Tibor Méray, b. 1924
After graduating from Budapest’s Péter Pázmány University in Hungarian and Latin, Tibor Méray joined the staff of the communist daily Szabad Nép in 1946, as an arts editor and afterwards a correspondent in Korea and then Berlin. In 1947–8 he was an editor of the periodical Csillag (Star). He was HWP secretary at the Writers’ Union in 1953–4, having received a Kossuth Prize in 1953. In 1954–5, Méray was a member of the Szabad Nép editorial board. He joined the party opposition centred on Imre Nagy, whose policies he supported publicly at party meetings at Szabad Nép in October 1954 and the Writers’ Union in 1955–6, and at the press debate held by the Petőfi Circle on June 27, 1956. He was dismissed from his job in 1955, but worked for the periodical Béke és Szabadság (Peace and Freedom) in 1956. On October 26, 1956, an article by Méray supporting Imre Nagy appeared in Népszava. Fleeing from the reprisals in 1957, he reached Paris by way of Yugoslavia. In 1959–63, he was on the staff of the Brussels Hungarian paper Szemle (Review) and from 1962 onwards, he edited the Paris Irodalmi Újság, of which he became editor-in-chief in 1971. Initially, he published abroad under the pseudonym Elemér Asbóth. He did much, while in exile, to foster the memory of the revolution. He was vice-chairman of the Paris Exile group of PEN and the founder of the Pissarro Museum in Pontoise.
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