In Memoriam: Jeno Szeredas

12/10/2004 - JENO SZEREDAS, 90, Hungarian Freedom Fighter Federation Founder, AHF Member, and Noted Artist Dies...

Jeno Andras Szeredas, Hungarian political activist and Senator, 1956 Freedom Fighter, Founder of the Freedom Fighters Federation in the United States, poet and artist of rare talent died quietly in his sleep at his daughter's home in Connecticut on November 30. He had just celebrated his 90th birthday.

Born in Iglo, Hungary (now Slovakia) in 1914, Mr. Szeredas was both witness to and active participant in the turmoil sweeping over Europe for the balance of the 20th century. The young Mr. Szeredas spent seven years in Antwerp with uncles, one owner of the Red Star Shipping Line and the other a Dominican monk and doctor working with lepers in the Belgium Congo. During this time his family relocated to what remained of Hungary after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. After high school in Budapest under the tutelage of the Piarist Fathers, he attended the medical University in Debrecen, studying anatomy.

However, his artistic side was calling to him and he left medical school and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, working under Professor Stephan Szonyi, a well-known modern Hungarian artist. He then studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, returning to Budapest to attain a Masters in Fine Art and continuing studies for a Doctorate in Far Eastern Philosophy. He
continued to paint while teaching Fine Art and his art has earned the
highest National Gold medals and awards. His paintings hang in museums in Budapest, Baja and Debrecen; a hundred-page group of silverpoint drawings was commissioned by the Cultural Ministry of Hungary for Pope Pius XI and is in the Vatican collection, and other paintings, wood cuts, engravings and etchings are in various private collections in Europe and the United States.

Politically, Mr. Szeredas fought against tyranny, whether it was the
Nazis in World War II, working in the underground to aid downed Allied pilots or fighting Communism in Hungary after the end of the War. As an outspoken advocate of the Small Landholders Party, he served in the Hungarian Parliament as a Senator. Jailed and tortured by the Communists for his political views, he was freed in time to be an active participant and planner in the 1956 uprising against the Communists.

Forced to flee for his life, he reached the Austrian border and freedom with a Russian bullet in his shoulder. Airlifted by the US Airforce Camp Kilmer in New Jersey in the United States, he went on to found the Freedom Fighters Federation and was active in the American Hungarian Federation and in politics in seeking and sending help to his homeland.

He married Pauline Parke in 1972 and they moved to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, where he found the peace to paint again. He is survived by his wife, a stepdaughter, Polly Kelly and her husband Thomas, two grand daughters, Pia Fontaine and Gabrielle Santos, a step grand son, Thomas Kelly and eleven great grand children.

"Always in my art a sort of sacred inspiration leads me...a Wonderment over ever-changing Nature which brings one near the Great Creator. From the surrounding harmony, God-given talent weaves celestial music. One's earthly being shrinks to nothingness freeing the essence from the body's cage, rising to infinite space and time." Jeno Szeredas.

Further information from Maria I. Wood: makawood@cs.com

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