HUNGARIAN PATRIOT
Old Glory is truly appreciated
A winter storm was raging in late December when Peter Ciotta, turning from Main Street onto Audubon Drive near his Snyder home, spotted an elderly fellow trying to wrest something from a tangle of pipes on his front lawn.
“The wind was howling. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he was outdoors struggling like that,” recalled Ciotta, who jumped out of his car to help. It turned out Tibor Baranski was simply respecting the American flag pinned beneath his toppled flagpole.
“I must get the flag off the ground,” he told Ciotta.
Tuesday, Baranski and the good Samaritan who rushed to his aid six months earlier raised a brand-new Stars and Stripes on the 50-foot-tall pole, which was restored and put back up with assists from the Amherst Police Association, John W. Danforth Co. and Greg Blaser Plumbing.
Fluttering just beneath Old Glory was the flag of Hungary, the country Baranski fled during Soviet rule 50 years ago. A large hole smack in the middle of the tricolor banner, where the hated Communist red star had been imposed during the Cold War, symbolized Hungary’s escape from tyranny.
Ciotta organized Operation Flagpole after Baranski, 87, invited him indoors to look at a yellowed newspaper clipping. “Here’s some information on the gangster you helped today,” he joked.
The story was about how Baranski helped save more than 3,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust during World War II, when as a devout young Catholic he worked closely with the papal nuncio in Budapest. Years later, after five years in Communist prisons, he risked his life to help Hungarian patriots fight the Soviets.
In 1979, Baranski was honored by the Israeli organization Yad Vashem for his wartime heroism. The following year President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Council. The retired teacher estimates he has given about 1,500 speeches about his experiences.
“After I read his story, I realized why he was so proud of that flagpole,” said Ciotta, communications business development manager at Performance Partners in Williamsville. “It reminded me that we need to remember men like Mr. B, and our war veterans, in order to teach our children about our history and their service.”
Ciotta and his 9-year-old son, Peter, repainted the pole’s three cast iron sections, Blaser Plumbing rethreaded them and Danforth brought in a hi-lift to reassemble them. The Amherst police union underwrote the project, including replacement of the flag blown down in December.
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