Heroes Don't Cry

In 1973 I went to Budapest to convince my parents to join me and immigrate to Canada. My father, Sándor Kopácsi, barely escaping execution, had been condemned to life imprisonment as one of the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. An amnesty allowed him to leave prison, but he was never really free as even a wrongly phrased word could have sent him back to jail. He had applied for full parole, but was refused. When he tried to discover the reason for his parole application refusal, he learned that his files had disappeared from the archives and were in the hands of General Ichtchenko, a senior officer of the KGB. This intense KBG scrutiny could only mean that his life and freedom were still at risk. It was vital that I get my parents out of Hungary immediately! The book deals with contemporary Hungarian History including the, until now, poorly documented story of the Mokan, an anti-Nazi resistance movement, responsible for saving many Jewish lives during World War II.