Faith and Devotion

About the Book

After the occupation of Hungary in 1945, Stalin crushed the democratically elected Hungarian Parliament and the political parties.  A Communist dictatorship was established.  The Secret Police, directed by the Soviet KGB, persecuted, arrested the members of the opposition and closed the escape route to the West with the Iron Curtain.

     The lives of many families were destroyed by the Communist system.

     This is a story of a family, where the father dies in 1946 and the mother marries an American Hungarian who visits Hungary in 1948.

     The marriage is approved by the Communist authorities, but the wife and her two teenage children from her first marriage are not allowed to leave Hungary to the U.S.

     They try to escape through the Iron Curtain.  They are caught and imprisoned.

     After 9 years of separation, the wife and her daughter are allowed to leave Hungary, but her son, a young physician can not follow.  He never gives up plans to join his family in America.  This finally happens in 1974 when he misleads the ever watching Secret Police.  He establishes a successful career in Medicine and Medical Research in the U.S.

About the Author

Laszlo Geder, M.D., Ph.D.  Born in Debrecen, Hungary on August 11, 1932.  Attended the High School of the Hungarian Reformed Church, graduated in 1950.  He was a medical student in the University of Debrecen, graduated in 1956.  Obtained a Ph.D. in Medical Virology in 1968.  Enrolled in the academic staff of the Department of Microbiology of the Medical School in Debrecen from 1956 till 1972, when he joined the World Health Organization and became the Acting Head of the Department of Microbiology of the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria till 1974 when he settled with his family in the U.S.A.  He was an academic staff member in the Department of Microbiology of the Penn State University Medical School from 1974 till 1980 and continued in the Faculty of Neurology in the same institution.  He retired in 1999 and continued in part-time private practice till present. 

He is the author/co-author of 73 scientific publications in reviewed medical journals, in the field of Medical Virology and Neurorehabilitation.  He is listed in the 4^th listing of “The Best Doctors in America” by Woodward/White, Inc. and Strathmore’s Who is Who, America’s Registry of Outstanding Professionals, among others. 

His sabbatical research leaves include the following institutions:  Institute of Sera and Vaccines, Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1959, Department of Virology, The Humbold University, Berlin and Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Insel Riems, Germany, 1961, The Ivanovsky Institute for Virology, Moscow, Russia, 1962, Dr. Albert Sabin’s Virus Research Department in the Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati, OH, USA, 1964-65, Welcome Research Fellow in the Department of Virology, University of Birmingham, England, 1970-71. 

He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, Julianna, married in 1956, has 3 children and 5 grandchildren.