COURAGE

connecting collections

Sándor Soós, was born in 1939 to a worker family with four children in Budapest. When the revolution broke in Hungary in the autumn of 1956, he was a 17-year-old apprentice miner in Oroszlány. Together with some fellows, he came to Budapest and soon joined a group of freedom fighters defending the New York Palace, a hotel and press center in downtown Budapest, with a machine gun from the Russian tanks, and only fled to the West with the last group of insurgents one week after the second Soviet invasion.

From the refugee camp of Traiskirchen, Austria, he soon got to Germany, where he worked as a miner, and then to France, where in 1958 he joined the French Foreign Legion. He served under the French tricolor and the red-green banner of the Legion in Algeria, Djibouti, Corsica, and Orange 19 years in total before leaving the army and getting married. He became a French citizen quite early, in 1966, but could visit his native land, Hungary, for the first time only in 1985. As a civilian he took a job in Marseille as a port guard, and for many decades he was also the voluntary president of a residence community in Septémes les Vallons, a suburb of Marseille, where he has been living for a half a century together with his family. Sándor Soós has three adult children, and two grandchildren; together with his Alsatian wife, Marie-Thérese, he often visits Hungary.  

Tamás Soós in 1984, along with Zénó “Kelémpájsz” Kiss and Tamás “Atom” Bernáth, started the band Csokonai Vitéz Műhely. Their intention was to tunnel Hungarian and European culture into the international sphere. However, due to the constant hampering of the Hungarian state, this ambitious goal could not be realized. Nevertheless, the band had some successes. Besides concerts, they were editing a samizdat magazine, and they also released a cassette in the German Democratic Republic. Meanwhile, Soós was the one who designed the posters for his band, characterized by striking colors, like pink and neon tones, dynamic graphics and montage. He particularly like to reference pop art and psychedelic rock posters. In 1988, the band received an invitation to perform in the Netherlands, and they stayed there for a few years, operating under the name Uralbeat.

Árpád Spaller (b. Cluj, 22 June 1945) obtained his degree at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca in 1970, in special education (health pedagogy) and Romanian language and literature. After graduating, in accordance with communist policy he was officially sent at first to Șimleu Silvaniei (Sălaj county), and from there to Popești and then Tileagd (both localities in Bihor county) where he worked as a teacher. Many circumstances contributed to his desire to “escape,” and in July 1987 he and his family moved to Hungary. After a short period in Budapest they moved to Tolna county as special education teachers (his wife having a similar qualification). After a year, mainly because of their children’s studies, they moved back near Budapest. First they lived in Gyál, then in Felsőpalkony, and then they were able to move to Budapest, where they managed to find jobs that suited their qualification. In 1989, as an attempt to offer the “newcomers” as much assistance and information as possible, he founded the Association of Hungarians from Transylvania. After the change of regimes, between 1990 and 1995, he edited under the auspices of the Association the journal entitled Vigyázó (Watchful), a quarterly with a selection of articles published in Hungarian-language newspapers in Transylvania. He is also the author of several articles published in Romanian and Hungarian professional journals(Interview with Árpád Spaller. 2008; Spaller and Spaller 2006).

Karel Srp, a Czech music journalist, was born on 18 January 1937 in Beroun. He studied chemistry at a technical college and worked at the Research Institute of Asbestos Cement between 1959 and 1969. He worked as a manual worker from 1969 and as an editor and journalist at the Panton publishing house between 1972 and 1984. He began publishing articles in music magazines in the 1960s. Karel Srp was the vice-chairperson and then chairperson of the Jazz Section (1981–1983). Originally the Jazz Section was founded as an official branch of the Czech Union of Musicians in 1971. After his promotion to the position of chairperson, the section became more politically active and was also more open to other areas – from music to a more broadly understood definition of culture. From the outset, JS published, for example, “Jazz” (1972), a bulletin for its members, and later books about jazz, rock music, contemporary art, philosophy etc. in a series called “Jazz petit”. JS fell out of favour with the regime who viewed it as an “enemy” institution, and there were attempts to officially dissolve it from the beginning of the 1980s. Srp, who had been one of the section’s most significant members since its foundation, did not avoid being prosecuted (as well as other leading members of JS) and was sentenced to a 16-month jail term in 1986; he was released in January 1988. He attended a meeting of dissidents with François Mitterrand, the president of France, in December 1988. After November 1989, he became a department director at the Ministry of Culture (February – October 1990) and afterwards chairperson of Artfórum – the successor to the dissolved Jazz Section. Karel Srp was registered as a State Security (StB) collaborator between 1976 and 1982. However, the views of his colleagues and other contemporaries on this matter differ. Srp himself claims to have played a “double game”, informing the StB only about unimportant and easily verifiable facts to protect the Jazz Section. However, he was (together with Vladimír Kouřil) one of two members of JS who were sentenced during the trials to a custodial sentence.

Sruoga was a famous Lithuanian writer, poet, literary theorist and playwright. In 1914, he began studying literature at St Petersburg University in Russia, and later he continued his studies at Moscow University. In 1918, Sruoga returned to Lithuania. In 1921, he enrolled in the University of Munich, where he received his PhD in 1924 for his doctoral thesis on Lithuanian folklore. After returning to Lithuania, Sruoga taught at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. He also wrote various articles on literature. From 1930, he began writing dramas. In 1939, he began teaching at Vilnius University.

Sruoga's best-known work is the novel The Forest of the Gods (Dievų miškas), based on his own experiences as a prisoner in Stutthof concentration camp. In 1943, he and forty-seven other Lithuanian intellectuals were arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis. Sruoga was freed by the Red Army, and returned to Soviet Lithuania in 1945. He wrote the novel The Forest of the Gods the same year. The manuscript of the novel was severely criticised by Party officials, and was first published in Soviet Lithuania in 1957.