Петер Гергелі Peter Gergeli

“There was, for example, the second [third] World Congress of Hungarians in Budapest. At that time, I was in the Committee of Civil Accord, with Chornovil, and we discussed the situation, which was very difficult, and found certain solutions. That's how I got to this Congress. A day later, the World Congress [Forum] of Ukrainians opened in Kyiv. And those were very difficult times. The Yugoslav events, the unfolding of all those conflict stories. We remember the horrors of that time. My daughter, who used to be a South Hungarian in the camps there, corresponded with a Yugoslav boy. And she received another letter with such a specific stamp that this village... not that the gentleman is no longer there, but that the village no longer exists. No problem. That is, we are familiar with the practice of erasing entire ethnic groups and so on. And those events were happening at the time. There were certain undertones at the Hungarian congress, because everyone there was trying to manipulate the situation so that, God forbid, Hungary could not stay away from this conflict. To draw it into this conflict. And suddenly I see this proposal being thrown around, and if the contingent, which, as far as I can see, does not understand it, votes for such a seemingly simple, mild question, then Hungary will be drawn into this conflict in a matter of weeks. And then, in fact, I suggested how to formulate this question, which also had to be done discreetly, but if it was voted for, there would be no automatic consequences. And it passed. The next day, due to the fact that the World Congress of Ukrainians opened in Kyiv, in fact, I suggested that they write and send such a letter. Because when else will there be such an opportunity, right? That we, the neighbours, should live in peace, help each other, and all these textbook things. But not every day there is an opportunity to physically appeal from representatives of the entire Hungarian world to the entire Ukrainian world. And there are Hungarians in Africa, even black Hungarians, and not everyone knows this. Actually, three: one former member of the CDU [Christian Democratic Union], the Bundestag; one former, well, non-former journalist, in whose case the capital punishment was imposed by the Budapest courts, he was supposed to be shot, and he was taken in the trunk by diplomats to Germany; and your humble servant. The three of us sat down and wrote this letter. It was interesting. And Dmytro Tkach, who was then the ambassador to Hungary, managed to pass it on, and it was read out in front of all of Ukraine. It's not a good thing to be proud of, but it's a thing I'm proud of, and I wrote a letter to all the Ukrainians in the world, and it was official. Wow, yeah. We can't wait for another such opportunity.”

“Returning to the dynamics of Hungarians, that is, the figure that was indicated as a result of the [population] census in Brezhnev's time, it incorrectly reflects the true situation. But nevertheless, it turned out that there were also seven hundred and something thousand people in Lviv, and about three and something thousand Hungarians. Those who declared themselves Hungarians. Because I, in fact, was registered as a Slovak, my mother also, and so on. That is, specifically, to avoid repression. But these were people who permanently, by registration, lived in Lviv. In addition, there were students, both in universities, institutes, and secondary specialised educational institutions, of which there have always been a lot in Lviv.”

“Back in the day, when I was at school, I was involved in music and mathematics, and I won regional competitions in this way and that way. And then I was among the first rock musicians. My grandmother was ill, and I got permission to stay with her for a few years. And at that time, the first, very first rock bands were formed in Zakarpattia. There were two really professional ones: in Mukachevo and ours. And the authorities hated us so much that they spoiled our equipment and cut our wires. If anyone knows professionally what the shielded wires looked like back then. Some Fender guitar, another one. The plug goes in there, and then it's like barbed wire up to your knees. It doesn't fall down, it's as hard as a table. And the Dutch wire – you take it, throw it on the stage, and it snaps like water, and it costs accordingly. You go to get ready for the concert tomorrow and see that all the wires are cut into pieces of about 10 centimetres. I was supposed to go to the concert, it was [19]69, and suddenly – I was doing cycling – I see that I'm in the air, my bike rolls out from under me, two cops hold me in the air and just run towards the police. They take me to the chief's office, and he closes the door and throws the keys out the window, just like in the movies. He said: ‘Well, your concert has already started’. He said: ‘Oh, your concert has already finished, you can go.’ And they brought him the key and opened it. That is, something very ugly was at the heart of everything that happened then.”

“I'm going to tell you about it to give you a little more of a taste of the era. If anyone has seen the correct, high-quality broadcasts of what was filmed on the moon when Apollo landed, this is a picture of such high quality. What did the corresponding footage from the Soviet space odyssey look like? Anywhere. It's a kind of rice with sand, a low-quality image, but because the element base was poor. Out of a thousand transistors, there was only one that could work, and the rest were used for ‘consumer goods’. Of course, the rock band wanted an amplifier that would work like a Marshall. That is, a clear sound, all frequencies saturated, and so on. The mix was so flawless, and to achieve this, they had to find a way to manufacture military electronics. Back then, microtubes still had transistors. So we found an approach to an engineer who lived in Riga, Latvia. My friend and I went with him to get the equipment and ready-made amplifiers. We arrived in Riga in the evening. It was November, wet snow, and a chilly wind. Imagine that we didn't know how to get to the address we had – and this was the key moment. Of course, we asked a passerby: ‘How do I get to Imantas Street?’ ‘Are you not from here? Wait, I'll be right there, I'll bring you, I'll show you everything, I'll draw you a picture’. He disappeared for about 10 minutes, and I thought he definitely forgot about us. Suddenly, he came running with two umbrellas, a tablet with a paper on which he could hook the paper to draw, another map, where he would show us where he was drawing. I wrote down very carefully where to go, how far, where to get on and off, where to walk, and so on, and then where to turn, and there was Imantas Street. And do you know where we ended up? At one in the morning? In the farthest cemetery. In terrible weather, when you could freeze to death in five minutes. Because we asked in Russian. How could I ask a Latvian in Hungarian? Maybe I should have. Then he wouldn't have been like that, because of the so-called predestination, that is, prejudice.”

"There was such a wave that everyone seemed to start breathing and realised that there was more oxygen than they could handle, and tried to do something with it. And we got together. After our first steps were taken, it became clear that we had to find somewhere where we could discuss our plans and issues in our own circle without the hustle and bustle of school. And it turned out to be the art studio of this artist, Marion Ilku, who was already working at the Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. Marion Jozsef Ilku is the nephew of the minister of culture I mentioned, back in the days of Janos Kadar. He was, among other things, a wonderful caricaturist. This is what the poster for one of the exhibitions we organise regularly looks like. You can feel here – it's his self-portrait in this style – that we are dealing with a person who has a professional routine in how to depict a person's character in a short and catchy drawing. He served as a gateway for us, a pass to any superiors. Because when something happens somewhere, someone sits in the presidium, Ilku Marion Jozsef sits among the audience, draws the gentleman we need in the form of a caricature, hands him the drawing, and that's it, and the contact is made. I don't think everyone can have a phone that can draw a caricature and send it somewhere, although artificial intelligence can handle this."