“I think a lot about my homeland. God bless the country and its people,” Lukacs told Mandiner in a short telephone interview from his Phoenixville, Pennsylvania home.
Born János Albert Lukács in Budapest in 1924 to a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother, he studied history at the University of Budapest.
During the war, he served in a Hungarian labor battalion for Jews but evaded deportation to the death camps and survived the siege of Budapest. After the war, he worked as the Secretary of the Hungarian-American Society and fled to the United States in 1946 when it became clear that Hungary was going to be a repressive Communist regime.
He was a professor of history at Chestnut Hill College from 1947 to 1994 and held the chair of the history department from 1947 to 1974. He has served as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Princeton University, La Salle University, Regent College in British Columbia and the University of Budapest and Hanover College.
Lukacs, who describes himself as a “reactionary”, wrote over 30 books, mainly dealing with WWII and American history, but also some works on the theory of history. He also considers himself a toquevillian and is a practicing Roman Catholic.
His oeuvre is in English but 22 of his books have also be translated into Hungarian.
“I have just turned 95 and I am not very fond that God is keeping me for so long,” Lukacs told Mandiner.
