Political Prisoners in Romania in the '80s – book presentation

Presentation ceremony of Ernő Borbély’s book entitled Az enyedi politikai főiskola. Politikai foglyok a ’80-as évek Romániájában (The Political Academy of Enyed. Political Prisoners in Romania in the '80s) will start at 5 p.m. on Tuesday February 25, 2020.

 

The book will be presented by

Géza Szőcs, poet, former friend of Ernő Borbély,
Zsolt Németh, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian National Assembly, and
László Tőkés, Chairman of the Hungarian National Council of Transylvania.

 

The book was also published in Romanian in December 2019. The book was published in Hungarian by Státus Publishing House, Csíkszereda, while it was published in Romanian, under the care of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), by Polirom Publishing House.

 

About the book:

The Romanian authorities and the press were deeply silent on the anti-regime manifestations of the 1980s. The reason for the silence is that of those, who imprisoned the political prisoners at the time, many still hold important state or political functions, so their fundamental interest is to avoid publicity. Author of the book Ernő Borbély was also a political prisoner in Nagyenyed. He was arrested by the Communist authorities on November 23, 1982,  on charges of anti-state conspiracy. He was then sentenced to seven years in prison, of which he served four years and eight months.

With the cooperation of the Csíkszereda Club of PRO Democratia Association, Csíkszereda-based MEDIUM Foundation started making oral history-type video recordings as of 2004 about former political prisoners, many of whom were Hungarians and served their sentences in the prison in Nagyenyed. The book is a collection of these interviews. Unfortunately, Ernő Borbély passed away in December 2011, so he did not live up the actual publication of the book.

 

Venue: National Széchényi Library, Boardroom 516

Working language of the book presentation ceremony will be Hungarian.

Invitation card of the event (in Hungarian)