Az ünnepség keretében a XIII. Kerületi Önkormányzat és a Carl Lutz Alapítvány emléktábla állításával emlékezik meg a két portugál diplomatáról, akik több száz zsidó üldözöttet mentettek meg a vészkorszak idején.

Helyszín: 1133 Budapest, Újpesti rakpart 5. (térképet ld. lent)

Időpont: 2011. április 14., csütörtök 10:00

We cordially invite you and your friends to the inauguration of the Memorial Plaque to Sampaio Garrido, late Portugal minister in Hungary and Carlos Branquinho, late chargé d’affaires in Hungary.

In the course of the ceremony the Local Government of the 13^th District of Budapest and the Carl Lutz Foundation, Budapest commemorate commemorate the two Portugal diplomats, who saved hundreds of persecuted Jews during the Hungarian Holocaust.

H-1133 5 Újpest Quay, Budapest (see map below)

Thursday, April 14, 2011, 10 a.m.

Meghivó/Invitation Card

Kérjük, támogasd alapítványunk közérdekű munkáját!

Személyi jövedelemadód 1 %-a számunkra nagy segítség a honlapunk megújításához.

A Carl Lutz Alapítvány adószáma: 18113499-1-41

Köszönettel

Vámos György

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Friend!

Please, help our work of public utility!

1% of your Hungarian personal income tax or other donation could be a great help to renew our website.

The tax number of the Carl Lutz Foundation:

18113499-1-41

Thank You Very Much!

György Vámos

(2010 January Newsletter of Teple Isaiah, Palm Springs – PDF)

You are welcome on our website in the second month of the second decade in the third millennium. This is the ball season and we hope you got your Valentine’s Day gift. We also hope that you have time to read the newest news on the Memorial Room and look around a bit.
Two weeks ago tour guides of the Hidden Treasure Tours Ltd. visited the Memorial Room. Special thanks to Emőke Szövérfi for managing the visit. The tour guides were good and inquiring tourists. They raised many questions and tried to learn more and more details about the topic. We hope they will come back with tourists soon.
Some days ago Prof. Paul Lendvai and Zsóka Lendvai also visited the exhibition. They said that more people would have known it. We will do our best in order to reach this goal.
We would like to ask you, Dear Visitor, what your opinion is, what you want to see on our website. More history, more memoirs or something else? Please, send a message to us in the virtual Guestbook!
Thank you very much for your visit!

Every Visitor is important to the Carl Lutz Foundation – it was established in order to show bravery and heroism in a dark age, and, at the same time, the background of the events –, however, it is always special to greet people from Switzerland in the Memorial Room. In a month’s time we could do it twice. Four young girls came in December, and a kind couple with a small child visited us last week. We hope that they found the exhibition appropriate for the purpose above.

There are two new Pages on this website: Guestbook Quotes and Historical Quotes. The Carl Lutz Foundation is grateful to all Visitors who have visited the Memorial Room since 2005. It would like to express its appreciation to them by a selection – because of the great number – of the Guestbook Notes. Because of practical reasons there are mainly the Hungarian and the English texts. This is anonym excepting people from public life.

The Historical Quotes is planned to make more colourful the picture on our topic with short quotes from that time. It is planned to be a selection of quotes from known and less known people in Hungarian and in English. We hope, you will find them interesting.

We wish a happy beginning in the New Year to everyone!

The audience in the assembly room listened to his words fighting against their tears and soundlessly. You might see the piety of the festive hour what they didn’t feel a long time ago. Then Teri Gács, the excellent poetess came. Or rather she would have come, but, even then, when she wanted to begin reciting one of her ad hoc poems – The List 7800 –, a bomb fell to the firewall of the next house with great noise. The Glass House trembled, a huge amount of plaster streamed from the ceiling to the necks of the audience.

I wasn’t at home, I came back late at night from the Szabadság square. Some good friends led by Arthur Weiss waited for me in the small room. In the corner some nutshells, oil and wicks in each, were lined up on a stick which was put on a chair. One by one I lit the small oil lamps. I will never forget that holiday feeling what descended upon us, and I will even less forget the dinner what my wife made on this occasion. She took out some potato lángos from the pot under the table which I didn’t know how she had fried, and, especially, from what she had fried. Especially as that there wasn’t any potato in the Glass House since months. There was a little fat on the cold lángos. I never eat so delicious potato lángos since then.”

