Author: andrasthehun

The Ukraine and Russia. The two existential decisions Ukrainians face. My memory of Hungary in 1956.

March 6, 2022.

Ukrainians are fleeing their country to escape the Russian bombing of their cities in this unprovoked war. Over a million Ukrainians have fled to date. Estimates range up to five million refugees by the time this war ends.

To leave your home, your community, your friends, and your job is an existential decision. By leaving your country, you enter another country, with an unfamiliar language, with a different culture. You have to reestablish yourself and adapt to the other country’s way of life. You may have to go back to school and relearn skills.

A decision to leave your country and emigrate is a life-altering decision with high risks for success: a lot of effort may have to be spent to get back to an equivalent position to what you left behind. It may take years. Some people may never make it: they may not have the skill to learn a foreign language or they do not need their skills in the adopted country.

My father was in his forties when he left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Having succeeded professionally as a medical doctor and director of a regional hospital, he had no reason to leave. He was a proud Hungarian: proud of the people and accomplishments of a thousand years of history in the country.

My mother’s family lost everything. The communist government confiscated (nationalized) all of their property: a summer home on the Danube river and vineyards on the mountain behind. She had no reason to stay in Hungary.

Under the communist regime, the children of the proletariat, of the blue-collar workers, were admitted to a university. They considered a professional a “bourgeois” and were not part of the proletariat. A university graduate was, by definition, a “bourgeois”, and even though my father came from a farm, his education put him into the bourgeois category.

The communist government owned and directed all economic activity. The government hired and assigned people to specific locations where their skills were required. One of my cousins graduated from dental school and married a fellow dental student; when they finished university, they were assigned to two different cities where dentists were needed.

My parents did not think their children had a future in Hungary; I think that was the reason they left the country. So when during the Hungarian Revolution the border was unguarded–the guards did not know what to do during the 1956 upheaval – father and mother decided to leave the county. For the future of their children. And leave before the Russians returned and closed the border.

The day mother found out that the border was open, she collected my brother Peter, age 18, and myself, after school. I was 16 years of age. She packed some food into a backpack; gave us the name of someone living in Vienna and told us to walk to Vienna. Arriving there, we were to look up the person whose name she gave us. The situation was unreal for Peter and me, and not understanding what was going on, we got on the highway leading to Austria. Hoping that we would get to Vienna somehow. Mother did not know if she, father, and my younger brother John, eight years old, would see us again.

But Peter and I walked and walked and walked. The highway was like an exodus, with people filling up the road. Nobody talked. We hurried, not knowing how long the border would stay open.

The Austrians welcomed us with open arms and put us up in an army camp outside Vienna. After a day, they helped us to contact the person whose name mother gave us. He was a Jesuit priest, and he came in a few days and helped us to settle in Vienna. It turned out that the priest was a friend of one of my uncles from university days. The Jesuit helped Peter enter medical school, and he placed me in a dormitory of a high school.

When the large Russian army returned to Hungary in November, my parents decided it was time to escape from Hungary. Otherwise, they may never see their two older children. One of my father’s patients, the Mayor of the City of Sopron where we lived, helped them. He drove the family across the “iron curtain” in his official, government-owned car. The family reunited in Vienna and pondered the next step.

Right after you make an existential decision to emigrate, you have another life-altering decision to make: where to? You think the entire world is your choice. But to be pragmatic, you consider your trade, profession, and language skills and try to find someplace where you could use these skills.

Another constraint is your financial resources; you have nothing with you except what you wore during your escape and a backpack. With limited resources, you cannot travel too far. (Father had sold some assets and used the cash to buy collectors’ stamps, thinking the stamps took no space in his pocket and could sell them. Unfortunately, the stamps he had were worthless.)

A potential opportunity is a relative abroad who could help you get established. Or, friends in the diaspora of your country. And that is usually the first choice. Mother contacted her brother living in Manchester, UK, and asked for help to move there. We stayed in Manchester for a couple of months evaluating the possibilities in England, then my parents moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 1957, where my mother had a sister, a public health nurse. Canada appeared to have great potential to start a new life.

Father had to redo his studies and pass the Canadian medical exams, which he did in two years. It was difficult to do so at his age, but he persevered. And then he was a “resident” in St. Paul’s hospital for a couple of years, often with twenty-four-hour shifts. Not a peaceful life when you are in your mid-forties. Mother took a job as a dishwasher to help with money; she had never worked outside the house, being born into a privileged family in Hungary. But my parents had grit. And the children attended university; the youngest one was in high school.

