ALL MATERIAL: COPYRIGHT CALIFORNIA EUROPEAN CULTURAL INITIATIVE/MEMORY PROJECT

Magdi Varga, 1956er
(August 25, 1947 - June 11, 2022)

Magdi Varga's family was internally deported in Hungary after WWII, from Sopron to a very poor area of the Great Plains, because her Uncle, an important (conservative, anti-communist) politician fled Hungary after WWII and was active on Radio Free Europe. Thus her family was deported in 1954, when she was seven years-old. They lived there until the revolution of 1956, which her family did not take part in but she clearly remembers food being collected in the surrounding villages and sent to the people of Budapest during the fighting. Her parents took the opportunity that 1956 provided for fleeing the country and left with their two children in 1956. She says she was more impacted by the internal deportation than by 1956.

She arrived to the US quite soon after that, reuniting with her Uncle's family (Hajdu-Németh) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She married another 1956er Hungarian, Gyula Varga and they had four children, and the entire family was always active in the Hungarian community of New Brunswick, NJ.

Maga neni passed away on June 11, 2022. She was 75 years old.

Interview conducted by Andrea Lauer Rice and Réka Pigniczky in June of 2015 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.