I owe a lot to László Hámos and to the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation.

And actually, it wasn’t by chance that I ended up there.

When I arrived in New York in the summer of 2001, I had already spent months bouncing around the U.S. with $500, two suitcases, and a little piece of paper with five names on it, people I thought might help me get started in America. By the time I made it to New York, there was only one name left on that list: László Hámos, HHRF, 90th Street.

I came to HHRF specifically because they had helped my father in the past.

My father, Árpád Visky, had been persecuted and imprisoned by the authoritarian regime in Romania the 1980s, and HHRF had advocated around cases like his and documented what was happening to Hungarians and dissidents under the dictatorship. So HHRF already existed in my family history before I ever walked through the door.

By the time I left Romania, things were different politically. I wasn’t fleeing dictatorship anymore. But I still needed saving.

I came carrying a lot of family trauma, loss, instability, and the weight of history. I wanted to prove to myself that I was not doomed to become just a sad continuation of a tragic story.

And honestly, what better place to try to reinvent & challenge yourself than New York City? The most exhilarating city on earth.

I wanted to study, learn, absorb culture, meet people from all over the world, become part of something bigger, while still protecting and preserving my own people and my own heritage. And there was no better place for that than HHRF.

From the first conversation, László understood me. I think he respected the courage that it took to try to change one’s life, or maybe he liked the insanity of it, of just deciding to leave everything behind and start over in another country.

Walking into that office felt monumental to me. Filing cabinets full of samizdat, underground publications, decades of minority rights advocacy, and somewhere in those cabinets were folders about my own father. It felt like history, politics, identity, and my personal life had all collided in one tiny office on the Upper East Side.

László taught me my first important lessons in grassroots organizing and activism, identity & representation, and how to use institutions strategically instead of just complaining about them. He understood how political systems work and taught young people how to move and influence them.

And through László, I met my guardian angel: Gabriella Mauthner, Memi néni, and she completely changed my life.

She supported me through every step of my immigration process, including paying for my immigration attorney. She was protective of me in the most practical ways, always making sure I was okay, that I had what I needed, that I was thinking ahead, staying focused, building a stable future for myself.

She supported me through graduate school, gave me meaningful work at HHRF, constantly checked in on me, and made me feel loved and valued.

She was curious, funny, and deeply engaged with life. She could be selective about people, but when she loved someone, she loved them fully and loyally. She lived a busy, purposeful life right until the end, constantly connecting people, helping people, finding ways to be useful to others.

Even later in life, she wanted to keep learning. I taught her how to use email, and she treated the whole thing like a miracle. That sense of wonder never left her.

And honestly, the work I do now comes directly out of that experience.

Today I’m a political director for a major public sector union. I lobby, testify, organize, and fight for workers, healthcare, immigrant rights, economic justice, and social justice and there’s a direct line between what I do and the example László and HHRF set for me.