Reading the news, I empathize with the Ukrainians; I have been through what they are going through now. Many Ukrainians send their family out, hoping to join them later or perhaps hoping to have them return should the Ukrainians win this war. Not a likely possibility; the Russians have much more military power and Putin’s vision appears to be the political order of decades ago.

The Ukraine and Russia. My Memories of Hungary and Russia

February 25

As Russia is pounding Ukraine, I thought of my early childhood in Hungary. Hungary was under German occupation and the Russians pounded Budapest in 1944, advancing on the German army. I was four years old. We covered all the windows at night to avoid lights that the coming bombers could see. And we rushed down into the basement of the four-story apartment building for protection should the bombing destroy the apartment building where we lived.

During the days, the “Green Shirts”, the Hungarian Nazis, came visiting our apartment looking for Jews. But the Germans were losing the war to the Russians, who came at night and bombarded Budapest.

I was old enough to be scared, but not old enough to understand what was going on. Complicating our situation was mother being Jewish. Although she took on the Christian religion, the Nazis went after all of Jewish origin. And father, a Catholic, hid mother’s family members in the corner of our living room behind the china closet when the Germans came looking for Jews; I was told to shut up and say nothing to the Nazis searching our apartment.

Then my father was sent on a military train to Ukraine by the Hungarian Army to serve as a medic. He was an MD. The rest of us – my mother, my brother Peter and me – stayed at a military camp in Szatmarnemety (now it is Romania). We had a soldier assigned to guard the family, who played with Peter and me; when the sirens shrieked alerting us to the upcoming Russian bombing raids, the soldier threw us into a hole in the ground and covered us with a piece of plywood. Then we waited until the siren’s undulating sound indicated it was safe to come out and the soldier would lift us out. But sometimes we had to wait a long time because the Russian pilots often returned and strafed the camp at a low altitude. It was extremely noisy, dark, lonely, and terrifying in the hole with the strafing.

The Russians occupied Hungary in late 1944, after the Germans were defeated. Shortly after, my father was transferred to Sopron as director of the regional hospital and the family accompanied him by train from Budapest to Sopron. The Russians divided Hungary into zones; Sopron was in the border zone, accessible only for Hungarians working and living in the zone. We crossed into the border zone, close to the Austrian border; two soldiers armed with guns stood on the steps of the last coach of the train to make sure that nobody jumped on, going into the border zone. When trying to escape from Hungary, people tried to reach the border zone first, hoping to escape to the west.

A huge number of people tried to go west but were stopped on the way at Russian checkpoints at all major highways or perished trying to cross the “Iron Curtain” between Hungary and Austria (a strip of land half a kilometer wide, mined, fenced, and with watchtowers and guards with dogs patrolling).

We never talked about politics. The secret police, the AVH, kept tabs on everyone and one never knew who were the informers or moles. People kept disappearing at night never to be heard from again. A friend of my father’s lived in an apartment across from us and disappeared one night. We never talked about him.

My father sometimes was called at night to tend to people shot up trying to swim across lake Ferto into Austria. The lake straddles the Hungarian/Austrian border and a wire fence in the water stopped people from swimming across to Austria.

And there were long line-ups for meat and eggs and food because of rationing. The Russians took Hungary’s agricultural and industrial output. They also nationalized (confiscated) all property that our family had.  

I learned to fix electrical devices and discovered that I could make the “People’s” radio (the only legal radio in Hungary at that time) to receive foreign channels by changing the rheostat. The “people’s” radio brought in one channel only, the official voice of the Hungarian Communist Party. It was illegal to listen to foreign radio channels. I was in my teens and thought it was clever of me to make these radios into receiving “Radio Free Europe”, the “Voice of America” and the BBC. But since it was illegal to do so, I worked on it alone without letting my parents know what I was doing. And then I listened to “Radio Free Europe” at night, in my bed, pulling the covers over so nobody would know it.

I feel sorry for Ukraine and its people. The consequences of the Russian army’s occupation were something I had experienced. I hope they survive.

What is Community Engagement in Ottawa

February 24

What is Community Engagement in Ottawa?

We called it “citizen participation” in the late sixties in Norfolk, Virginia, where I worked for the City of Norfolk as a city planner. Urban renewal was in vogue and I had to liaise with community groups in the inner cities where urban renewal took place. The program replaced dilapidated homes with public housing.

To help to identify what the residents of the inner city wanted in their neighborhood – in their homes and open space surrounding them–we played interactive games. We had paper cutout benches, models for housing types and asked for their preferences. We tried to develop a plan from their input. That was called “citizen participation”. To get federal program funding, we had to show and describe how we worked collaboratively with the inner-city people (mostly African Americans) in Norfolk, Virginia.

