The French minister as a smuggler
Olivier de Sayve, the French minister in Budapest smuggled out of Hungary Erzsébet Schiffer, Bálint Ordódy’s mother, in his own car. The Schiffer family had been one of the founders and main shareholder of Palatinus Joint Stock Company which had built and possessed elegant blocks of flats in Budapest. The company had among others in its property the so called Palatinus Buildings on the Danube bank, some of them were shelter houses for Jews in 1944. The Ordódy-Schiffer couple belonged to the high society of the Hungarian capital, there they met and became good friends with Olivier de Sayve and his wife. The Soviet forces occupying Hungary had arrested several times Béla Ordódy, Bálint’s father, and as the family legend holds he could leave Hungary only through the good offices of László Rajk, the communist Minister of the Interior. After the properties of the Palatinus Company were nationalized in 1947, the French minister suggested to Mrs. Ordódy to bring her out of Hungary and he promised to help the family to begin a new life in France. Mrs. Ordódy waited for the call when the diplomatic car would come and take her. She got into the car and sat next to Mr. de Sayve as she had been his wife. She crossed the border showing Mrs. de Sayve’s passport. They brought with them in the car also some family jewels and an old wooden statue of Virgin Mary. They couldn’t bring else, it would have been conspicuous if the diplomatic couple had had big lugagges on their way to visit Wien. Béla Ordódy was waiting for her wife in Wien. Olivier de Sayve returned to Budapest the very same day and the following day he left again for Wien this time in the company of his real wife. „My mother as Madame de Sayve left Hungary and the real Madame de Sayve followed her in train with her husband and two daughters the day after it, but with her own passport.” Nobody noticed under the technical circumstances of those years that a French woman left Hungary twice.
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Bálint Ordódy
Bálint Ordódy (Balint Ordody de Ordod) was born on February 13, 1931 in Budapest. His father Béla Ordódy who came from a family of landholders became the executive director of Palatinus Joint Stock Company thanks to his marriage with one of the daughters of the founder of the company. The company built and possessed elegant blocks of flats in the Hungarian capital, among others also the so called Palatinus buildings on the Danube bank. Bálint Ordódy was private pupil, then he was sent to the secondary school of the Piarist Order. After WWII his father was arrested several times by the Soviet forces. Finally he got a passport and he emigrated to Switzerland in 1947. After the nationalization of the properties of the family company the same year they had difficulties of subsistence. His mother Erzsébet Schiffer was smuggled out of the country by the French minister in Budapest, Olivier de Sayve, in the diplomatic car of the legation in 1948. Bálint Ordódy with his half-sister and his brother-in-law fled Hungary near to Sopron by a stock train in September 1948. He settled down with his family in Paris. His parents made a new living by renovating old flats and being agents for Primtemps stores. He finished his secondary school studies at the Hungarian Secondary School in Innsbruck in 1949. Then he moved to Great Britain temporarily with his parents. He worked for Thomas Cook's and he tried to continue his studies at a British university. He tried also to get in the Hungarian staff of BBC. Finally he got a scholarship from the Free Europe Committee and he could study political sciences at the university in Strassbourg. He managed to change his scholarship for a French one and thank to it he graduated at Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris. In the meantime he had begun to work for American Express, too. Having heard the news of the fightings in Hungary at the end of October, 1956, he returned to his motherland with a Dutch friend. He joined the national guard of Sopron. After the suppression of the revolution he was in a POW camp in Austria for some time. Having returned to Paris, he worked as a volunteer for the French Red Cross. Between 1958 and 1960 he was marketing assistant at the French Tin Syndicate. In 1960 he married Marthe de Levis de Mirepoix. They had two children, Stanislas and Mariella. He worked as product manager for different companies for different times. He applied for French citizenship three times but since in 1956 he had returned to Hungary and thus he broke his status of refugee, he became French citizen only in 1968. Thank to his citizenship it was easier for him to find jobs. He continued as product manager at various firms. Finally he was employed by Promexport, an affiliated company of BRED Banque Populaire in 1971. He organized the sale of French enterprises’ products abroad. In 1978 he made himself moved to BRED, Department of Big Affairs, where he worked for one and a half decade. Beside his job he was active in a number of social organizations. He was the founder of the French organization of English Speaking Union, then he founded an ESU unit also in Anjou. He retired in 1990 and he moved to St-Clément-des-Levées (Anjou) with his wife. He tried to build cultural and political relationship between Anjou and Hungary. Together with his wife he’s joined a few caritative, cultural and heritage saving initiatives.
