Refugees Happy With Life In New Country

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28169, 7 January 1957, Page 3

Refugees Happy With Life In New Country

Hungarian refugees who arrived in Christchurch three weeks ago are happy in their new country. When 11 of them met together last evening with some of their fellow countrymen who have spent longer in New Zealand and are more familiar with the New Zealand way of life, one of the newcomers remarked through an interpreter: “You will have to shoot me with a gun to get me out of Christchurch. I will die here.”

A grey-haired refugee said through an interpreter that he had been a prisoner of war of the Russians during World War 11, but after the war when the Communists had promised an attractive way of life he had stayed on in Hungary believing what they said to be true. Now after spending three weeks in New Zealand his only regret was that he had not escaped to the West in 1945.

Another of the refugees said it was a pity that those still living in Hungary, who thought that they had a democratic way of life, could not come to New Zealand and see for themselves what freedom really meant. Language is’ the main barrier between the newcomers and New Zealanders, but a Hungarian who has been living in New Zealand for four and a half years and has been visiting the newcomers and their New Zealand hosts, said that both sides were straining to please the other. The refugees were still a little bewildered, he said, at their new surroundings.

particularly because they could not understand the language, and they were sometimes in a quandary as to what was the right thing to do. The newcomers had, however, been taken into New Zealand family groups and were being treated as members of those families. Two young Hungarians call their New Zealand hosts “mother and father,” and in turn are treated as sons.

At the mention of food one of the refugees exclaimed through an interpreter that New Zealanders seemed to eat six times a day. They had been taught that New Zealand was a second paradise and now they found it to be true. The newcomers could not easily be drawn to criticise any facet of New Zealand life but they have found that New Zealanders eat more sweet things and more puddings than they are used to. In Hungary more use is made of seasonings such as red pepper. Not all the newcomers have yet started to work, but those who have say that they have found the tempo of work in New Zealand more leisurely than they have been used to. There is not the same pressure to produce more based on intake of calories of food as in Communist-dominated lands Presiding at the informal discussions held in the home of Mrs Mae Brodie, in Hereford street, was Mr Z. H. Ladanyi, a Hungarian who has lived in New Zealand for more than seven years and is married to a New Zealander.