Historian Endre László Varga has received the prestigious Wacław Felczak Award, which has been presented since 2022, to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to promoting Hungarian-Polish friendship.
The IV. Felczak Gala was held at the House of Traditions, where the Wacław Felczak Award was presented. The award was established by the foundation’s board of trustees in 2022, with the aim of recognizing the work of individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to perpetuating the idea of Hungarian-Polish friendship over the centuries, the organizers wrote in their Thursday announcement.
This year, the award went to historian Endre László Varga, who has spent many decades uncovering and publicizing the forgotten history of Hungarian volunteers who served in the Polish Legion between 1914 and 1918, as well as Hungarian-Polish relations between 1918 and 1920, and arms and ammunition shipments from Hungary to Poland, thereby serving the cause of Hungarian-Polish friendship for many decades.
The award winners received an anamorphosis designed by graphic artist István Orosz. The award is symbolic and unique in that the graphic, composed of tiny details, is projected onto a metal cylinder, bringing to life the portrait of the foundation’s namesake.
Previous recipients of the Felczak Award include István Kovács, a Polish scholar, diplomat, historian, writer, and poet; Csaba Kiss, a Polish scholar, literary historian, and cultural historian who passed away this year; Áron Petneki, a Polish scholar and cultural historian; and Ákos Engelmayer, a Polish scholar and cultural historian.
Fact
A former resident of the prestigious Eötvös Collegium boarding school of Budapest, Wacław Felczak was a researcher on Polish-Hungarian relations. Based in Budapest, Felczak functioned as an organizer of the secret courier service between Warsaw and the Polish government-in-exile during the Second World War. By means of his clandestine activity, he contributed to the exchange of information and orders, and also provided financial support to the resistance in occupied Poland.After the war, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist authorities. He was released under an amnesty in the fall of 1956, subsequently becoming a researcher of the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University. From the 1970s onwards, he paid regular visits to Hungary, offering lectures to small groups of students.
The establishment of the Wacław Felczak Foundation was announced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a former mentee of the professor, at a memorial conference that took place in 2016, in Krakow commemorating the centenary of Felczak’s birth. The Hungarian and the Polish side decided to establish two institutions dedicated to the memory of the late professor, based in Budapest and Warsaw respectively. The Foundation aims to strengthen traditional Hungarian-Polish friendship and collaboration, particularly by supporting educational campaigns, university programs and academic activities, as well as by offering unique community experiences for the youth.
Via MTI; Featured image: Facebook/Głos Polonii Głos Polonii
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