Jenő Fónay

From the Hungarian Wikipedia page [1] which includes details of his writings.

Jeno Fónay (Kaposvár 5 September, 1926-Budapest 16 June, 2017) engineer USA, 1956 freedom fighters, deputy commander of the Széna Square resistance group.

Founder of the National Association of Political Prisoners (POFOSZ), president until 2002. ( He was elected by the founding meeting on February 17, 1989: the co-chairman was Árpád Göncz]].) He had two children, Andrea, born in 1954, and Péter, ten years younger.

In September 1944, at the age of 18, he voluntarily joined the St. Ladislaus Division, which retired to Germany where Jenő Fónay fell into a US warship. He returned home on November 1 1945.

In 1946 he enrolled in the University of Economics in Budapest and in 1952 at the Technical University. In these years he worked at the Hungarian State Coal Mines and later at the Tükert. From May 1, 1953, he worked at the Power Engineering Office as a mechanical engineer.

On October 23, 1956 he attended the Petőfi Statue, Bem Square and the Parliament's protests. On October 25, at the Buda bridgehead of the Margit Bridge, he organized the bridges of the insurgents. On the same day, he got a group of weapons on the Tímár Street police station and joined the Széna Square resistors who fought under the command of Uncle Szabo who was later executed. On 27 October he was elected deputy commander. On behalf of the insurgents in the Széna Square he participated in the armistice talks held at Petőfi Academy with the government.

After the Revolution, he was arrested on 11 October 1957 . (First- and second-degree on 25 April and 8 July 1958) was sentenced to death. He spent more than four months in jail as a prisoner of death (spending most of his time in the throes of death among the 1956 deaths), but eventually he was pardoned on August 8 and released in 1963. (He was the only one of the 15 men who had been sentenced to death in the Széna Square).

After his release, he was a thermal engineering designer at the Mélyépterv and then at the Water Route. As an engineer, he has three registered patents. He became a disability pensioner in 1984.

Jenő Fónay participated in organising the redemption of Imre Nagy and his executions to June 16 1989 . (A year earlier, when the communist power was still strong, he spoke a memorial in the resting place of Imre Nagy, parcel 301).

From 1990 until the Compensation Office was dissolved, he was a member of the Office of the College of the Office.

The Széna Square Circle of Friends, founded around 2000, regularly attacked János Fónay in public. (According to historian László Eörsi, the Circle of Friends, which preserves the anonymity of its members, had only one significant activity.)

In 2005 he was awarded the Imre Nagy Order of Merit. On 22 October 2006 the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary received a prize in the Parliament. On October 25, like other veterans, the police did not allow him to twist the memorial of the victims of the 50-year-old volley on Kossuth Square.

János Fónay's memoirs were published in 1983 by the title of the Hungarian Hungarian Literary and Fine Arts Retaliation (What Happened in Hungary after 1956?) . In 1986, at the 30th Anniversary of the Revolution, Tosca's 1958 Award won the first prize for the Literature Prize of the Free Radio Europe.