Today (yesterday, actually, unless you’re on the West Coast or in Hawaii) was the 60th anniversary of the 1956 uprising against the Soviet occupation of Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish President Andrzej Duda commemorated the occasion in Kossuth Square in Budapest. Below is a subtitled video of their speeches.

When you hear Mr. Orbán mention “the executed prime minister”, he is referring to Imre Nagy, who was deposed by the Soviets and executed two years later. When Mr. Orbán is heckled by leftists in the crowd, he refers to them as the “devil coming back to whistle” — i.e. the Communist devil.

Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

02:06 …sent ammunition to us, and who knows? Maybe

02:12 that was the deciding factor of the battle in our favor.

02:16 (speaking Polish)

02:22 In ‘39, you opened the borders for our soldiers

02:26 who then successfully escaped from

02:29 the closing German and Soviet armies. (speaking Polish)

02:34 In the west this made it possible to create

02:38 the Polish Army.

02:42 You were always our friends,

02:46 We will never leave you alone to fend for yourselves.

02:50 You can always count on Poland!

02:54 In the most difficult moments,

02:58 we will march together…

03:02 Two countries that are based on Christianity.

03:05 (speaking Polish)

03:12 We are both free and independent and members of the EU.

03:16 (speaking Polish)

03:22 But together we take these thousand-year-old

03:26 Christian traditions into Europe

03:30 We will not let our traditions and our culture be taken from us,

03:36 nor our freedom!

03:40 We will not let them take it from us at any cost!

03:44 God bless the Polish!

03:48 God bless the Hungarians!

03:52 (speaking Polish)

03:56 Glory to the heroes of the revolution of ’56!

04:00 (speaking Polish)

04:06 God bless the Hungarians, with your grace and bounty!

04:10 Thank you very much!

04:14 (applause)

04:48 Thank you very much!

04:52 Ladies and gentlemen:

04:56 Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary!

05:00 (Applause — crowd: Viktor, Viktor!)

05:37 The Poles…

05:40 In their national anthem, the Poles sing:

05:45 “Poland is not lost as long we are alive.”

05:50 The Hungarians reply with their national song:

05:55 “By all the gods of Hungary, we hereby swear,

06:00 That we the yoke of slavery no more shall wear.”

06:04 The Polish Legion has it on their flag:

06:08 “For your freedom and ours!”

06:14 This was in 1848,

06:18 also in 1956 and

06:22 today, too! These are two freedom-loving brave nations,

06:28 a thousand-year-old friendship.

06:32 I would like to welcome from the bottom of my heart,

06:36 in the Hungarian capital, in the nation’s main square,

06:39 Andrzej Duda, president of the Polish people.

06:42 (applause)

06:54 With him together… With him together we welcome all Polish people,

07:00 God bless and protect Poland!

07:04 (applause)

07:10 With grateful heart, I welcome

07:14 the heroes of 56’, who are here celebrating with us.

07:18 We wish them a long life!

07:21 (applause)

07:24 With respect I welcome the friends of our country,

07:28 who arrived from 26 countries,

07:32 The ones who were with us in those hard days,

07:36 stood up for us,

07:40 and today they are celebrating with us.

07:44 Welcome to our country!

07:48 (applause)

07:52 Mr. President, Mr Speaker of the House,

07:58 Ladies and gentlemen, Hungarians all around the world:

08:04 We send you our heartfelt welcome,

08:08 to every Hungarian.

08:12 No matter where they live, in all corners of the world,

08:16 Hungary is their country and Budapest is their capital, too.

08:20 (applause)

08:26 Just as the bright memories of October 1956,

08:30 are also for every one of us.

08:34 For us October 23 is a day of pride.

08:38 Even after sixty years, still uplifting

08:42 and cleansing.

08:46 Such a common heritage is this,

08:50 which the students, the workers of Ujpest and Csepel,

08:54 The citizens of Pest and Buda,

08:58 locksmiths, apprentices, engineers, doctors, miners and

09:02 and military officers and the executed prime minister

09:06 left for us.

09:10 Our eternal gratitude, our grateful thanks for that.

09:14 (applause)

09:20 Dear celebrating Hungarians!

09:24 In Hungary, after 1956, for 34 long years

09:30 we had a communist dictatorship.

09:34 We must live!

09:38 Even in a dictatorship, this is the prime directive.

09:42 We live as best we can.

09:46 Boarded-up sky, bad bargains,

09:50 dissimulation, hiding away,

09:54 guarded glances aside, locked hearts

09:58 and distrust. The cold days of dictatorships

10:04 grind up human dignity.

10:08 After their fall, emptiness, diminished life force,

10:12 and pettiness. But here in Hungary,

10:16 but here in Hungary, we have

10:20 exactly our heroes of ’56 to thank, that even the darkest moments of the Hungarian history,

10:26 even under the Soviet occupation, too,

10:30 we had plenty to be proud of.

