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Györgyi Böjtös (née Papp), 1956er

Györgyi Papp was born on August 30, 1934 in Bratislava (Pozsony, Hungary before 1920). She was part of the strong Hungarian ethnic minority there until 1939 when that part of Czechoslovakia again became a part of Hungary. She attended Hungarian schools while she lived there.

Her mother was born in the U.S. to Hungarian parents who had emigrated there around the turn of the 20th century. When she was 19, Györgyi's mother moved back to Bratislava and married a Hungarian, therefore Györgyi was both Hungarian and American. Her father was from a wealthy miller's family and Györgyi had a priveleged childhood until her family's mill was nationalized after the communist goverment took over in the late 1940's. In 1945, right after the war, Györgyi and her mother spent a year in the U.S. while her father moved the family business from Bratislava to Pápa, Hungary. Györgyi completed high school in Győr, where she met László Böjtös (later a Hungarian American architect and honorary consul from Cleveland, Ohio) whom she married.

They escaped Hungary together in 1956 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Her husband László worked as an architect and later formed his own company. Györgyi first worked as a chemist in the textile industry and later opened her own jewelry store in Cleveland while raising their two daughters Anita and Barbara. Both Györgyi and László have been active members of the Hungarian-American Communion of Friends (Magyar Baráti Közösség) as well as Hungarian cultural life in Cleveland, Ohio.