[Unicum] Talk at Friendship Heights by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak

Tomorrow evening the Village Center will sponsor a talk by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak about her parents and the book she recently wrote about their love story set in Hungary before, during, and after World War II.  Her father was later Ambassador (Legate) to Washington but resigned when the Communists took over.  They lived in Chevy Chase, on Patterson St. just the other side of Connecticut.

 

She is an entertaining speaker and will have slides to show as well.

 

Below is more information from the Village Newsletter.

 

For those from outside the area:

Friendship Heights Village Center is just two blocks from the Friendship Heights Metro station (Red line) at 4433 South Park Ave.  From the Metro station walk up (towards Bethesda) on Wisconsin Ave. one block to South Park,  then one block on South Park (use the left side of Wisconsin: it is easier and you will see a little park.  The Center is there, with entrance just beyond the fountain.  (Registration is to help staff set up; please come even if you don’t have a chance to register.

 

Hope to see you there.

 

Eniko

 

 

A beautiful wartime love story

Journalist Marianne Szegedy-Maszák began a New

York Times op-ed piece this way: “My father, a

Hungarian diplomat, dined with Adolf Hitler three

times. And then he went to the concentration camp at

Dachau.” Ms. Szegedy-Maszak will discuss her book,

I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars

in Hungary, at the Village Center on Thursday, May

21, at 7:30 p.m.

The author’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met

and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising

star in the foreign ministry and a vocal anti-Fascist

who was in talks with the Allies when he was

arrested and sent to Dachau. She was a member of an

aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories, were

patrons of intellectuals and artists, and entertained dignitaries at their baronial

estates. Framed by letters written between 1940 and 1947, this family memoir

tells the story of the complicated relationship Hungary had with its Jewish

population and with the rest of the world.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszák, a journalist whose work has appeared in many

publications, has been a reporter at the New York Post, an editor at Congressional

Quarterly, a professor of journalism at American University, and a senior writer

at U.S. News & World Report.

Copies of the book will be on sale by the author at the special price of $20 —

cash or check only please. Please call 301-656-2797 to register.