My Father Was In The Hungarian Resistance. Orbán’s Defeat Reminds Us Why It Mattered

My Father Was In The Hungarian Resistance. Orbán’s Defeat Reminds Us Why It Mattered
Written by Jonathan Jacoby
Publisher:Forward
Published: April 13, 2026
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My father resisted the Nazis in Hungary. I thought of him — and how he would have rejoiced — when the Hungarian people voted out Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Sunday, after 16 years of authoritarian rule. Only a week before Hungarian voters made their choice, the outcome of the elections seemed far from certain. I remember watching in dismay last Tuesday, when Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest to try to help prop Orbán up. There, he spread the same kind of blood-and-soil nationalism that has haunted the history of Hungary, and helped enable the horrors through which my father lived. In his campaign rally with Orbán, Vance decried “far-left ideology” as “a shared threat from within that both of our nations face,” adding that its followers “view the very foundations of our shared civilization as illegitimate.” He also said that Orbán had kept Hungary from being “invaded” by immigrants.