ALL MATERIAL: COPYRIGHT CALIFORNIA EUROPEAN CULTURAL INITIATIVE/MEMORY PROJECT

Viktor Fischer, DP Generation

Viktor Fischer's father was an engineer who had already been in Russian captivity once and did not want to be possibly deported to Siberia again after World War II, therefore the family with a group of other families, escaped via trucks at the end of WWII, when Viktor was just six, towards Austria. Their escape was perilous and they nearly died a few times. The Fischer family arrived to New York in 1951 and lived in the predominantly Hungarian neighborhood where many of the stores, establishments and neighbors were Hungarian. He became a mathematics teacher, raised three boys with a Hungarian wife, and was and still is very active in the Hungarian Scouting movement, being also a part of the first Hungarian Scout troop in New York under Zoltán Vasvári.

Among other Scouting initiatives, he was the founder and organizer for six decades of the Hungarian Athletic Games (Sportverseny) for the Scout Association’s New York District, first in New York, then New Jersey. This event was and is not only unique to the tri-state area, but within the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris itself, and brings Hungarian children together for a day of track and field competition (conducted in Hungarian, of course).


Fischer Viktor: "Our strength comes from our nation, let that be our motto." (Nemzetben az egység, legyen ez a jelszó.)

Interviewed filmed by Réka Pigniczky in Fillmore, New York in August of 2015.