Series of events to commemorate 1956 anniversary in Berlin

Berlin, October 17 (MTI) – The 60th anniversary of Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet revolution will be commemorated in a series of events in Berlin this week.

Commemorations will formally start in the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (CHB) cultural centre on Monday evening with the presentation of video interviews that Hungarian documentary filmmaker Reka Pigniczky made with Hungarian freedom fighters and witnesses who emigrated to Germany after 1956.

The videos provide an overview of the unfolding of events in 1956, the retaliations and the future of some 200,000 Hungarians who made a home in their new country.

Starting on Tuesday, CHB will host a two-day international conference on changes that took place in the post-Stalinist era in central and eastern Europe and the fallout of 1956. Speakers include Elmar Brok, head of the EP’s foreign affairs committee representing the German CDU party, CDU lawmaker Hartmut Koschyk and Lothar de Maiziere, the last prime minister of former East Germany, among others.

On Tuesday evening, a commemoration will be held in the Berlin Concert Hall, to be addressed by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble and Hungarian Human Resources Minister Zoltán Balog. Afterwards the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will give a concert.

Between October 24 and 28, videos will depict the events of 1956 at ten venues in the German capital.

Source: MTI