I was born in America in 1962, to parents who fled Hungary after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. October 23, anniversary of the outbreak of the revolution, was a holiday for both my family and the broader Hungarian community - a day for commemorating Hungary’s heroic struggle for freedom and justice. Growing up I pored over Life Magazine’s special issue on the revolution until the pages all but fell from their binding. My heroes were the women freedom fighters. I felt fate had been unfair; had I been born in let’s say 1938 instead of 1962, I could have been among their ranks.

Then in 1980, I decided to go to Hungary, then still part of the Soviet bloc, to begin college. Our Hungarian friends in America thought it amusing that I was “defecting backwards.” I attended the Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Humanities with a major in ethnography.

There I discovered that my new friends and classmates knew nothing, or very little about ’56, this cathartic moment of their own history. It was as though the revolution had never happened.

Then around 1985, as if from some secret underground spring, the desire to know and remember the truth slowly broke the surface of collective memory.

The first time I attended a demonstration was on October 23, 1987. From then on I felt it was my duty, my moral obligation, to document the activities of the opposition. I had much less to lose than they did, as I was an American citizen. The worst thing that could happen to me was to be expelled from the country. 

In 1990, I laid my camera to rest after photographing the first Parliamentary session of the first democratically elected National Assembly following the fall of communism. I had never wanted to be a photojournalist and was not that interested in politics. I accomplished what I had set out to do, what my moral sense of duty had demanded of me. My mission was accomplished. I had done it with all my heart.