Rozsas, now a pensioner, used to work as accountant and a German-Russian interpreter. He served three years together with Solzhenitsyn in the same labour camp in Kazakhstan Ekibastuz from August 1950 and February 1953. Both were "third category" inmates, which meant they were spared from working in the mines and worked as builders instead.
Recalling his memories of the Russian writer who died on Sunday, Rozsas told MTI they both spent much time in the local library that mainly stocked literature of the time. Solzhenitsyn, seeing Rozsas's keen interest in Russian literature, offered to speak to him about writers and poets "who were before or currently in jail and about whom it was not proper to talk". This is how Rozsas heard about Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Lermontov or Pasternak, "to learn about other writers that we were allowed to know of".
"Solzhenitsyn was a very modest and quiet man; even when labour camp rules were as tough as in the wild", said Rozsas, who now lives in the town of Nagykanizsa (SW Hungary).
The last time they met in person was in the camp. The year was in 1953, when Solzhenitsyn was released. Rozsas was kept in the camp for another year.
Later they regularly exchanged letters between 1963 and 1967 after Solzhenitsyn published his novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" in 1962, and between 1989 and 1992, during the Russian writer's U.S. exile.
"He liked those Hungarians he was in the camp with and considered the them honest, good and intelligent people," Rozsas said. It was a Hungarian doctor who treated operated on Solzhenitsyn to treat his cancer. Solzhenitsyn was always planning to visit Hungary, which in the end, "never materialised due to many turbulent decades".
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
