Erika Kornélia Szeles

From the Hungarian Wikipedia page [1]

Erika windy Kornelia (January 6, 1941 Budapest-November 7, 1956 Budapest) Hungarian apprentice cook, and 1956 Revolution martyr.

She was born on January 6, 1941 in Budapest, in the XIII. district. Originated from a Communist Jewish family; her mother was Noémi Blumenfeld (1911–1990), her father was Sándor Sleser (1898–1944). Her mother - called by many Aunt Baba - worked as a typist in a company. "She was a communist in an almost religious way," stumbled in a sigh of knowledge of Stalin's death news, received a hysterical attack, and fainted.

Erika's father died in 1944, the exact circumstances of his death are unclear. Some sources say Germans were killed in a concentration camp. On the other hand, however, it also emerged that he could have died in a ghetto in Budapest. From the age of three, her mother alone raised her daughter strictly in Budapest VIII. district, Bezerédi utca 11, II. floor. According to István Ivanits, a report from a former neighbor who lived downstairs, "Erika had left her a lot, she spent a lot of time with us".

She completed her elementary school studies at the Metropolitan General Girls' School at 4th Republic. According to one of her former classmates, he was a "red-haired, freckled little girl" , approx. 165 cm tall. The old classmate recalled Erika: “Hers was a very controversial personality. She was very agile, especially a girl of movement, but she kept her privacy very much. Despite being in everything, she always stood out of the line. "I remember - maybe because I was a 14-year-old girl - that she had strange clothes." At that time, she was quite striking and she envious of her. They were completely different material and their tail was also alien. In the fifties we were in small flannel dresses, corduroy pants, plaid flannel blouses, knit cardigans. Erika had a couple of pretty clothes, for example, I saw a blue-green composition for the first time. These clothes were a package." A immigrated to the United States on 23 October 1983, Hungarian journalist, Thomas Foldes Based on the description "wild csitrinek seemed more than adolescent young lady. Her hair was cut shortly, she was more fond of pants than in skirts. ” At the end of the 1940s, she spent three months in Denmark organized by the Red Barnet Association to support children living in impoverished countries after the war.

According to her former classmate, Erika was a Pioneer in 1952-53. After the primary school, Teréz krt. 43 is located in Béke Hotel. In 1956, Dr. Almerigo Fonda worked as an auditor also an economist who danced with Erika in a folk dance group for three months. According to his reminiscences, Erika was quiet, restrained, smiling, but retreating, who did not really attract the attention, fit into the other without sound. In the opinion of the economist, the minority complex could play a part in the restraint of Erika: besides that, among other things, a reviewer, a receptionist and the Foundation, danced among them, and these were all higher positions than the professional status. Erika also participated in the events of literary clubs organized by her mother's uncle, Endre Bondi (conductor, composer, writer, conference). Based on Tamás Földi's report“The then fifteen-year-old girl was surprisingly mature with our word duel. He had an opinion on the debates taking place in the Petőfi Circle , hoping for some kind of democratic renewal with a flaming eye.”

Despite her mother's communist views, Erika became interested in anti-communism as a result of her older friend . In the 1981 Berlingske Tiende article, József Árki, who attended the same cookery school with Erika, told him that Erika had been taken by the same older friend to the insurgents in the newspaper "The Hero of the Hero". Erika also invited some of her fellow students to the uprising group who taught her how to deal with a machine gun. On November 1, 1956, a Danish photo editor, Vagn Hansen, made a famous picture of her. In the picture, the 15-year-old Erika was smiling at the model in a buffalo in rubber boots and a Russian machine gun in his hand. After November 1, the friends who knew about the invasion of Russian units in Hungary were worried about Erika's security and convinced her to be too young to fight. Erika agreed to put down the weapon and joined the Red Cross as a volunteer nurse on November 4th.

