György Bálint (originally surname Braun;
28 July 191921 June 2020) was a Hungarian
horticulturist
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
,
Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, journalist, author, and politician who served as an
MP.
Biography
Bálint's parents Braun Izidor and Koch Rozália were
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
from a long tradition of farming. He graduated from the Royal Hungarian Institute of Horticulture in 1941.
His parents and their children were deported to a
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
during the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
; only Bálint and one of his sisters survived. He was taken first to
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
and then to the extermination camp in
Gunskirchen
Gunskirchen is a town in the Austrian state of Upper Austria.
Geography
Gunskirchen lies in the Hausruckviertel. About 11 percent of the municipality is forest, and 78 percent is farmland. Internal combustion engine maker Rotax has been headquart ...
.
[ He weighed 42 kilos when he escaped in 1945.][
He was a ]horticulturist
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, journalist, author, and politician who served as an MP.[
He died at 100 years of age in 2020 from ]COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary
The COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). On 4 March 2020, the first cases in Hungary were announced. The first coron ...
.[
]
References
1919 births
2020 deaths
Hungarian centenarians
Members of the National Assembly of Hungary (1994–1998)
People from Gyöngyös
Jewish Hungarian politicians
Alliance of Free Democrats politicians
Hungarian journalists
Hungarian agronomists
Mauthausen concentration camp survivors
20th-century Hungarian male writers
20th-century journalists
Horticulturists
Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary
Men centenarians
{{Hungary-politician-stub