Speech #970134736

It is also a tribute to the Hungarian people that despite the loss of freedom after the free elections in 1945 and the loss of the revolution of 1956. they still prevailed by passive resistance to achieve an uneasy and incomplete compromise with their Soviet occupiers and the Kadar regime and regained at least some economic and political flexibility under a Communist dictatorship. It would be ungenerous to remember the 1945 elections without remembering its surviving political hero. Monsignor Bela Varga. Both as a member of the Hungarian Parliament before and during the war. and afterwards as the Speaker of the Parliament Monsignor Varga was a fearless fighter for individual rights and a protector of the oppressed and persecuted. He saved many Polish refugees and escaped French POWs. stood up against the Governments