Gen Bela Kiraly

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Gen Bela Kiraly




Birth:    Apr. 14, 1912, Hungary
Death:    Jul. 4, 2009
Budapest, Hungary

Hungarian Freedom Fighter, Historian. Best known as the military leader who commanded the turbulent 1956 uprising against Soviet invaders and then decades later served in his country's first post-Communist parliament. Commissioned an officer in 1935, he graduated from the Budapest Military Academy in 1942 and fought on the eastern front during WWII until 1944. Then was promoted to general and commanded the infantry until assuming command of Hungary's military academy in 1950 until 1951 when he was arrested by the Stalinists in 1951 and convicted on trumped up charges and sentenced to death in 1952. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. During the 1956 Hungarian revolution he was freed. Emerging from prison and surgery, he immediately joined the rebellion and was appointed commander-in-chief of the national guard by the new revolutionary prime minister Imre Nagy. Shortly thereafter when the Soviet invasion quashed the rebel government he again appeared on a Communist execution list. With Central Intelligence Agency help he and his staff escaped to Austria after which he emigrated to the United States. Beginning life anew for the third time, he returned to school in a new land and language earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He then took a position as professor of military history at Brooklyn College and in his new career taught thousands of students and published a large number of scholarly books and professional articles in both English and Hungarian before retiring in the early 1980s. With the fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1990 he was invited back to his homeland and in his 80sserved as a general and won a seat in Hungary's first post-communist Parliament which he held from 1990 to 1994 after which he was an adviser to the Hungarian government on reform of its armed forces. In 2004, he was appointed as an associate member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a position he held until his death. (bio by: Fred Beisser)

 
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Burial:
Unknown
 
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jul 14, 2009
Find A Grave Memorial# 39440547

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