1987. május (53-73. szám) / HU_BFL_XIV_47_2
®mí 24/D Littit Rutfcell Street, LONDON, WC.i • Ttl. 0Y-45O ti 26 • &. KraSió 56/1987 /E/ 9th May, 1987 "Alternative Cultural Centre” in Budapest Opened with Wallenberg-exhibition At 5pro on the 8th of May in Budapest,in the building at 165 Erdőalja Street of III. Distriet - the house of the graphic artist Gábor Zrinyifalvi - an insti- tution unauthorised by the state, the "Alternative cultural centre" started its activity. 'i'his community-house - as it is alsó called -,is opened to the public every Sunday aftemoon from 5 to 9 o'clock and its goal, according to the prog- ramme issued, is to provide a piacé fór independent intellectual manifestations ousted from the official artistic and cultural life. As Tamás Molnár,member of the INCONNU group, told in his short opening speech, 'We believe in the community- creating force of culture and in that culture has a more important and quite different meaning than in other parts of the world'. The new institution has been opened in the aftemoon of 8 May with two exhi- bitions and both of them were in connection with up-to-date events in Budapest - with the sessions of the Executive Committee of the Jewish World Congress held in the Hungárián Capital and the erection of the statue of Raoul Wallenberg with more than four decades delay, at the site of the sessions. In the garage converted intő an exhibition hall with considerable expense of labour, visitors could see paintings and drawings, while in the entrance-hall the life and activities of the young Swedish diplomát, Raoul Wallenberg saving tens of thousands of Hungárián Jews at the end of the Second World War and then deported to Soviet death-camps, were shown by photographs, articles and original documents displayed on ten huge tableaux. Among the artworks displayed in the exhibition-hall were one by the re- cently deceased Hungárián avantgarde artist Miklós Erdélyi, two mighty, wall-sized paintings of the hőst - Gábor Zrinyifalvi -, pictures of János Romvári, two greater and three smaller non-figurative works of Vera Dávid and two oil-paintings by László Fehér, one of which depicts broken, mouldering Passover cake, while on the other a combination of figures resembling Jewish graves recollects the memory of the holocaust with great force of affection. After the opening speech of Tamás Molnár, the philosopher Miklós Gáspár Tamás delivered a speech under the title "The memory of Raoul wallenberg". With the passing of fifty years - he told - perhaps no one will understand "why the Swedish diplomát Raoul Wallenberg, who tried to savé victims of National Socialism and then perished in one of the concentration camps of the Soviet Union alluding to International öocialism, became a symbolic figure. Raoul Wallenberg was a symbol in the eyes of those,who valued liberal humanism more highly even in the hours of its weakness and defeat,than the spirit of the age embodied in armour wearing svastikas and red stars." "However hideous it had been, Fascism had been only an episode of the pást in the history of Europe - continued Miklós Gáspár Tamás - , while the Communist systems, though somewhat softened-up and in a less ferocious mood, are still there and albeit they sometimes honour the memory of their innocent victims with a nőd - particularly when they think that the West is stuffed with congratulations and dollars -, bother their empty heads about the consolidation of modernized serfdom.
