VIDEO – Budapest mayor Karácsony: Fifty-sixers ‘knew only a brave nation can be free’

Fifty-sixers “knew precisely that only a brave nation can be free”, Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, said on Wednesday in a video message uploaded to YouTube to mark the occasion of the October 23 national holiday.

“They also knew that the courage of the nation was possible only by belonging together,” Karácsony said of the 1956 uprising against Soviet rule. He noted that he was spending a part of the national holiday in Strasbourg at a summit of European mayors, but he felt it was important for him to declare, quoting Hungarian author György Faludy, that 1956 was not a memory, nor the past, nor history, but “a piece of my heart…” “Let’s not allow this heart, our heart, to be torn out…” he said.

The mayor added that a power “that only thinks of itself and puts its interest before values, and mixes up the aggressor with the victim … is capable of projecting onto the present day and declare that Hungarians should lie down before the aggressor and give up everything — freedom, independence, and the homeland.” “What’s totally unforgivable is a nihilistic policy that puts all values in parentheses and subordinates everything to its own power interests…” he said. “I and many others trust that this country, including … Budapest, will not lie down, kill ourselves, or surrender…” he added.