The death of Gen. Bela Kiraly at the age of 97 ought not to pass unnoticed. At the time of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, he commanded the National Guard, and had the distinction of fighting the invading Soviet forces to the bitter end. Everyone in the Europe of the 20th century suffered at the hands of the Nazis and Communists, but Bela Kiraly met the history of his times with particular courage. A conspicuously handsome and commanding man, he’d been a professional soldier in World War II, and a marked man because the course of events had left Hungary an ally of Germany against the Soviet Union. At one point Kiraly had a labor battalion of Jews under his command and saved them by putting them into Hungarian uniforms, for which afterwards the Israelis honoured him as a Righteous Gentile. Captured by the Russians in 1944, he escaped from the train carrying him and others to Siberia. Joining the Communist party then didn’t save him. Stalin apparently had singled him out. In 1951 he was arrested and sentenced to death for subversion and spying for the United States. After years in the death cell he was released just in time for his leadership in the Revolution. Fighting lasted nearly a fortnight after which the Soviets pretended to be ready to come to terms. It was a trick right out of primitive times. They arrested and hanged all their guests, and pushed their traitorous stooge Janos Kadar into power. In this respect, Nikita Khrushchev was a faithful pupil of Stalin. Staying in his headquarters, Kiraly avoided the trap, fortunate once again to escape in an armoured column that crossed the Iron Curtain frontier into Austria. For the next three decades, he was a professor in the United States, and the author of important books. Returning to Hungary after the collapse of Hungary, he became a member of parliament, and a living legend.