(from the book of Mihály Salamon: “Keresztény” voltam Európában. [I was a "Christian" in Europe])

Let us inform you, Dear Visitor, during or before these great days what happened in the Memorial Room. It was, namely, visited by many interesting people from many countries, and there were many interesting conversations. A family came, for example, from Israel, and both of the husband and his wife had relations with the Glass House – it turned out accidentally some years ago. A pair came from Denmark was very well-informed on Hungarian history and told us interesting information. Other dear visitors came from Scotland, Canada, the United States of America, France, Germany, Italy, and, naturally, Hungary.

At the end of November a group of pensioners and librarians from the Thirteenth District of Budapest visited the Memorial Room. The President of the Carl Lutz Foundation, Mr. György Vámos held a lecture on the history of the Glass House and the role of Carl Lutz. It was followed by a conversation. The audience was very intense and they had many questions. The meeting was mutually instructive. It turned out again that it would be very important to record the memoirs of the older age-groups – until we can.

On the same day three visitors came from Germany and brought good news. A new film will be made on the rescue action in Budapest. We hope their work will be successful.

Some words about our work generally. We contacted hundreds of secondary schools in the hope that we can cooperate with them. The Foundation plans to open a new page here for quotations from the Guestbook of the exhibition in the Memorial Room. Besides, the Foundation continues to search for partners in order to make exhibitions, programs or events of commemoration. We hope that you will visit us, our websites and/or our exhibitions personally and/or virtually.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Budapest, the capital of Hungary became a battlefield. It was decided that it would be sacrificed on the altar of the war – as Leningrad, Stalingrad or Warsaw were. The operations on Hungarian territory began in September, but the Soviet Army encircled Budapest only during the Holidays.

Hundreds of thousands listened to the sounds of arms as the front approached their homes. Tens of thousands were crowded in the Last Ghetto of Europe in Budapest. Thousands and thousands of people had to hide.

The Christmas candles were the bullets. The silent nights were loud because of the artilleries, guns and cannons. The “holiday dinner” was overshadowed by the fear that they would run out of food, water and other supplies.

The people were waiting for the future with fear and doubtfulness and hope of survival. The latter would have been the greatest present for them. We hope that we, our contemporaries and successors never have to live through anything like that.

We must never forget what was happened then. And we mustn’t let it happen again. All the people have the right to live in peace, happiness and love.

We wish a Happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays every people in the World!

The Carl Lutz Foundation decided to inform you in every month about the events in connection with the traveling exhibition and the Memorial Room in Budapest. The Foundation wants to reach more and more people in order to tell them a story about the courage, humanity, and hope in the age of darkness.

On August 1, 2009 the Foundation started its own website – available in three languages, Hungarian, English and Hebrew – full of important data. There are the newest list of people survived in the Glass House, the movie on a virtual tour and useful information on the website. Please, visit it, and leave a comment in the Guestbook.

On October 8, 2009 a new film was shown about the Glass House and the book of György Vámos – Üvegsziget (Glass Island; available now only in Hungarian) – was presented. This anthology contains an essay on the topic and many documents, memoirs, and writings focused mainly on the events happened in the Glass House. The essay reveals the ground, and the background of the events.

In the previous months the Foundation contacted organizations, companies in Hungary and abroad, and schools in Budapest, in order to find possibilities for cooperation. We are very grateful that the Generations of the Shoah International mentioned the Foundation and the traveling exhibition in its 2009 November Newsletter. The Foundation is present on a few Tourist Information websites yet.

The Foundation plans to bring the traveling exhibition to Europe, or make a new one for traveling in European countries, and, if it possible, to make a Hungarian version. The Foundation searches for people, organizations and companies to host, support and sponsor these plans. This topic is in connection with actual questions also – the refugee question, for example.

The members of the Foundation hope they can inform you good news as soon as possible.

Thank you for your visit.