On September 11, 1989, the Hungarian socialist government, still under Soviet control, opened its border with Austria, allowing thousands of Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans to cross the famous Iron Curtain into the West. That unprecedented action was later officially recognized by Germany as having created a situation that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, two months later, on November 9th, 1989.
In September, 2015, Hungary’s right-wing government held thousands of mostly Muslim refugees prisoner in a train station for days, refusing to allow them to travel on to the countries of Western Europe where they wanted to settle. After Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared on television that this was not a European problem, but a German problem, since most refugees want to settle in Germany, the refugees, mainly hardy young men, but also women carrying children, took to the main highway to Austria on foot, as ordinary citizens turned out to offer food and drink along the way. Facing a wave of opprobrium across the world, Orban finally ordered up busses to carry the reguees as far as the frontier, where they were taken in charge by the Austrian government..