Ilona Szablya: From Refugee to Honorary Consul

She was born Ilona Bartha-Kovács in Budapest on September 6, 1934. The family fortune was nationalized in 1948, and facing the threat of forced relocation, she married János Szablya at the age of sixteen.

In November 1956, they crossed the border into Austria with their three small children, including ten-day-old Lajoska. They were planning to emigrate to Canada, as Ilona’s father was already living there. At the request of the Canadian envoy in Vienna, they joined a group of university students and professors from Sopron, using their language skills to help those settling in Vancouver integrate and complete their studies. Her husband was appointed to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, where he taught for seven years.

In 1963, János Szablya was invited to teach at Washington State University Pullman in the United States. After the birth of their seventh child, Ilona — then forty years old — enrolled at the university and began a career as a writer and journalist. She published numerous articles in the United States about Hungary during the Rákosi era and the 1956 Revolution, and also gave lectures on the subject. The “Szablya Hotel” soon became a household name among former ’56 revolutionaries, the Hungarian diaspora, and the resistance movement back home; they never turned away a Hungarian seeking assistance. In 1982, the family settled in Seattle.

She served Hungary as an honorary consul for Washington, Oregon, and Idaho from 1993 to 2016. In 2005, she was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic (Civil Division) in recognition of her years of work fostering Hungarian-American relations and providing consular care.

She passed away surrounded by her family on October 21, 2024, at the age of ninety.