COURAGE

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József Kötő (1939–2016) was a senior theatre official, dramaturg, theatre historian, and politician. For about two decades (1965–1985), he was literary secretary of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, then the director of the same institute until 1990. After the change of the political regime in 1989, he acted as a politician representing DAHR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania). He was the president of the Hungarian Cultural Society from Transylvania between 1998 and 2008.

Paulis Kļaviņš (1928-2016) was a Latvian-born religious and political activist, who lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. He studied theology at Bonn University, and afterwards was active in the work of the Pentecostal Church. In 1968, Kļaviņš and his wife Zeltīte read the book ‘Tortured for Christ’ by Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who had been persecuted by the communist regime in Romania, and they were deeply impressed by it. In 1969, Kļaviņš met Wurmbrand, and in 1970 he and his wife started to work for the Christian human rights organisation Hilfsaktion Märtyrer-Kirche (HMK), which was part of the International Christian Mission to the Communist World founded by Wurmbrand. His main activity was working for HMK’s radio station, which broadcast programmes in nine languages in cooperation with the Swedish Pentecostal Church’s IBRA-Radio. Kļaviņš prepared the programme ‘Klusuma balss’ (The Voice of Silence), which was broadcast once a week in Latvian. He worked for the radio until 1992, when he moved back to Latvia.

In parallel, Kļaviņš founded the organisation Gaismas akcija (‘Action of Light’). It was registered in the USA in 1977, and in Western Germany in 1978. It had the same general aims as HMK, but it was aimed specifically at Latvia.

Zsuzsanna Kőrösi (1967–) is a sociologist. She graduated with a degree in Hungarian Language and Literature and Adult Education and Sociology. She has been an associate of the 1956 Institute since 1990. She conducts interviews and takes part in the research projects of the Archive and the work involving the collection. She has edited numerous publications and thematic volumes based on the interviews. She is one of the editors of the webpage: visszaemlékezések.hu – Személyes történetek a XX. századból (Remembrance.hu – Personal Stories from the Twentieth Century).

Kőszeg, Ferenc (1939-) a writer, editor, human rights activist and politician.

He was born in Budapest, as the only child of his parents. His father: Ferenc Kőszeg was a dentist, who died in the Sovietunion in 1943 as a Hungarian Jew forced for military labour service at the front line, his mother Lívia Eidus was a dentist too. He himself married editor Éva Fekete (1944-1997), they have three children.

Having passed his school leaving exam at ELTE János Apáczai Csere Secondary School in 1957 he started his university studies at ELTE in Latin as wll Hungarian Language and Literature. However, in October 1957 he was arested and spent two months in prison charged with his activities in students’ resistance movement, but as the purges ended in high schools and universities, he was released too. He received his MA degree in Latin and Hungarian Language and Literature in 1967.

Kőszeg started his carreer as an editor of Szépirodalmi Publishers from 1963 to 1975, then that of Europa Publishing House for another five years. During the 1960s and 1970s he published book reviews, and translated English and German literature. From the mid 1970s he got in close contact with the circles of Hungarian democratic opposition. Having signed the solidarity proclamation with the imprisonned members of the Charta ‘77 dissident group of Czechoslovaki, he lost his job as an editor at the state company. From 1980 he made his living as a free-lance translator, and a foreign language teacher, then took a job as an employee in a book shop. In the mid 1980s he received a few months long research grant from the New School for Social Research, New York, by returning home his passport was taken by the police and he was not alowed to travel abroad for years.  

He was an active member of Hungarian dissident movement as one of the founders of SZETA, the Fund for Aiding the Poor from 1979, and founding editor of samizdat periodical Beszélő from late 1981. He was also a founding member in 1987 of Asylum (Hungarian Association for Migrants), in 1988 of Independent Legal Aid Service, and in 1989 of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (of which he was later elected the Executor Director 1995-1999, and the President 1999-2007).

In 1988 he was also the founding member of Hungary’s liberal party: the Alliance of Free Democrats, (1988–2010), of which he was elected as a representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1990-1998). As an MP he held the post Vice President of the Committee on National Security (1996-1998).