Dr András Kupper, the district’s deputy major, and the representative of the Hungarian Aviation Historical Society, and Sándor Balogh, the president of the African-Hungarian Union gave speeches at the ceremony.
The Hungarian-born count’s adventurous nature sent him on a trip to Africa in the 1930s. He waned to discover the lost oasis, Zazura. Almasy – called the “Father of Sand” by Bedouins – never found the legendary place, but explored two million square kilometers of the Sahara and made maps of his explorations. Among other things, he discovered unique Stone Age rock paintings at the foot of the Kebir plateau: in the Wadi Sora (Valley of Images) he found fossils depicting prehistoric paintings of swimming figures.
His diaries of his journey were lost, but the spy reports he spent to the Nazis were found by the British. These documents can now be found in the Imperial War Museum in London.
Although his story was the inspiration for the Hollywood movie entitled The English Patient, the movie’s script deters in a lot of places from the truth.