Hungary is a beautiful country but has a tragic history that has seen the country carved up and its citizens displaced. After getting rid of the Russians in the 90s, they finally had an independent and free democratic Hungary.

Prime Minister Victor Orban, often portrayed by media as a fanatic, is anything but.

A good friend of mine, a firefighter, asked me one day, “You know the second-largest reasons forest fires spread beside the wind?” Speechless, I said, “No idea.”. He replied, “Animals on fire running through the forest.”

Most modern news media are animals on fire.

If you take the time to do your research, you’ll see he’s very much a centrist and with an eye towards the future. His party just supported the nomination of the first woman President. 

Back to my visit to Budapest…

I wanted to share a bit of Hungary’s history with SOFREP readers, as seen through my trip to the House of Terror Memorial Museum.

Once larger than Italy and England, the First World War stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territories after. This isolated the country politically and left Hungary as one of Central Europe’s weakest states. Similar to Poland in the 30s, Hungary found itself like a piece of raw meat being chewed apart by angry dogs of Russia and Germany.

The country fought for independence with the outbreak of World War II but eventually saw itself bullied into taking sides with the Germans after several high-level leaders and family members were kidnapped by the Nazis. Shortly after Hungarian troops were sent to the brutal and cold Eastern Front, not many survived the harsh conditions. In addition to this, almost half a million Jewish Hungarians were rounded up and sent to Nazi death camps. Few would ever be seen again.