Communist Secret Police Unveil the Love of a Lifetime.

• Author: Nagy, Ernest
• Position: Foreign Service Life

April 2016

Through the good offices of a Hungarian historian-journalist who is working on a movie script dealing with the 1956 Hungarian revolution, I have recently received one half of the 600-page dossier maintained on me by the Hungarian Secret Police of yore. This stems from my service at the first post of my diplomatic career (1952-56) in Budapest in the really bad old days when Stalin brutally suppressed virtually all nations east of Checkpoint Charlie.

Following is the dossier entry for May 21, 1952, classified as "Szigoruan Titkos!"--Strictly Secret:

"Otherwise Nagy is very happy because, being a good looking young man (I did not make that up, author) he has not found, among the young ladies of the Legation, an appropriate girl friend. Today he literally beamed with happiness as he escorted into the coffee shop the new, young, black-haired girl newly arrived from Rome." This beautiful, vivacious, gifted young lady died on August 1, 2015. I miss her. A lot.*

PS

I had arrived at my first post, Budapest, on April 4, 1952. Helen and I were married on both October 9 & 11, 1953. Reason: The first was the civil ceremony before the Communist Party Secretary of Budapest's 5th district, an Ana Pauker clone. The second ceremony was performed at the Minister's residence (we were still a Legation) by a military chaplain flown in from Salzburg. Some months later I was secretly shown photos of the wedding reception, taken surreptitiously by the Hungarian Secret Police, the AVH.

About Ernest and Helen Nagy

I was born on May 1, 1927 in Hamilton Square, NJ. My Dad was a Seventh Day Adventist Minister and we lived in Bridgeport, CT; Perth Amboy & Metuchen, NJ; Chicago, IL; Toledo, OH and Cleveland, OH. Both my parents were born in Hungary (though my Mom was ethnic German); neither birthplace is part of...