Béla Király

Dr. Béla Király (14 April 1912 – 4 July 2009) was a Hungarian resistance fighter during World War II, as well as a military historian, author, and politician.

He was born in Kaposvár, Hungary. Commissioned as a second lieutenant of the Hungarian Army in 1935, he fought actively in World War II. Following the war, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party, and rose to the rank of major general in the Hungarian army. In 1951, he was arrested on what many felt to be false charges and sentenced to death. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. In September 1956, however, he was released from prison.

United States
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the military guard and military commander of Budapest. After the Soviet military intervention in Hungary, he fled to Austria and later the United States, where he attended Columbia University. He received his doctorate in history in 1962 and taught Military History at Brooklyn College, where he held the title of Professor Emeritus. During his tenure at Brooklyn College he served as director of the Society In Change Program on East Central Europe, supervised Brooklyn College Press (the College's Publishing House), and served as the advisor to the Brooklyn College Military History Club.

After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, he eventually returned to Hungary, and from 1990 to 1994, became an independent member of the Hungarian Parliament. In 1993, he was named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem. Since then, he assumed the role of government adviser. In 2004, he was made an associate member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Selected works

 * Király, Béla K. Hungary in the Late Eighteenth Century; The Decline of Enlightened Despotism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
 * Király, Béla K. Basic History of Modern Hungary, 1867-1999. Malabar, Fla: Krieger Pub, 2001. ISBN 0-89464-950-7

Death
Kiraly died in his sleep in Budapest on 4 July 2009, aged 97.