I have often wondered if and how the City of Ottawa would invite the public to comment on upcoming developments in our neighborhood. My curiosity increased with my discovery that over 3000 apartments units in highrise buildings have been proposed in our neighborhood in the last few years. Construction has already started on some of them.

 Where will all these people come from to fill these new units? And who will pay for the infrastructure required by the increased demand for roads and utilities? Who is the target market for all these units: families, singles, retirees? What effects would all these proposals bring to our traffic? To our water and wastewater systems, and electrical grid? Would our taxes go up to pay for the new infrastructure required or do developers pay for the increased demand for these services?

So it pleasantly surprised me when I saw an ad in my local community newsletter in Ottawa. The City of Ottawa, it said, was accepting applications for “community engagement” to review neighborhoods’ development proposals. What better way to understand plans for our neighborhood than to take part with the city in reviewing these proposals So, I jumped on the opportunity and applied.

The response to my application came a few days later, advising me: I have to belong to the local community association; sign a “non-disclosure” agreement, and that I’ll need some training provided by the City. Instead of providing training, I expected the City to find out what skills I would bring to these reviews. I sat back, awaiting info on my training.

When cleaning up my old emails yesterday, I came across my exchange with the City on the application I submitted ten weeks ago. Wow! I followed up and copied my local City Councillor on my response. That did the trick: I received an email from the city the day after explaining that their “priorities have changed” and that is why I have not heard from them. But someone will follow up this Spring. Does that mean that they have one training program in the Spring? Or that they do not need volunteers anymore?

More importantly, does the City want “community engagement” or just check boxes to reflect “political correctness”? I suspect the latter: the email I received from the City to my application ends with three expressions; “Thank you” “Mercy” and “Migwetch”! The first two words are standard in a bilingual city with English and French. But the last word got my interest. It is in a native language meaning “thank you”. OK. We are politically correct, the City occupies Algonquin lands and I suspect the native language word is an acknowledgment of that.

But only five percent of the Ottawa population is of native origin. The same percentage of the population is Chinese, Arabic, and Asian. Will we see “thank you” notes in City of Ottawa letters in Chinese and Arabic and Hindi as well to acknowledge other major ethnic groups? Just a question.

However, my more serious concern is the commitment of the City to “public engagement” – it has now been three months since I applied in response to a request by the City for “public engagement”. It looks like it will be another three months before there is a “training” session. The sluggishness and response to my inquiry lead me to believe that the City is more interested in checking boxes than receiving input from citizens on development proposals. Just my opinion.

Ottawa Under Siege?

February 18

The headline said “Ottawa under siege” and then “Ottawa under occupation”. I live in Ottawa and frankly, I did not understand what they were talking about. In our neighborhood, there was nothing different from yesterday or the week before. Or the month before. I did not see one single truck pulling through our streets. I went shopping, went for my walks, and continued with my usual activities, including going to the gym, etc. so where is this siege?

Ottawa’s population is one million people; the metro area, including the Quebec side (the City of Gatineau), is one and a half million people. One part of the downtown area is the Parliamentary Precinct that is one kilometer long along Wellington Street and is a narrow band of land housing the Center, East and West blocks plus the Supreme Court building and the Archives (Parliament meets in the Center Block). The northern boundary of the Parliamentary District is the Ottawa River. The Precinct is a narrow sliver of land.

The protesters jammed up Wellington Street and then expanded to occupy the next few streets in the downtown area. Most of the buildings in this area are office buildings but include some condo high-rises. Further out there are more low rise residential apartments. The protesters occupied a four-block area going south from Wellington Street. I do not know how many people live in the occupied zone, but I would hazard to say that there are no more than a thousand.

The diesel fumes, the honking, the dancing, and the parties plus the fires where the protesters drank and conducted themselves in a loud manner surely irritated the nearby residents. And there was taunting as well for people who wore masks. But there was no vandalism to speak of and what I heard was that it was a party type of atmosphere downtown. OK. So the occupation was downtown and covered the kilometer-long Wellington Street and a few parallel streets south of Wellington. So would that be half a square kilometer area: it is one kilometer long and half a kilometer wide? The area of the City of Ottawa is 2800 square kilometers, not including the Quebec side). So we are talking about much less than one percent of the area of Ottawa where the occupation is.

But, the occupied area is an important part of Ottawa, both economically and symbolically.  Many people, including government employees, work remotely, away from the downtown area. Their absence hurt downtown shops economically.

