Béla Király
Béla Király [ ˈbeːlɒ ˈkiraːj ] (born April 14, 1912 in Kaposvár , † July 4, 2009 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian general and historian.
Life
In 1930 he became a professional soldier . Fighting on the side of Germany in World War II , he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. He is honored on the Avenue of the Righteous in Yad Vashem for saving Jews . His commitment to caring for Hungarian Jews in labor companies for forced labor was recognized.
In 1945 he joined the communists and in 1949 founded the Budapest Military Academy . In 1951 he was sentenced to death in a show trial , the sentence then commuted to life imprisonment ; he learned English in captivity. After his pardon in 1956, he was appointed commander of the National Guard by Imre Nagy on October 30, 1956 and fought in the Hungarian uprising as city commander of Budapest against the Soviet troops .
In December 1956 he traveled with American help in the United States , where he after graduation at Columbia University as a professor of military history at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York taught. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he returned to Hungary and was elected to the first democratic parliament for the Union of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) , where he remained as a member from 1990 to 1994.
literature
- Walter Mayr: A wall of hatred . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 2006 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Béla Király on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
- ↑ 1956 veteran in Hungary who died on Pester Lloyd on July 4, 2009, retrieved on July 10, 2009
Web links
- Literature by and about Béla Király in the catalog of the German National Library
- Reading list
- Leader of the uprising of 1956 died - dpa report at derstandard.at, July 4, 2009
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Király, Béla |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Hungarian general, historian and politician, Member of Parliament |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 14, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kaposvár |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 2009 |
| Place of death | Budapest |