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Hungary Unveils Statue Of Late President Bush

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News reporting from Budapest, Hungary 

(Worthy News) – Hungary says it will unveil a statue of late U.S. President George W. Bush in Budapest to mark the 30th anniversary of the collapse of communist dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1989, Bush became the first U.S. president to visit Hungary while in office. He died in 2018 at the age of 94.

The statue will be inaugurated on October 23, when Hungary remembers its 1956 Revolution for freedom against Soviet Union rule.

President Bush played a crucial role in ending decades of communist rule, Hungarian and US officials said. The statue “expresses our mutual appreciation and gratitude for the statesman, who contributed to shaping the future of Europe and within Hungary through his commitment and strong morals, and through his advocacy for democracy and against communist dictatorship,” added a joint statement from U.S. Ambassador David B. Cornstein and Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff.

The statue of the 41st U.S. president is being created by Hungarian sculptor Istvan Mate, whose larger-than-life statue of former President Ronald Reagan was unveiled in Liberty Square in June 2011.

PRESIDENT REAGAN

“It is fitting that the statue will be located close to that of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Budapest, which will symbolize the joint fight of these two leaders to defeat, in President Reagan’s words, the ‘evil empire,’” the officials’ statement added.

Liberty Square is surrounded by several large institutions, such as the National Bank of Hungary, the U.S. Embassy, and a huge building that housed Hungary’s first stock exchange during the first half of the 20th century.

The announcement came while separately the speaker of Hungary’s parliament László Kövér recalled the 30th anniversary of the group of former Hungarian prisoners and forced laborers in the Soviet Union (Szorakész). 

Many suffered torture and few survived the horrors of that time. Kövér noted that Gusztáv Menczer, the founder of Szorakész, had shown that the “secret” to surviving the Gulag was faith. 

“This — faith in God and faith that he gave us a homeland and family so we could preserve it — is also the secret to shaping a humanly liveable future in the 21st century,” Kövér said.