The Parliamentary Precinct is an important tourist destination as well, even in the winter. No question that the protesters create a nuisance for people living and working in the area. But to claim that the City is under siege is an overstatement. It is an exaggeration beyond reason. Outside of the small affected area, the city is carrying on normally as if there were nothing dramatic occurring.

I live nine kilometers from Parliament (by road) and if it were not for the newspapers and television, I would not have known that there was is an “occupation” downtown. For people with no interest in politics and no desire to go downtown, the protest is nothing more than an interesting episode on television. Please, do not exaggerate and sow panic! Just my opinion.

My gout story; Canadian healthcare

February 14

When I woke up one night with a pain in the first digit of the middle finger of my right hand, my first impression was that it had to be gout. I had some gout flareups before and it always started with sudden pain during the night. The weirdest thing is that once it happened in Dawson City after we hiked the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska and the other time it happened in Chennai, India when we did charity work. Perhaps it happens during unusual and maybe stressful times, although I remember it happened at home, in Ottawa years ago as well. The usual treatment has been some anti-inflammatory tablets for a week. But not this time.

I wanted to see my GP but met a doctor substituting for her, whose first comment was that my swelled digit was a powerful middle finger to show someone to bug off – said in jest and taken as such. Then he sent me for an x-ray and gave me a prescription for anti-inflammatory medicine. And come back in two weeks. So far, so good. When I returned, I was scheduled with another doctor. She said the x-ray did not show gout and said I was on the right track. Then she examined all my fingers and toes and noticed that I had a toe enlarged by an accident a few years ago that never healed properly and looked like gout with puss oozing out of it. So she prescribed anti-biotic medicine for me and another anti-inflammatory to speed up the healing. Again, come back in two weeks. This third visit, with yet another doctor at the clinic, told me I was improving and took pictures of my finger and toe. The next time a fourth and again, a different doctor said that I was on the right track but sent me to a rheumatologist to deal with my gout for the long term and also noticed that one of my toes is pink, indicating perhaps that blood circulation is lacking and therefore sent me for an ultrasound test for my vascular system. Aha. I saw four different doctors, all subbing for my GP,  sent me for tests, and prescribed medicine. Now you would consider that our medical system is great. And it is and was accessible for me; appointments secured quickly. But was I over-medicated? In previous bouts I have had with gout, a doctor gave me one prescription to reduce the swelling and decrease the pain and that was the end of the treatment.

I told the four doctors my history with gout; I had flareups once every five to ten years and in total not more than half a dozen times. And each time, they treated me with medicine that lasted a week. This time, the doctors treated me differently. Perhaps they intended to solve my recurring gout on a more permanent basis; if so, I did not understand why. I was wondering, though, about the cost to our medical system.

I was happy to get an appointment with a rheumatologist quickly but disappointed in having a remote consultation. I explained on the phone what my gout looked like but I would have preferred if the doctor saw me in flesh before prescribing a couple of medicines that I understood to be taken for life. This was another one of today’s health care practices: remote consultation. After the consultation, I read up on gout and found that diet has a major role and with an appropriate diet, one may reduce flareups. I would much prefer to use dieting to taking pills for life, and at least have the pros and cons of this more moderate approach explained to me.

The rheumatologist also sent me for a blood test to provide a base case for “uric” acid that triggers gout. The doctor probably assumed that my level of uric acid was high. Imagine my surprise when the results came back, showing that the level of uric acid in my blood was right in the mid-range of the acceptable level.  When I inquired why to take pills when my results followed recommended levels, the doctor told me she would like to see the uric acid level further decline in my blood. It made me think perhaps I should have had the blood test first, based on which to prescribe the type and amount of medicine.

Healthcare was accessible to me and practiced by well-educated professionals. But I had a feeling that I did not have one doctor who knew me and my history and advised me accordingly. So each doctor gave me his/her best opinion and prescriptions, but continuity was not there. I thought that perhaps the first doctor who saw me should have taken the pictures that subsequent doctors could use in examining my gout. And I was quite willing to see the rheumatologist in person instead of remote consultation. But I was not asked if I preferred it. Frankly, I am confused about how our medical system is delivered; whether it is cost-effective, and whether it is patient-centered.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have seen five doctors in six weeks, triggered by a gout attack in the first digit of the middle finger of my right hand. This is when people are searching for general practitioners with a short supply of doctors and when elective surgeries are postponed because of Covid. I was given five prescriptions, sent for a blood test, an x-ray, and an ultra-sound. I was overwhelmed.