10:34 We are grateful that for us,

10:38 and for every future Hungarians not yet born,

10:42 there are not 45 years of depressing darkness to befell us as our heritage.

10:48 We do not get human weaknesses and discord,

10:52 but receive bravery, heroism ,

10:56 and the glory of greatness as our viaticum.

11:00 We can be proud of our ancestors and

11:04 we can be proud of our country.

11:08 (applause)

11:16 We Hungarians survived Communism

11:21 and the Soviet occupation.

11:24 Today we can hold our heads high,

11:28 in our height of strength, the self-confident sons

11:32 of a strong Hungary can stand here. We overthrew the Communist party state,

11:38 sent the Soviet troops home, and healed our country

11:43 from the complications of dictatorship.

11:46 Opening to the world, an upright posture,

11:50 clear speech, clear vision and open hearts.

11:56 Thanks and gratitude that we can build our future on these.

12:00 (applause – Viktor, Viktor, Viktor)

12:26 Dear celebrating Hungarians!

12:30 In October 1956 history took a sharp turn.

12:34 Instead of the foretold

12:40 World Communist Revolution,

12:44 There erupted a revolution against the Communist world.

12:48 We sent a message to the West:

12:52 the Soviet Union is vulnerable. And in today’s world, the only stars that remain

12:58 are on the tops of the churches.

13:02 (applause)

13:06 Soviet Communism, believed to be unshakable,

13:10 received such a fatal blow, that it was unable to recover from it.

13:14 After 1956 the system calcified and grew old

13:18 along with its leaders,

13:22 and finally they were both taken by the devil. (applause)

13:30 But it is true, sometimes it comes back to whistle!

13:34 (laugh, applause – Viktor, Viktor)

13:52 Nobody could know

13:56 how comes the strength and willingness of the Hungarians,

14:00 who attack from nowhere like David with the sling,

14:04 once every hundred years,

14:08 can produce the greatest miracles.

14:12 Perhaps in us the same type of

14:16 ancient knowledge works as in the Greeks.

14:22 The testament of the ancient Greeks sounds like this:

14:26 The secret of a happy life is freedom.

14:30 And the secret of freedom is bravery.

14:34 We Hungarians have a talent for freedom.

14:38 We always knew what to do with it.

14:42 We knew freedom is not a state

14:46 that we would reach, but a way of life.

14:52 It is like swimming: he who stops will sink!

14:58 Freedom always and everywhere is a simple question.

15:02 Either we make decisions about our lives,

15:06 or someone else does. Dear commemorators!

15:10 Hungarians will never give up freedom, and they will never give up reclaiming it, if it is lost.

15:16 And even in the most hopeless situation, they can conjure it back again.

15:22 (applause)

15:30 In the fall of 1956, in October,

15:34 everyone could see freedom.

15:38 All could see it in its perfect and flawless form.

15:42 It walked on the streets and squares of the city,

15:48 it queued up in front of the stores,

15:52 it sat at the family tables, showed up in the offices,

15:56 in the smoky gluey train stations,

16:00 in the sad metal counters of the pubs.

16:04 When it arrived, the Hungarians stood up there

16:08 and sang our national anthem.

16:12 If freedom is Hungarian, it’s still wonderful,

16:16 even in its death. And it was miraculous,

16:22 in an unmarked grave, buried face-down, rolled in tar paper,

16:28 legs tied together with barbed wire.

16:32 Now resurrected, it is here with us today

16:36 and gathers us together.

16:40 (applause)

16:48 Dear celebrating citizens!

16:52 If our country is not free, we can’t be either.

16:56 Someone can just be lonely, but never free.

17:02 The fate of vanished nations warns us:

17:06 if a nation gives up its independence,

17:10 it can sink back to simple ethnicity.

17:14 Against the appetites of empires

17:18 to annex and digest, only our national independence can protect us.

17:26 That is why we stuck

17:30 in the craw of the Soviet empire. It broke its teeth in us,

17:36 because we clung to our national ideas, we joined forces and did not give up our patriotism.

17:42 That is why we cannot accept now

17:46 that our shared home, the European Union,

17:50 can be converted into a modern-day empire.

17:54 We do not want the alliance of

17:58 the free European nation states to be replaced by European United States.

18:02 (applause)

18:16 The task of the freedom-loving nations of Europe,

18:20 is to save Brussels from the Sovietization,

18:26 they who want to decide — instead of we ourselves —

18:30 with whom we want to live and how we want to live in our own countries.

18:34 We Hungarians want to remain a European nation,

18:40 and not an ethnicity in a united Europe.

18:44 (applause)

18:54 As heirs of the ’56 revolution,

18:58 we cannot accept that Europe

19:02 will cut its roots, which made it great

19:06 and helped us to survive

19:10 the Communist oppression.

