I was there. We lived in the very center of Budapest, Almasy Ter 8 harmadik emelet, and I went to the regime's elite Gorkiy school in the Ligeti Sor. On October 23 1956 I was coming home when a large mass of people was going on the avenue with the idea of throwing down the enormous bronze monument of Stalin. People was enthusiastic, they told that the Poets and Writers Union had some meeting and the Radio had been taken. I got carried away by the general enthusiasm and wanted to join the mass, but my father or mother did not allow me. I was 9 years old and excited by the action. The first question in their minds was antisemitism, if it was a fascist uprising and if they were attacking Jews. We always lived in fear. Only a decade ago, Auschwitz had been fully operational. Almost yesterday. Memories were very fresh.
Next day there was no school and we walked on the main street and saw the head of the statue laying on the paviment, separate from the body. People were writing things on the body, other trying to cut a piece of the metal to take it as a souvenir. They had hammers and other tools in hand. Big hammers that I have never seen. I was surprised that the statue was hollow. I also came near and touched the big statue but my Mother didnt allow me to take anything. Later that day or the next, we saw unmoving tanks on the street and a burning tank with dead tankists in it and laying on the street. Young men looted the tank and I stole a leather headgear which I took with me. It had built in audiphones which I intended to use to build a cristal radio. It was made of black bakelite, like the phones of that era. Someone told me that it was from a Russian tank, I dont know. I was happy. My parents were very worried.
We were much afraid, because arms were given out to unknown civilians and we were afraid that fascists would get arms and start killing Jews. A national guard, armed, was being formed. Only ten years ago, during the Russian
ostrom (encirclement) of Budapest, fascist bands roamed the streets to kill Jews, among them they shot my uncle Joshka in the Danube, the big brother of my father. We saw people hanged on the trees in the street, with white paper signs and blood, but my parents didnt allow me to get near and see it. They were suspected AVO people (secret police).
People was hysteric, they went on the street and suddenly someone would shout out hysterically that he recognizes someone as an AVO policeman and a lynch mass would immediately form around them and the suspect would be beaten and killed and hanged then and there. People was afraid to go out and be lynched. AVO was peopled by Jews, everybody knew that. Jews and Communist Party and the AVO were all the same and hated. My father's best friend, Miky Lengyel, didnt go out to the street for weeks. We had nothing to do with anything, but fear was in the air.
Somebody came to my father and told him that they were sacking the Party headquarters and each one could get and see his own secret file (the
kader). My father went and got his file, and I overheard him telling that people who he had thought of as friends had informed about him. Jewish colleagues had informed on him. He was amazed and thoughtful, more than anything.
Then some tractors and excavators were digging a big hole in a plaza. I went near and people told me that voices were heard from under the earth, there was a secret underground prison of the AVO and people was imprisoned and could not get out and they were shouting for help. Tractors and excavators were working night and day, with reflectors that were new for me, and individual people helped to dig. Sometimes the work would be stopped to hear the voices clamouring from the deep, I too put my ear down and heard nothing coming from the earth, and nothing was found. It was a psychological thing, hystery, hallucination. It rained and it became frozen mud and the hole was abandoned when I saw it again in a few days.
Lipschitz, our "tenant", came and said to my father that he found a leather factory where leather could be taken away but he didnt know what was valuable and what was valueless. My father grew up in the leather business so his expertise was required. Lipschitz was a Slovakian Jew, about 50 y.o. then, whose family had been killed and had not one relative left. The communists had put him in our department's servant room. My parents were against him, mostly because he was a gross peasant type of person and doing hard physical work, unbecoming to Jews, but in the end he
was a warm country Jew and much worse people could be put to live with us. He worked as a
hordar transporting heavy things in his tricicle. His trycilce, which he protected, was made from heavy black iron tubes, an industrial machine, unlike my own bycicle. He used to play cards in the nearby Feszek klub, arrived late night and drunk and brought girls (
whores) to his room. My parents didnt want him, because he was a bad example to me. They forbid Lipschitz to bring drink and women into the house. Lipschitz protested and there were fights. But Lipschitz loved me, even if my parents did not allow him near me and I was dead afraid of him. Jewish boys were scarce in postwar Hungary. During the revolution he came home with a tricolor armband and a rifle. My parents were out of themselves with fear, they didnt want him to have a firearm in his room. There was a
statarium meaning that anybody cought with firearms was ipso facto executed on the spot. Lipschitz was not afraid. On the other hand, it was some kind of protection to have him with us. My uncle Gyuri and my Father went one night with him and came back with a packet of good leather. This leather was used later to pay the Zalaegerszeg peasant who guided us through the frontier to Austria.
Then Gero was deposed. We went to my uncle Gyuri's home, it was near the parliament. According to him, they saw from the window how a great mass of people was shot at when they wanted to demonstrate in front of the parliament. We heard shots and people started running, we also ran. My memories of the place are confused, I dont know if I was really running or I imagined it.
