MBE for the Association’s Chairman
The Chairman of the Muswell Hill & Fortis Green Association, John Hajdu, has been awarded an MBE in this year’s New Year Honours List for his contribution towards Holocaust awareness and education. He regularly delivers talks to schoolchildren through the agency of the Holocaust Educational Trust.John was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1937 and suffered persecution under both Nazi and Soviet regimes in the 1940s and 1950s. John is particularly keen to spread the word because not many people have gone through not one but two periods of persecution, firstly under the German regime and secondly under the Soviet occupation, and also because one hears mostly about what happened to the Jews in Poland and Germany but very rarely, if at all, about what happened in Hungary.
Whilst giving his talks John tells the children that it is possible with all the hardship and all the fighting in your life, to survive and create a happy life in this country.
John said that the award simply spurs him on to try to talk to as many people as possible and be an ambassador on behalf of survivors who might not be able to talk or might not want to talk about their experiences. In an interview with Sky News he admitted that recounting his story is difficult and traumatic but that it is vitally important that stories such as his should be told to future generations.