On a frigid foggy fall evening, Dad was only 15 when he walked across the Hungarian border. Mom, then 13, would cross later. Hungarian refugees, they were fleeing the blitz of Russian tanks crushing freedom-loving people during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
Gone now, my parents were heavy on my mind as I worked with Ukrainian refugees in Hungary last month – mainly women and children living a parallel nightmare as Russian military ravage their homeland.
More than 11 million have now fled Ukraine including almost 6 million into neighboring countries, including over 600,000 into Hungary. On track for being the largest refugee crisis in modern history, more Ukrainians will have left their country than those who fled the Syrian Civil War and the Soviet Afghan War.
A son of refugees, I needed to feel the real-life experience of the Eastern European migrant. "I want to sit next to a stranger and learn about his life," Thomas Csorba (my own son) wrote it in a folk song -- because when we learn about another soul, we surely get a glimpse into ours...
English (US) ·