On 8 November 1956 based on George Ivanits was a neighbor telling "Erika appeared a boy and a cartridge-drum submachine gun. I remember tared there, packed into the ammunition. She told me that she was a Red Cross and wounded among the revolutionaries megsebesülteket saved And the boy, her friend, is a revolutionary. ”She said they were going to just rest a little, his mother crying and crying to her not to go because she knew she would kill him. As a member of a street rebellion around Blaha Lujza Square, she ran to help her wounded companion when she was killed by a Soviet machine gun. According to György Ivanits, “it was almost an entire ammunition. She was crossed and even the red cross dress on it. " After November 8, Erika Szeles's mother searched for her daughter all over Budapest, in hospitals, dead houses and people who knew what had happened. József Árki also weeping asked to tell what he knows her child. he knew only a few days later to bring himself to tell the mother of Erika's death. Erika was buried in November 1956, the 14th in the Fiume Street the National Cemetery. Total the heroes and innocent victims of the 1956 Revolution and War of Independence who were buried in this graveyard. You can find it on a marble label. The grave is the 24th grave of line 1 of the 21st cemetery. The following inscription is on the grave: “Unforgettable single little daughter Erikm, 1941 I. 6 - 1956. XI. 7. ” According to Tamás Földes, her mother's mother was crazy for a few years after the revolution because of her husband and daughter's loss of life. György Ivanits, however, remembers: "The mother lived alone. She often came to talk to my mother, but she could only complain, life was hurting her. I think she got home to a community of old people and died there. Her mother was married to Sándorné Blumenfeld Szeles as her husband, buried in a grave with her parents at the Kozma Street Jewish cemetery , and the tombstone reads: "Little hill, but we have a world, our happiness is under it ... Dear heart, who just knew it, bless and bless you."

The photograph was taken by a Danish photographer, Vagn Hansen, who at the time was 15 years old, with a smile in rubber boots with a Russian machine gun in her hand. His photograph, as a front page photo, came to Western countries during the October Revolution, and became a real symbol: a symbol of courage and hope. "I accidentally managed to make a picture that went around the world and became a symbol of revolution. I saw a serious-looking, beautiful girl in [...] in a jacket with a Russian machine gun on my shoulder, which I made to take some pictures of her," Vagn Hansen. The photographer and Erika talked, but there was nothing to know about her name. In addition to Hansen, several foreign photographers have taken pictures of the little girl probably on the same day as Hansen, because Erika is wearing the same dress on those photos.

Henning Schultz A retired geographer living in Copenhagen in 1956, as a 15-year-old student with his friends, was inspired by the Hungarian Revolution. The enthusiasm has only been enhanced by the most prestigious photos of the most respected Danish weekly, Billed Bladet, made by Vagn Hansen in Hungary in the last days of October. He and his fellow students were greatly influenced by the cover photo of November 13, 1956 about Erika. He was one of those young Danish teenagers who were photographed by Erika for their photo. The serious-looking, wavy-haired young lady in the photo burned the romantic imagination of the young, as they thought it was different from the Danish girls. "We all loved her, we thought she was very strong, brave and pretty," Schultz recalled. As a teenager, she hid the three numbers of Billed Bladet and found Erika's photo in the depths of a crate between her primary school textbooks. The name of the newspaper was Erika's name, but we couldn't know more about the brave girl with cotton pads. He often played with the idea of ​​coming to Hungary once and looking for a model for such an attractive cover page. In 2006, with the approach of the 50th anniversary of the revolution, he decided to search for Erika and give him the old papers. At first Schultz tried to find the girl with the help of internet forums but he did not succeed, so he went to find more information for Hungary. In November 2006, he was a researcher at the Hungarian National Museum Historical Photo Gallery. The Museum Photo Library did not provide him with information that could help her find her, but she had donated the newspaper to two other contemporary figures, the photographic library. He invested a lot of time in his search, asking for more Hungarian papers to publish Erika's image if anyone knew. He did not know anything from the Hungarian sources, although the photo was published by Magyar Nemzet (November 25, 2006) and the website of the Prime Minister's Office in 1956, but without results. The Hungarian National Museum wanted to buy a few of Vagn Hansen's photographs taken in 1956 during the Revolution in Budapest. Vagn Hansen's Danish photojournalist on the 1956 Revolution Mr Schultz, who was already in contact with the old photographer, promised his intervention. Returning to Denmark, Henning Schultz visited Vagn Hansen, who was ready to sell 10 to 12 photos to the Hungarian National Museum. But when the purchase price was not too high in the Hungarian context, it turned out that he could not cover the amount from the museum's collecting framework. After a multiple e-mail exchange, the case seemed to run into a reef. At that time - in autumn 2007 - Mr Schultz was in their favor. With a letter of purchase from the museum, he submitted a tender to several foundations. In the spring of 2008, Axel Pitzner Fonden and Velux Fonden donated a sum of money from which the purchase was made. Vagn Hansen insisted on selecting the pictures that came into the museum by himself and then making magnifications in the presence of the original negatives in one of the most outstanding photographic laboratories in Copenhagen . The 12 30x40 cm signed paper images were handed over to the museum in 2008 by Henning Schultz. Subsequently, Henning Schultz arrived at a newspaper article in one of the leading Danish pages, Berlingske Tidende, November 14, 1981, entitled "The Hero of Erika Dead", in which a 56-year-old refugee living in Denmark, József Árki provided credible data. According to them, Erika learned to cook with her and, through a friend older than 3-4 years, became a revolutionary. Henning Schultz summed it up in writing to the museum.

