Szilárd Újhelyi ( 1915-1996)
Born in Debrecen, Újhelyi graduated in law from Debrecen University in 1937. In that year, he was among the initiators of the anti-fascist March Front and editor of the periodical Tovább (Onward). He joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1941 and took part in the resistance movement. He was arrested twice and kept under police surveillance for three years. In 1945, he became state secretary at the Ministry of Welfare. He was appointed general secretary of the Institute of Cultural Relations in 1948, and in December 1949, deputy director general of Hungarian Radio. However, he was arrested on March 5, 1951 and sentenced on October 20 to eight years' imprisonment in the trial of Dr István Tariska and associates. He was rehabilitated on July 23, 1954 and appointed to a managing directorship in the film industry. In 1955, he became a member of the party opposition grouped round Imre Nagy. He took part in the discussion in Nagy' s flat on October 23, 1956. On November 4, 1956, he was among those who applied for asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest and were arrested and interned in Romania on November 23. He was allowed back to Hungary in the autumn of 1958, with members of the Nagy group who had not been arrested and dependants. He joined the staff of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of History, returning to the film industry in 1962. In 1967- 8, he headed the publishing division and then the film division at the Ministry of Culture. In 1976, he retired, but in the following year, he was appointed Hungary's ambassador to Unesco. He was recalled in 1983. In 1988, Újhelyi was a founder member of the Committee for Historical Justice and of the New March Front, of which he became president.
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