Hungarian Freedom Park: Denver, Colorado

Around 600 Hungarians and Americans gathered on October 23, 1966 to inaugurate the United States’ first memorial to the 1956 Freedom Fighters in Denver, Colorado. It’s not commonly known, but this indeed is the first site in the entire US where a 1956 revolutionary memento was established.

It was organized by the Hungarian Club of Colorado, and within that, that Memorial Committee. The park lies along the banks of the Cherry Creek and beside the East Speer Boulevard and was actually planned by a Hungarian engineer in the beginning of the 19th century.

At its inauguration in 1966– and simultaneously the tenth anniversary of the 1956 revolution– Colorado’s governor at the time, John Love, and Denver’s mayor, Tom Currigan, were present at the ceremonies as well.

Initially, the “Hungarian Freedom Park” was also home to a temporary, wooden plaque commemorating the 1956 Freedom Fighters. By October 1968, a permanent, lasting memorial was erected in the form of a bronze statue of a boy attempting to break through an iron curtain.

Hungarian Library: New Brunswick, New Jersey

The American Hungarian Foundation was founded in 1955 in New Brunswick, New Jersey; in 1989 they opened the Hungarian Heritage Center, designed by Laszlo Papp, board member of the Foundation at the time. The Foundation’s origin was in promoting Hungarian Studies at Elmhurst College, and has morphed into the institution it is today with the slogan “Collect, Conserve, Celebrate”.

The Hungarian Heritage Center contains a museum, archive facility, and a significant library. Equipped with over 60,000 books, monographs, and historical records the New Brunswick Hungarian library works as an affiliate of the Rutgers University library. The texts housed here concentrate on the history of Hungarian-American relations, along with the contributions of Hungarian-Americans and their descendants, spanning back to the colonial times.

Térkép

Rare books from the fifteenth century are among the collection as well as museum-quality maps, and various periodicals, videos, recordings, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and archival materials. While all published materials are catalogued online, the library is in the process of digitizing their archive and library.

If you want more stories, subscribe to our YouTube channel or read our articles about Hungarian memorial sites around the world.