The Hírszerző.hu internet opinion-forming portal started to deal with the history of the mysterious girl and her family in 2008. Thanks to the exhibition of the Intelligence Act and the Hungarian National Museum's Vagn Hansen 1956, more and more people came from the past, making Erika's history more and more rounded. Reading the Intelligence article and seeing the photo, a former elementary schoolmate recognized the little girl and identified her as Erika Szeles, and in November 1956 died of a heroic death around Blaha Lujza Square. The Hungarian National Museum's Vagn Hansen exhibition featuring images from 1956 made Mr. Hansen aware of where the girl was resting, and the Intelligence Agency then visited the Kerepesi cemetery and searched for a grave.

## lmerigo Fonda

As a result of the exhibition, an economist from Dr. Almerigo Fonda, who has been dancing with Erika for three months in a folk dance group, was presented with a photo by Erika Szeles. Not only was the fate of the girls in the photo tragic, one of them, for example, died in 1956 because of a miscarriage.

## Tamás Földes

The journalist's article was read by Tamás Földes, a Hungarian journalist emigrated to the United States on October 23, 1983 , who in 1956 was 3 years older than Erika, so they were not in close contact, exchanging only a few words. According to his early memories, Erika and she also visited the literary club of her mother's uncle, Endr Bodi. “Only in the summer of 56, when we met in the street, we talked for a little longer first. The fact that his death nevertheless shook him is due to my enthusiasm in 1956, and then to the subsequent shock - not to my love for Bondi Bandi. Földes has previously published several articles about his little girl's memories, entitled "Once upon a Little Girl". The article, in which the author only vaguely recalls the girl named Judit, also identified by Hansen's photograph, does not provide accurate data, but appeared in the American Hungarian Newsletter, in the New East of Israel , and most recently, in 2004, we could read Hope at home.. The article itself is not suitable for identifying Erika's identity, but the description in it is, in some respects, identical to the information from the girl's former acquaintances.

## Brothers Ivanits

In 2009, the Ivanits brother sent a letter to the Newsletter who lived in a house in 1956 with Erika at 11 Bezerédi Street, the last residence of Erika. The then six-year-old György Ivanits was at Eriká before the little girl went to the street, where the deadly shot was worth.

## János Aracs

János Aracs was a former friend and he liked her very much, but he said they were only loosely connected. “She was smarter and more advanced than me, I looked at her. During the Revolution, they met in the Royal Hotel : "She came with a machine gun to the kitchen and I was terrified of her." I could not grow up to her age, maturity, ”remembers János Aracs, who had no head of a child's understanding that his mother could allow Erika to carry a gun.

## Szekeres Pál

Like Erika, Peker Szekeres worked at the Béke Hotel and he knew the girl. He says that the revolutionary, who has become a chef, was not grieved, he smiled forever, and he could always help everyone - but the face of a photo of the western world press was looking back at us, according to his former colleague, Erika was the revolution.