The Undefeated

George Paloczi-Horvath was born in 1908 into the feudal nobility of Hungary. Despite his privileged background, he came to realize that his family's wealth was based on the exploitation of a brutalized peasantry. By the 1930s he was an active anti-Nazi; by 1941 he was forced to flee the country. Returning after the war, he became a dedicated communist; but this didn't prevent him from being arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the communist regime. He spent 1,832 days in prison, many of them in the solitary confinement of underground prison cells. In 1954 he was eventually released; but after the Hungarian Revolution he was forced to escape with his wife and baby for sanctuary in Britain. A new afterword by his widow, Agi Argent, describes how they survived.