By Robin Marshall
The Budapest Sun (Volume XIV, Issue 51, 21 December, 2006)

As Hungary seemingly slips into becoming an ever more polarized society, perhaps the saddest casualty is that even the history of 1956 has become a political football, spun this way and that to fit the views of whichever party is seeking to make capital from its distorted memory.

The 50th anniversary of one of the seminal moments of the latter part of the 20th century became, rather than a rare moment of national pride and unity, an excuse to thrash out modern arguments, often violently.

The memory of that failed uprising (as is true of any conflict) is, simultaneously, collective and individual. But it is through the individual stories that you get, perhaps, the best understanding of what life was like then.

And that is exactly what Andrew Princz, a Canadian-born writer whose parents grew up in Hungary, has sought to do with Bridging The Divide: Canadian and Hungarian Stories of the 1956 Revolution.

In the wake of the failed revolt, families were rent asunder. Princz's own father, uncle and grandmother were, as he puts it in his introduction to the book, "separated by an ocean for at least a decade."

The very existence of an estimated 200,000 '56ers who fled the country (some 40,000 finding their way to Canada) has been an issue for Hungary ever since. Many have described the sense of alienation they experienced both in their new homes and, perhaps more painfully, when they returned.

Some of those who remained felt those who fled had abandoned the country. For that generation it is, and always will be, you feel, a difficult, complex series of emotions.

From his own family experience, Princz knew there must be hundreds of similar stories out there. And so, he sought to collect some of them. In what became something of a labor of love, he and Hungarian photographer Katalin Sándor toured Canada and Hungary, eventually finding 15 people who had left to make a new life, matching them with relatives who had stayed behind, and letting them tell their stories.

Princz rightly makes no claim that this is a historical reference book; recollections are always far too selective for that ever to be the case.

The goal, he says, "was more to obtain an impressionistic account of two individuals and how they remember one of the most determinate moments in their lives."

The result is a lush, coffee table- style publication, beautifully illustrated, and told in both English and Hungarian.

"I wanted to take the politics out of 1956," Princz told me. "I wanted to humanize it." It works. The stories are of "ordinary people, who lived through an extraordinary moment in history, Some gained, others lost. A few were indifferent, many were forced to act. Some were heroic while others were pragmatic. Some just looked out for themselves." Their stories are often revealing, frequently raw with emotion. Even the cover photo, of a hugely magnified button compass, replete with Soviet star on its time-worn face, has a story to tell.

Originally used to measure the magnetization of watches, Géza Hermann (whose story, along with that of his half brother, Elemér Hanó, is told on page 76) has it to thank for his escape. His watchmaker father used it to guide their way to safety across the Austrian border in 1957.

The book is published by ontheglobe.com, Princz's own arts and travel portal, with financial support from the Canadian government, Hungary's Foreign and Education and Culture ministries, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hungary, and the TriGránit Development Corporation.

Princz does not expect to make his fortune from this, but he does hope some schools will buy copies of the book, so that process of "humanization" he talked about can be passed on to another generation.

If you are looking for a last minute Christmas gift, be it for an emigree, a Hungarian friend, or simply someone interested in this fascinating, complex country, this makes the perfect fit.

INFOBOX
Bridging the Divide: Canadian and Hungarian stories of the 1956 Revolution
Andrew Princz, Katalin Sándor
Published by ontheglobe.com, 140 pages, Ft3,900, $45
ISBN: 0978161203
Available in Libri and Lira és Lant bookstores.