RHYL Rotary Club are supporting a Hungarian pastor with close ties to Rhyl with his work in helping refugees from Ukraine.
Sandor Kareskenji is a senior minister at the Hungarian Reform Church in Szeged, the country’s third largest city.
Yet the pastor’s connection to Rhyl is a surprising one, and happened by chance.
When Mr Kareskenji was a theological student based at Debrecen College, he visited Wales along with a group of fellow students they had a link to the United Reform Church in Wales.
After touring Snowdonia on their final day of their trip, the group were involved in a serious road accident.
Although most had only minor injuries, Sandor was critically injured and sent to the ICU at Glan Clwyd Hospital in Rhyl.
With the Iron Curtain still in place, the cooperation of British and Hungarian embassies in both countries, along with the help of Interpol, Mr Kareskenji’s mother was granted a visa within 24 hours and a ticket to Manchester Airport in order to be with her son.
Soon, Sandor was taken in by the family of Rhyl resident Gordon Marshall while recovering from his injuries, while his cousin also stayed with them to act as a translator.
Weeks later, Sandor was discharged and returned to Hungary to continue his studies, before going on to serve as the resident minister in the Hungarian Reform Church in New York before taking up his current role.
Mr Marshall added that the two remain close, with numerous family ties, and said: “My wife and I are godparents to his eldest son and we visited them in Debrecen and New York.”
Now, Gordon Marshall is President of the Rotary Club for 2021-22, and has collaborated with his old friend in order to provide greater care for Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Hungary with the war with Russia raging on.
At the Rhyl Rotary Club’s first meeting in their new venue Elwy Hall, the club agreed unanimously to donate £2,000 to support victims of the war in Ukraine.
£1,000 was to be given to the Rotary Foundation Disaster Response Fund and a further £1,000 was to be sent to Mr Kareskenji’s Hungarian Reform Church in Szeged.
Pastor Kareskenji said: “We sent a truck on the other side of the border packed with food, drink and bedclothes to different places where Hungarian churches and communities take care of Ukrainian refugees.
“We have delivered basic medicines like antifebriles, painkillers, disinfectants, and bandage.
“We focus mostly to those people who try to survive in their homes.
“There is a refugee camp in our town, and two other ones close to the city.
“We were asked to organise programs for the children who live there.”
With the war in Ukraine continuing to devastate whole cities and displace millions of people, the cooperation and closeness shown by Gordon Marshall and Sandor Kareskenji, despite the distance between them, offers some hope for a more unified Europe.
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