Looking Back: AHF since 1906

Shortcuts:

• "In the Beginning" - Unity Between the Nations: Budapest's George Washington Statue, 1906
• "Justice for Hungary" - an Historic Transatlantic Flight, 1931
• The "Movement for Independent Hungary," 1941 - 1942
• The Kossuth Bust in the U.S. Capitol, March 15, 1989
• The Szabadka Initiative (MÁÉRT), 2005
• WWII and the American Hungarian Relief Program, 1945

"In the Beginning" - Unity Between the Nations
by Bryan Dawson

In 1902 a movement started to build a Kossuth statue in Cleveland spearheaded by the "Szabadság" Hungarian language newspaper and its editor Kohányi Tihamér. The needed funds were raised within few short weeks. Some 60,000 people attended the unveiling, but there were no representatives from Hungary.

As a sign of unity between the nations, Hungarian-American leaders conceived an idea to place a statue of George Washington in Budapest.

The newly established AHF and its "Statue Committee" was organized and construction began on a site in Budapest's beautiful City Park (Város Liget). In 1906, several hundred Hungarian-Americans traveled to Hungary for the unveiling led by AHF's first President, Kohányi Tihamér. [read more]

"Justice for Hungary" - an Historic Transatlantic Flight
by Bryan Dawson

July, 1931, newspapers all over the world reported on the front page that two Hungarian pilots, Alexander Magyar and George Endresz (Endres), had crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the United States to Hungary in a Lockheed-Sirius airplane named "Justice for Hungary." The flight was intended to call attention to the dismemberment of Hungary after World War I. It was a spectacular success. On July 15, 1931, the trans-Oceanic flight left Harbor-Grace for Budapest on a non-stop flight of twenty-six hours. The historic flight took 26 hours and 20 minutes (Charles Lindbergh's flight in 1927 took six hours longer) and marked the first time that an airplane crossing the ocean had radio contact both with the starting and landing aerodromes. It was also the first time such a flight was used for political purposes. The pilots were received as heroes in Budapest.

Where did this idea come from? [read more]

AHF, Tibor Eckhardt, and the "Movement for Independent Hungary," 1941 - 1942: Seeking to extract Hungary from the Axis sphere - by Bryan Dawson and Katalin Kádár Lynn, Ph.D.

On the 31st of December 1940, the Amerikai Magyar Népszava, the most influential Hungarian language daily at the time, published a front-page editorial headlined “The Hour has Struck.” The editorial proclaimed that it was the “the historic mission of Americans of Hungarian origin to give voice to the cries of the silenced people of Hungary and to give their whole hearted effort to the liberation of their mother country which is clubbed into submission by the Nazi terror.”

The editorial called upon the American Hungarian Federation to unfurl the banner of a Free Hungary Movement without hesitation or delay. In January 1941 AHF 's Executive Committee sent a letter to President Roosevelt expressing the loyalty of the Hungarian-American populace and proclaiming,“The Executive Committee of the [AHF] as representative of the American citizens of Hungarian origin…consider it our sacred duty to lead a movement for the preservation of an independent Hungary for the freedom of it’s people.” [read more]

The Kossuth Bust in the United States Capitol by Bryan Dawson...

"The spirit of our age is Democracy. All for the  people and all by the people. Nothing about the people, without the people. That is Democracy, and that is the ruling tendency of the spirit of our age." - Louis Kossuth, spoken before the Ohio State Legislature, February 16, 1852, more than a decade before Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

The American Hungarian Federation commisioned a bronze bust of Lajos Kossuth and presented it to U.S. Congress. The dedication ceremony took place on  March 15, 1990, Hungarian National Day, under the magnificent dome of the Capitol Rotunda. The bust is one of only two honoring non-Americans in the  Capitol.  The base reads, "Louis Kossuth, Father of Hungarian Democracy." [read more]

The Szabadka Initiative (MÁÉRT)
by Bryan Dawson

AHF attended this historic meeting and signed a joint declaration by ethnic Hungarian political parties and human rights organizations from successor atates in an appeal to the Hungarian Government for more coherent support, coordinated planning, and dual citizenship. AHF was among fifteen organizations from Europe, North America, and Latin America that met January 5-6, 2005 in Szabadka (Subotica) in the Vajdaság (Vojvodina), a formerly autonomous region in Serbia-Montenegro, and joined forces to persuade the Hungarian Government to coordinate with them efforts aimed at assisting ethnic Hungarians living as national minorities in Rumania, Slovakia, Serbia- Montenegro, Ukraine, Croatia, and Slovenia. The meeting marked the first time ethnic Hungarian political organizations met independently of the Hungarian government. [read more]

WWII and the American Hungarian Relief Program
by Bryan Dawson

National organizations, as well as countless local ones lent assistance in every way possible. The Verhovay Insurance Association (a founder of AHF who would later become the William Penn Association) and the American Hungarian Federation purchased ambulances for the American Red Cross. In 1945 Hungarian-Americans organized large-scale relief programs to help alleviate the sufferings of their countrymen in war-ravaged Hungary.

The American Hungarian Relief Program, under the auspices of the American Hungarian Federation, collected and sent $1,216,167.00 in clothing, medicine, foodstuffs and money. In all, 200,000 care packages were sent by countless local and national groups. The greatest benefactors of the movement were: Mrs. László Széchényi (née Gladys Vanderbilt), Lajos Szánthó, president of the Virginia Kentucky Tobacco Company and Daniel Szantay, president of the Santay Corporation. Total estimated costs of the relief program exceeded three million dollars. [read more]

The 1907 Kohányi Szózat (Appeal)

“Amerika egy millió magyarja, nemcsak hogy követeljük, de keresztül is visszük azt, hogy Magyarország népének ugyanabban a szabadságban, ugyanabban az igazságban, ugyanabban a jólétben legyen resze, mint a mely szabadság, igazság, es jólét abban az Amerikában van amelynek lakósai, polgárai vagyunk.”

“We, America’s 1 million Hungarians, do not just demand, but will work to ensure that the people of Hungary may partake in the same freedom, the same justice, the same prosperity as we, citizens of America, partake.”
- Kohanyi Tivadar, AHF President, 1907

AHF 100 YEARS DISPLAY
(click on each image for a larger version)

AHF in the Beginning:
1906 and Budapest's
George Washington Memorial
[read more]

AHF and the "Justice for
Hungary" movement calling
attention to the tragedy of Trianon
[read more]

AHF, Tibor Eckhardt, and
the "Free Hungary Movement"
seeking to extract Hungary
from the Axis sphere
[read more]

AHF Honoring our
Heroes at the Arlington
National Cemetery

AHF and the Kossuth
Bust in the US Capitol
[read more]

AHF as a watchdog for
human rights in Rumania

AHF as a watchdog for
human rights in Vojvodina
and the MÁÉRT movement

AHF as a watchdog for
human rights in Carpatho-Ukraine:
The Divided Village of Szelmenc

AHF relief efforts during WWII
[read more]

AHF relief efforts during
the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

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