Helen Szablya

Helen Mary Szablya (1934-2024) The Honorable Helen M. (Ilona) Szablya, died peacefully on October 21, 2024, surrounded by her loving family. She was the Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Hungary for the States of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho from 1991to 2019, an unusually long tenure that signified her importance to Hungary. She died in Seattle, WA, thousands of miles and worlds away from pre-WWII Budapest, her beloved birthplace. During her 90 years, she lived in five countries and under seven different political systems. She was an award-winning author, columnist, translator, and lecturer. Her English language publications exceed 700 articles and five books, including a two-volume autobiography.

Helen was President of the Washington Press Association (WPA) and received its highest award, "Communicator of Achievement." The National Federation of Press Women (NFPW) awarded her a National First Prize for Editorials and the First Affiliate Presidents Award in 1988. She was project director and co-author of "Hungary Remembered," an oral history/drama/lecture series commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, which was featured on worldwide wire services in 42 languages. It also won two international awards and the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedom Foundation. Her book, "The Fall of the Red Star," about an underground boy scout troop operating during the 1956 uprising won first prizes from the WPA and the NFPW. A grant from the Hungarian Ministry of National Heritage supported Helen as she translated her book into Hungarian. It was distributed under the title "A Voros Csillag Lehull." Both the English and Hungarian "Red Star" editions were exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2005.

Born to Helen (Ilona) and Louis (Lajos) Bartha-Kovacs in 1934, her father headed Molnar & Moser, a prosperous pharmaceutical and cosmetic business. Because she was the eldest of three daughters, her father prepared Helen to be his successor. However, WWII changed her trajectory. The German Army invaded Hungary in March of 1944 and appropriated her family's home. Nine months later the Soviet Army laid siege to Budapest, driving Helen and her family to seek shelter by living in a cave for seventy-two days. They emerged into a new world governed by the ideology and dictates of Stalin's Moscow. In 1948 the Soviets nationalized Molnar & Moser's business and factories and all the Bartha-Kovacs family's property. Helen would often joke that "The Nazis took half of our property, and the communists took the rest."

Helen's joke about her family's fortunes belied the real dangers they had faced. Because her father was an entrepreneur, the ruling Communist Party considered him an "enemy of the state," and intended to execute him. He successfully fled Hungary, leaving his wife and three young daughters behind. Helen became a target of deportation from Budapest to confinement outside the city. Instead of fleeing to avoid deportation , she married John (Janos) Szablya, a professor of engineering. The year was 1951, Helen was 16 and her new husband was 26. Because the Communist Party needed engineers to maintain Hungary's electrical system Helen was no longer at risk of being deported and consequently the Party troubled neither John nor his wife. Helen returned to high school after her wedding and became pregnant with her first child before finishing her senior year. By that time the Soviet-mandated high school physical education curriculum required seniors to complete an obstacle course that included throwing a live hand grenade. Determined not to allow her pregnancy to interfere with her graduation, Helen ran the course, threw the grenade and passed the class.

In addition to her physical prowess, she graduated speaking six languages with fluency, with an ability to take shorthand in four of them. She remained fluent in those languages for the rest of her life. Upon graduation she planned to become an electrical engineer like her husband and began studies in pursuit of this goal.

Helen and John had an extraordinarily loving marriage despite the unusual circumstances that brought them together. Their intellects were well matched; they danced everywhere from ballrooms to kitchens; and enjoyed music of all genres. They had three children by 1956, the year of the failed Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet regime's brutal rule. That unsuccessful uprising was the catalyst for Helen and John's efforts to escape Hungary with their children knowing they may not ever return. Their first two attempts were thwarted; but on December 8, 1956, the family of five travelled to western Hungary and then dashed into Austria when the border was not surveilled due to a changing of the guards. They had taken with them little more than the clothes on their backs and some diapers for their newborn son, Louis. When they escaped, their daughter, also named Helen, was four and their oldest son, Janos, was two-and-a-half. The first volume of Helen's autobiography, "My Only Choice: Hungary 1945-1956," recounts this escape and her firm belief that God and her Catholic faith had underpinned its success. Her book also details the horror of both Nazi and Soviet occupations of Hungary.

International refugee agencies helped Helen and John make their way to Vancouver, BC, Canada, where John became a professor of electrical engineering at the University of British Columbia. Helen assumed she would continue the electrical engineering education she had begun in Hungary. Much to her dismay she found that in 1957 Canada young mothers were expected to stay home. Living by the motto, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade," she enrolled in a night school marketing program for businessmen (she was the only woman) and graduated at the top of her class. She then started her own business importing items only available in Europe such as Hungarian and German books, espresso coffee makers, velour sweaters and jewelry. She ran the business out of her living room, and it thrived. While in Vancouver, Helen and John added two more children to their family: Stephen and Alexandra.

In 1963 the Szablya family moved to Pullman, WA, a university town in the Palouse, which was a dramatic change from cosmopolitan Vancouver. The family flourished, adding daughters Rita and Dominique. Raising seven children did not slow Helen, who found time to teach German language, Hungarian cooking classes, and volunteered at a pregnancy counseling center. Also, it was in Pullman that Helen began her writing career, publishing articles in the Inland Register, a Catholic diocesan journal.

Helen decided to return to college in 1974, enrolling in Washington State University (WSU). She was 40. Unwilling to waste time repeating what she already knew, she told the university's registrar that she planned to skip the first two years of mandatory courses and enter WSU as a junior. This strategy required her to sit for the final exams in those skipped courses, which she did, receiving near-perfect scores on each exam. In 1976 she graduated from WSU with a bachelor's degree of distinction in Russian/German comparative literature. She was proud to say her three oldest children, were also her college classmates.

Upon graduation Helen became a speaker on the State of Washington's "Inquiring Minds" lecture circuit, telling her story of living under oppressive regimes, and casting a pox equally on the houses of the extreme right and extreme left. Additionally, along with her husband, Helen presented many hundreds of lectures on Hungary; and they coauthored papers on the disciplines of translating and interpreting as well as energy's effect on human culture. In recognition of their work, the Hungarian Congress named the Szablya family the Hungarian Family of the Year in 1981.

It was Helen's great joy to have lived long enough to see Hungary liberated from Soviet oppression. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, she flew to Hungary and began investigating what was needed to rebuild its democracy and free trade. As a result of her research, she and John formed Szablya Consultants, Inc.(www.helenmszablya.com), and through this company they traveled to Hungary annually -- staying for weeks at a time -- encouraging investment in Hungary and connecting government, businesses and nonprofits.

In August 2024 -- just two months before her death -- Helen's children held a three-day celebration honoring their mother's 90th birthday, which culminated with a late night of toasts and dancing. More than 85 family members gathered along with another thirty-five close friends. Helen stayed until the venue closed at 1 AM. She is preceded in death by her husband, John, her son, Stephen, and her sister, Marietta Szechy. She is survived by her children: Helen Szablya of Los Angeles, CA; Janos Szablya (Lys Hornsby) of Kent, WA; Louis Szablya (Kate) of Moses Lake, WA; Alexandra Szablya (Vincent McDonough) of New Orleans, LA; Rita Pool (Karl) of Kennewick, WA; Niki McKay (Christian Tiedemann) of Seattle, WA; and daughter-in-law Kristy Tenwick Szablya of Pullman, WA. She is also survived by sixteen grandchildren, eleven great grandchildren, and her sister, Elizabeth Nemethy of Toronto, ON, Canada.

A funeral mass and memorial will take place on March 28, 2025, at Assumption Roman Catholic Church in Seattle, WA. Time is to be determined.

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