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Zsuzsa Zádori works as an archivist at the Open Society Archives. She is responsible for the audio-visual materials, but she is also a curator for exhibitions and an organizer of film events. Her primary fields of interest are the Cold War, communism, and human rights.

Painter, performer, poet, writer, director, actor, singer, founding member of the Vajda Lajos Studio and the Bizottság (Committee) group.

The parson's tape recorder and the paintings of Menyhért Tóth impressed him deeply in his childhood. In the second half of the sixties he met István ef Zámbó in Kecskemét, where they founded together the Purgatory Club, where concerts, exhibitions and literal evenings were held.

The idea of the open air exhibitions was born in these years also, what they organized from 1968 to 1977 in Szentendre. This led - as a chain-reacton - to the founding of the Lajos Vajda Studio, than later the Bizottság (Committee) group, which made them known nationwide.

His artworks are characterized by experimentation and playfulness, seeking for new - often provocative - types of artworks. He draws, paints, creates objects and installations, celebrates performances, sings, shoots videos, writes poetic texts.

The most prominent feature of his creations is free, natural and spontanious expression. Visual art interweaves with poetry, music or moving imagery in his works excessively rich in visual imagination and ideas.

In his images he delineates beings, worlds, happenings, conditions, events with a method similar to the explicit symbolism of graffiti. The streaming of his texts based on free associations are pervaded by unexpected word-combinations and metaphysical humour.

His appearances on stage are certified with an elemental presence - similarly to his acts in moving images. With his objects and installations he intends to reveal the latent power of things and the hidden characteristics of human nature with a grim, but at the same time affectionate, accepting manner.

He was the recipient of several awards, including the Mihály Munkácsy Prize (1990), Gyula Hincz Memorial Prize (1991), Paralell Culture Prize (2007), Klára Herczeg Prize (2009), Knight of Cross from the Order of Merit of Hungary (2014)

Branko Ćopić (1915–1984) was one of the most prolific and most translated Yugoslav writers. He was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Thus, Ćopić’s literary legacy is kept at SANU. His most well-known works are, ‘Doživljaji Nikoletine Bursaća’ [The Adventures of Nikoletina Bursać, 1955], ‘Orlovi rano lete’ [Eagles Fly Early, 1957], ‘Gluvi barut’ [Deaf Gunpowder, 1957], ‘Bašta sljezove boje’ [The Marshmallow-coloured Garden, 1970]. He was the recipient of the most important literary awards in socialist Yugoslavia: the NIN Prize (1958), the Sedmojulska Prize (1969), the AVNOJ Award (1970), and the Njegoš Award (1972).

Branko Ćopić was born in Hašani, Bosnia. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 1940. During the Second World War, he joined the partisans. He worked as a war correspondent, and after the war was the editor of several children’s papers in Belgrade. At this time, he began to write professionally, and his works are dominated by the theme of the national liberation struggle. At the beginning of the 1950s, Ćopić began to write satirical columns for Belgrade journals and precisely this was to cause him the biggest problems. The first such story, ‘Jeretičke priče’ [Heretical Tales], triggered one of the biggest scandals in post-war Yugoslav literature (see more under featured item).

Despite this, Ćopić believed that free writers in free countries could submit anyone to the ‘whip of satire’ and that this was, in a way, their duty. He criticized the ‘servile mentality’ that he linked to former times, the era of Ottoman rule (R. Petković, 2000, p. 16). He ascribed an emancipatory role to satire, as apt for the broad masses as for the ruling class. Ćopić’s reputation suffered to a certain extent due to his provisional opposition to the authorities, but given his undisputed contribution to the liberation struggle he was not seriously hindered in his work, though he remained under constant surveillance by state security.

Ćopić continued to write satirical columns and after the problems with ‘Jeretičke priče’ [Heretical Tales], his novel ‘Gluvi barut’ [Deaf Gunpowder] (1957) – in which he criticized revolutionary dogmatism and the ‘red terror’ during the Second World War – also attracted considerable attention, though only after the interpretations given to it abroad in the following years. After an interview with a Soviet newspaper in 1960 in which he talked about ‘Gluvi barut’ [Deaf Gunpowder] as well as the state of Yugoslav literature, he was expelled from the party. In the interview, he put forward the opinion that Yugoslav literature was ‘slave to the West’, which was used as the main charge against him. Given that at the time Yugoslavia and the USSR were not enjoying the best of relations, Ćopić’s statement was experienced as a provocation (R. Petković, 2000, p. 89–90).

Notwithstanding his expulsion, he continued to write freely, to publish and, even more significantly, to receive literary awards. He was readmitted to the party in 1970. Ćopić described his attitude towards the party as follows, 'I know it is a failing of mine that I am relatively anarchistic, muddled and reckless, and am not fond of discipline. I conduct myself towards the party like towards a not very strict patron, who overlooks a fair amount, binding me all the more to serve the homeland in the literary field, so that I may repay the party somewhat for its concern, help and noble attention, which grant me confidence and zeal in work (R. Petković, 2000, Sudanije Branku Ćopiću [The Show Trial on Branko Ćopić], p. 10).

Branko Ćopić committed suicide on 26 March 1984 by jumping from the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity in Belgrade.

