Film Screening and Discussion - Patria Nostra

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION


PATRIA NOSTRA - Minor Hungarian refugees in 1956 in the French Foreign Legion.

89 min. in Hungarian and French with English subtitles

28 February 2017. at 6:00 p.m.

The screening is accompanied by a discussion with the author and film director Béla Nóvé (Historian) and  András Mink, (Historian, Blinken OSA Archivum)


Blinken OSA Archivum / Galeria Centralis - 1051 Budapest, Arany János u. 32.

Free admission | Limited seats available on a first-come first-served basis



There were some 500 teenage Hungarians who fought against the Soviet tanks in 1956, and a few years later joined the French Foreign Legion – only to be sent to fight in the Algerian war. Thus they were involved in two of the most heated conflicts of the Cold War period, and both times they were on „the losing side”.
Very little is known about their subsequent fate. After a long search we were lucky enough to locate some survivers in Corsica and Provence. Since most of them were denied re-entry to their homeland – some until as late as 1990 –, they continued to serve in the Legion for 20 or 30 years in such far-away places as Algeria, Corsica, Madagascar, Tahiti, Chad, Djibouti and French Guiana.
No wonder that they are still fighting now – at least in their hearts – , feeling obliged to redefine their loyalty to their native land (Hungary) and their host country (France). And of course to the Legion itself, which offered them a sort of ’asylum’ or ’homeland’ for so many years. The motto says it all: ’Légion Patria Nostra’.