Vilmos Apor

Who was Vilmos Apor?

Blessed Baron Vilmos Apor de Altorja was the Bishop of Győr during World War II who became famous for protesting against the persecution of the Hungarian Jews. He became a bishop only at the end of his life.

In the summer of 1944 he wrote to the Hungarian Primate Jusztinian Serédi to persuade him to take a strong stance against the government. He also appealed to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin in an attempt to free the Jews of Győr from the ghetto and negotiated with the Nazi military command to spare the town from a siege.

On Good Friday March 28, 1945 as Soviet troops reached Győr he offered sanctuary to numerous women and children in his residence. When Red Army troops wanted to storm his residence he was shot trying to protect the women from rape. He died from his injuries but the women were saved.

Today, there stands a statue in District XII of Budapest in Hungary in his honour and the place itself has been named Apor Vilmos tér according to the Hungarian standard of name order. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1997.

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was his nephew