19:14 There is no free, prestigious

19:18 and honorable Europe,

19:22 without the lifeblood of nations and the wisdom of two thousand years of Christianity.

19:30 (applause)

19:34 We cannot watch it idly,

19:38 while in an open and organized way,

19:42 it replaces the soil

19:46 where European civilization grew.

19:50 If our homeland, because of its size and weight,

19:54 is not capable of shaping Europe’s future,

19:58 we must take responsibility

20:02 for our own destiny. If the majority of Europe decides to replace

20:08 the foundation of its own civilization,

20:12 replace and mix its own ideals and population,

20:16 we still must be able to preserve and protect

20:20 the Hungarian slice of that Europe,

20:24 which has always warmed our hearts

20:28 and inspired the Hungarians.

20:32 (applause)

20:42 Ladies and gentlemen, dear citizens!

20:46 The secret of freedom is bravery,

20:50 not something that can be measured easily.

20:56 Either someone is brave, or a coward.

21:00 Who we are will be decided when

21:04 the time of trial arrives.

21:08 In the Hungarians bravery and common sense

21:12 can fit together very well.

21:18 We never wanted a role which was beyond our strength.

21:22 We never drove our axe into too large a tree which,

21:26 in the end, fell on our own head.

21:30 Yet maybe it is our geographic location,

21:36 but once every thirty years history tosses us into

21:40 the vortex of arguments about Europe’s future.

21:46 In 1956 when the Soviets left Austria,

21:50 we wanted to push the

21:54 Iron Curtain to our Eastern borders,

21:58 We were brave, and armed only with Molotov cocktails,

22:02 we attacked the Soviet tanks. In 1989 we had to open the borders,

22:08 so Germans could find their way to Germany.

22:14 We were brave, despite the fact

22:18 we had Soviet troops stationed here.

22:22 And now in 2015-16 we must close the borders,

22:28 to stop the migration flood from the South.

22:32 We were brave, we did not let a threat

22:36 or blackmail to change our resolve.

22:40 (applause)

22:46 We never asked… We never asked for this task.

22:52 History gave it to us; fate brought it to us.

22:56 Our part was that we did not run away,

23:00 We did not back down.

23:04 We did our duty. We still cope, when those attack us from the back,

23:10 those whom we are really defending and protecting.

23:16 We have courage to face injustice.

23:20 in the land of the Magyar, injustice,

23:24 does not exonerate one from his duty.

23:28 For that Europe can always count on us.

23:32 (applause)

23:38 Dear celebrating Polish guests and Hungarians!

23:42 For ourselves, I wish that we

23:46 never become coward nations. Cowards have no country!

23:52 We always have dramatic situations,

23:56 strong enemies and serious stakes.

24:00 There is no reason to let fear get the better of us.

24:06 No reason to give in to despair,

24:10 to give in to terrorists, who declared war

24:14 on the Western world, to give in to profit-seekers

24:20 who push hundreds of thousands of people,

24:24 hoping for a better life, towards Europe.

24:27 To give in to the naïve fools — who have no idea —

24:30 into what grave danger they put Europe and themselves.

24:36 If you can choose between two roads, take the harder one:

24:42 This is the first rule of courage.

24:46 The modern world is suffering because it forgot this lesson.

24:52 Today Europe would rather have the cheaper, thinner and the more comfortable.

24:58 Immigrants rather than their own children,

25:02 speculation rather than honest work,

25:06 debt instead of a disciplined life. We Hungarians chose the harder path:

25:12 we want our own children instead of immigrants,

25:16 work instead of speculation and welfare,

25:20 to stand on our own feet, rather than be a slave to debt,

25:24 and we chose border defense, instead of raising surrendering hands.

25:28 (applause – Viktor, Viktor, Viktor!)

25:42 Greatly respected members of ’56, dear celebrating citizens!

25:48 There is no victory without hearts being lifted up;

25:52 there would not have it in ’56, either.

25:56 It made the cowards brave, turned the suspicious towards each other,

26:02 brought the desire to act,

26:06 to replace the fainting numbness. It brought unity, and helped to create national unity,

26:12 where before were feud and incitement to class warfare,

26:18 poisoned wells and a nation torn asunder.

26:22 My friends! Political strength does not matter

26:28 in the parliament and with the new Basic Law [constitution],

26:32 because all that is necessary, but not enough.

26:36 We can’t win without lifting up our hearts,

26:40 and without the spiritual awaking of the Hungarians.

26:46 Ahead of us burning brightly is the example of ’56.

26:50 He who has eyes can see it,

26:54 who has ears can hear it,

26:58 the thousand-year-old truth: On important things, unity;

27:02 on other things, freedom; and in everything: Love!