately, survived them.

Download or read book Enemies of the People written by Kati Marton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned author Kati Marton tells how her journalist parents survived the Nazis in Budapest and were imprisoned by the Soviets.

Download or read book My Escape written by Esther Kando Odescalchi and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-01-08 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of eight young refugees' dramatic escape from Hungary after Russian tanks defeated the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Together, they faced the dangers of the escape: Soviet tanks, secret police and border guards and together they suffered the cold, the rain, the thick mud, the cruel reeds and the hopelessness of being lost in the swamp not knowing whether or not they would end up in the free world or face the menacing arms of Soviet guards. In spite of all the misery, they also experienced the best manifestations of humanity: compassion, love, sacrifice and nobility. These are the memoirs of a teenager in 1956 written right after her escape to Vienna and translated from the original Hungarian document fifty years later without altering a word of the teen's diary. To enable the reader to better understand the sequence of events and see the distances covered during the escape, the writer added pictures and maps.

Download or read book Goodbye To Budapest written by Margarita Morris and published by Margarita Morris. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hungarians live in fear of the dreaded Secret Police. A student-led demonstration soon turns into a bloody battle to overthrow the hated communist regime. People fight with Molotov cocktails, bravery and cunning. They fight for freedom. They fight to survive. A panoramic novel of courage, sacrifice and the indomitable human quest for freedom.

Download or read book Those Glamorous Gabors written by Darwin Porter and published by Blood Moon Productions. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zsa Zsa, Eva and Magda Gabor transferred their glittery dreams and gold-digging ambitions from the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Hollywood. There, these 'Bombshells from Budapest' broke hearts, amassed fortunes, and amused millions of voyeurs through the medium of television, movies and the social registers. This title demonstrates that wit, charm, ruthlessness and beauty can indeed go a long way toward the realisation of the American Dream.