COURAGE

connecting collections

Mrs. Hetényi Varga is the widow and co-author of Károly Hetényi Varga, who herself did research on clericals who had suffered under the dictatorships of the 20^th century. She was born in Szécsény in 1930 as Borbála Varga. After finishing secondary school (1946), she couldn’t continue her studies because of the hard political and economic situation. She later graduated from school and worked at the office of the National Insurance Company. She had to seek treatment at the Korányi Sanatorium (Budapest), because she got tuberculosis in October 1956. She underwent surgery in 1957. After her recovery, she worked at the Sanatorium (1958–1960), where she met Károly Hetényi Varga, who himself sought treatment there. In July 1960, they got married, and soon they had two boys: Péter Pius (1961) and Károly József (1962). Borbála Varga started to work in the surgery in the Komló City Hospital, but after the birth of their first child, she worked as a regional nurse until her retirement. She helped with their husband’s church historical research, typing the audio materials and sorting sorted the documents, which later were edited by her husband. She was the first reader and the first person to correct the manuscripts. After the death of her husband (2002), she offered Hetényi Varga’s collection to the Cistercian Abbey of Kismaros.

Sándor Varga was born in 1942, in Chotín ( Slovakia). He graduated in Komárno, then continued his studies at the Pedagogical Institute in Nitra. He completed his studies at Comenius University in Bratislava and graduated as a historian-archivist. He received his PhD in 1975. He participated in youth organisations while still a student. The first youth organisation of ethinc Hungarians was established in Czechoslovakia in 1964,after the Czechoslovak Union of Youth failed to meet their needs and claims.  Varga was one of the founders of the Hungarian Youth Association [Magar ifjúsági szövetség]. This association (MISZ) was established in 1968 in Bratislava as  a response to the political situation following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The main purpose was to create an independent youth organisation, on that protected the rights of Hungarian youth.  From 1968 to 1970 Varga worked as a secretary in the largest cultural organisation of ethinc Hungarians in Slovakia, CSEMADOK. Until the Velvet Revolution (1989) he worked as archivist in the Slovak National Archives; during this time he remaind the member of CSEMADOK and defended the rights of Hungarians. After the Velvet Revolution, between 1989 and 1990, Varga was the Deputy Prime Minister in the Slovak goverment. While in government, Varga represented the Hungarian independent intiative. This intiative was created as one the most important movements during the Velvet Revolution. It worked closely with Public Against Violence. From 1978 till 1989, Varga was a member of the Hungarian minority’s rights defense committee. The commitee co-worked with some international organisations whose main purpose was to protect human rights. In 1991 he created the Documentary centre of nationalities in Bratislava. The centre’s main purpose was to document the history of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Throughout his life Varga tirelessly defended the rights of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. He also had a big part in maintaning Hungarian cultural heritage in Slovakia. He was not persecuted for his activities.

János Vargha (1949) is a Hungarian biologist, environmentalist, and photographer. He founded and directed the Danube Circle (Duna Kör), a civil movement which opposed the Nagymaros dam project on the Danube River in the 1980s. He completed his studies at the József Attila University of Sciences in Szeged in 1977, after which he worked at the periodical Diver. In 1981, he began to write articles and deliver lectures on environmental issues concerning water management. In 1984, he joined the Duray Committee, a movement which offered criticism of and put up opposition to the Czechoslovak leaderships’ policies against the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. In the same year, he founded the environmentalist movement Danube Circle. Thanks to his efforts, the organization was awarded the alternative Nobel Prize in 1985. This prompted the Hungarian opposition to support environmentalist candidates in the parliamentary elections in 1985. He was dismissed from his workplace, the editorship of the periodical Science, because of his oppositional activities. In 1988, he became the government’s senior advisor on environmental policy. Until 1997, he was the leader of ISTER – East European Environmental Research Foundation. From 1998 to 2000, he was the chief environmental advisor of the Hungarian government. Now he is working as a photographer and web developer.

Vantzeti Vassilev’s problems with State Security began in the 1970s. Because of his "untrustworthy" origins, he was under control by the State Security. Due to this pressure, and unwilling to cooperate with the secret services, Vassilev left his job and started to work as a swineherd in his mother's village, Vranya Stena, in the Pernik district. He used this time to write the autobiographical novel Semenata na straha [The Seeds of Fear] based on personal experiences and stories he gathered from his father and other former prisoners. Out of fear of identifying those who had shared their experiences, he destroyed all relevant notes. In 1988, during a fair held at the Bulgarian-Serbian border, Vantzeti Vassilev escaped to Yugoslavia and from there to Italy. In Italy he worked as a gardener, translator for Russian evangelical immigrants. At the end of 1989, he emigrated to New York, where he worked as a night watchman, painter, construction worker, and truck and taxi driver. 

Vassilev managed to escape with a copy of his manuscript. Another copy, left at home, was recovered in 2016, having been hidden in the ceiling of the old family barn. In New York, Vassilev became an author of memoir novels. There he finished Semenata na straha [The Seeds of Fear], a first-person account of the humiliation and oppression of a young scientist living under the totalitarian regime. The book was published in Sofia in 1991 with the financial support of Open Society Institute, and presented in New York.