Šimun Šito Ćorić is a Croatian theologian, writer and psychologist, an ordained priest of the Franciscan Order. Born in Paoča in 1949 near Međugorje (Bosnia-Herzegovina), he earned a degree in philosophy in Sarajevo in 1973, and then in theology in Lucerne (Switzerland) in 1975. He earned a psychology degree from Columbia University in 1982, and then a PhD in clinical psychology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Zagreb) in 1988. Some of his books and articles have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Mostar, University of Zagreb and University of Osijek, and has lectured for eight years at the University of Zadar. From 1994 to 2005. he served as president of the Croatian World Congress (HSK), the largest Croatian international organisation. He is the national coordinator of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Switzerland. Under the pseudonym Boris Katich, he published the book So Speak Croatian Dissidents in 1983, with which he attempted to warn the world public about the unenviable position of Croatia in Yugoslavia, and especially the unfortunate status of Croatian dissidents and oppositionists persecuted and imprisoned in Yugoslavia.

Jan Čep was a Czech prose writer, essayist and translator. He was born on December 31^st, 1902 in Myšlichovice (now Haňovice - Myslechovice near Litovel), to a family of peasants as the oldest of ten siblings. Jan Čep attended a general school in Cholina, then studied high school in Litovel where he graduated in 1922. At that time he published his first work in the Moravskoslezské Noviny. He studied Czech, English and French at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. He did not finish his studies, after the first state examination he left for the publishing house, the Old Empire (Stará říše), influenced by Josef Florina, where he helped him for less than a year in publishing. He then lived as a translator and professional writer and worked for the Melantrich and Symposion publishers. Since 1923, he often took study trips to England, Spain, Yugoslavia, but mainly in France. During the war he lived in his birthplace, wrote short stories and maintained close contact with the Dominican spiritual centre in Olomouc. After the war he worked for a publishing house in Vyšehrad. After February 1948 he left Czechoslovakia and lived in Paris. From 1951 to 1955 he worked as a cultural editor of the Czechoslovak editorial office of Radio Free Europe in Munich, later acting as the Parisian cultural correspondent. Through his radio reflections, he tried to confront communist power and spiritually empower people "at home". Outside of his homeland he did not feel happy because he had a very strong relationship with Czechoslovakia. Several times, he seriously thought about becoming a priest, but in 1954 he married Charles Du Bose's daughter, a French literary critic. In 1962 Pope John XXIII gave him the papal Order of Saint Silvester for his lifetime work. He died after suffering a stroke on January 25^th, 1974 in Paris.

Nikola Čolak was born in Janjevo, now the Republic of Kosovo, on 14 April 1914. He was a Croatian historian, classical philologist, philosopher, archivist and publicist. He attended elementary school in his birthplace and the classics gymnasiums in Prizren and Travnik. In 1938, he graduated with a degree in philosophy at Gallarate, near Milan, in Italy. He also earned degrees in the Italian and French languages and literatures in Zagreb in 1943, together with degrees in history and classical philology. A communist court sentenced him to three years of forced labour in Zagreb in 1945 under charges of "plotting an uprising." After being released from the labour camp, he worked in factories on the outskirts of Zagreb and in schools in Ivanić-Grad, Glina and Novi Marof.

From 1954 to 1960, Čolak worked as archivist in the State Archives in Zadar and then moved to the Social Science Institute of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Science as a research associate in Zadar (1960-1965). In the summer of 1966, he initiated the review Slobodni glas (Free Voice) together with Mihajlo Mihajlov and a group of intellectuals, the first review that would not be controlled by the one-party state. Because of this initiative, he lost his job at the Institute and had to go into exile to Padua. He taught history and philosophy at Padua University and collaborated with the economic institutes in Verona and Padua. Čolak also joined the ranks of Croatian political émigrés, with particularly intense contacts with the circle around Branimir Jelić and his Croatian National Committee. In 1973, he unsuccessfully tried to renew the activity of the Croatian Party of the Right in exile. Since 1987, he was the assistant to Srećko Pšeničnik, the president of the Croatian Liberation Movement. In exile, he edited two political journals, Hrvatsko pravo (The Croatian Right) and Hrvatska domovina (Croatian Homeland). Čolak also wrote for other émigré journals such as the Hrvatska država (Croatian State), Hrvatska revija (Croatian Review) and Nezavisna država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia). He additionally contributed essays and articles about Croatian and Yugoslav matters to Italian newspapers and periodicals such as Il resto del Carlino, Cultura e politica, Il Messaggero, Reggio oggi, and Energie nuove. He established the Centre for Croatian Historical Studies in Padua as a research institution for Croatian history.
As early as 1977, he published his book “Behind Barbed Wire: the Fate of Croatia in Serb-Communist Yugoslavia,” and after that he wrote a new book in Italian in 1979 under the title “Communist Yugoslavia: Between the Intellectual Dissent and Croatia’s Right to Statehood.” In 1988, his book “Croatia Above All: Reflections on the Past and Future Perspectives” appeared, which included Čolak’s essays and articles written during the émigré period of his life. A year later, “The April Tenth Action in Light of the Key Testimony of Ivan Prusac and the Accompanying Documentation” was released. He died at the age of 82 on in Padua on 23 August 1996 and was buried in Zagreb.