The Army leady was Pal Maleter. My parents speculated if he was fascist or not. When the Russian tanks came in to Budapest center and was shooting, we went down to the building's antiair refuge, where each apartment had a coal deposit. I had been down maybe once, with my father, who went to fetch coal for the nice yellow keramic heater we had. Underground tunnels connected several houses. Freedom fighters came in and moved on. We were afraid they would attract attention. The tanks were shooting at windows with people. We lived several days down. I remember there was an excitement when soldiers came to search for fighters, but my parents hid me and could not see anything. Then they decided that it was less dangerous in our apartment in the third floor and moved back. In front of our window there was a round parking area or something, I remember a tank came and turned but did not shoot. The tank damaged the grey stone paviment.
Lederer Robi was in the diplomatic service. He and his old mother lived in the third floor as we did but they had a very small one room apartment at the end of the corridor. It was some kind of deposit or service staircase that had been made into a mini-apartement. I didnt know that people lived there. Robi had been in Vienna, he was invited to our apartment to tell and he brought me an orange. We touched with marvel the unknown fruit. He told me that he had also eaten a banana in Vienna. I had never seen an orange and didnt know what was a banana. He said that the frontier was unguarded and open, there were no Russian nor Hungarian patrols and thousands were leaving Hungary.
Then my parents and uncles decided to leave Hungary and started to think how. I think my Father travelled to Zalaegerszeg, a town with frontier with Austria, where he had been working within the framework of his water planning institute and had an alibi if he was caught. He returned saying that everything was arranged, a peasant will take us past the frontier. We travelled by train to Zalaegerszeg with my uncle Gyuri and his wife my Mother's younger sister Ella. By late December the Russians were again in Hungary and patrolling the frontier and people got shot trying to escape. Escaping became something complicated and dangerous. We travelled by train to Zalaegerszeg and slept in the house of the peasant, my Mother was afraid and wanted to return to Budapest, but early in the morning the peasant put us in his horse drawn carriage and covered us with tarpauline, and we descended near the frontier when no one was around. It was very cold and there was a cold wind and everything covered with 30 cm - 50 cm high snow. We walked all day stopping in the roadsides, in the snow, till we arrived tired to the other side. We crossed the frontier on 31 December 1956 and arrived to Kaisersteinbruck in the early morning, where there was a station for new arrivals and we received hot chocolate, which I never had before in post-War Hungary. The chocolate tasted strange, the milk was greasy, but they forced me to drink it. Well, that is for another post.
A last thing. My aunt Ella was pregnant then but it was considered that it was better to abort and start the new life free of a baby. My mother took her to Leo, a doctor who made illegal abortions in his house. My poor aunt was very weak walking all night through the snowy frontier, and she never could have another baby. She died in Sidney in the eighties delirating about her nine children. Judith Lieberman told me. I always hated my uncle Gyuri for killing her baby. A real tragedy, very typical of the way of thinking of Mittel European Jews of the postwar era. I decided then that no material considerations (poverty, danger, etc.) would
ever impede me to have children, that there was never a bad time for having children.
Here is an article that caused all these memories of fifty years ago. Oh, God, fifty years have passed. I am old.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the October 23, 1956 Hungarian uprising, which foretold the international collapse of Communisim. Many heads of state have been invited to participate in the Hungarian celebration. However, while Hungary is trying to create an outward impression of unity, the collective memory is divided regarding the uprising.
Alongside the official events, opposition groups will also be holding mass ceremonies, each in its own plaza. All this comes in the shadow of the political ferment and the demonstrations calling for the resignation of the Socialist government.
Hungary today does not have only one version of the 1956 events, nor does it have a unified collective memory, says Dr. Raphael Vago, of the Tel Aviv University history department. Vago is an expert on Eastern Europe. The country's memory has undergone privatization, and each group maintains its own version, he says.
"The Socialists, who are sort of the heirs of the Communist party, are trying to adopt the concept of a revolution against totalitarian communism in favor of socialism with a human face. On the right they are adopting a blunter anti-communist, nationalist and patriotic line, accompanied by Christian symbols.
"The extreme right holds a rally of its own every year, and presents not only the struggle against communism but also Hungarian frustration during the 20th century and its division in the wake of the World War I defeat. They blame the Jews for bringing communism into Hungary by force as early as 1919, with the revolution of the Jewish Bela Kun (Cohen). On the nationalist and anti-Semitic right, the anti-communist struggle is also a struggle against the Jews."
Anti-Semitism rears its head
The Jews also have their own memory of the events of 1956 - even if is does not have political expression or legitimization in the Hungarian public discourse. As an assimilated and influential minority, Jews were active on both sides of the divide during the uprising. In addition, they were prominent among both the oppressive Stalinist leadership and within the rebels' core. However, during the revolt, average Jews underwent an experience different from that of other Hungarians - one that was far less heroic. Alongside the dozens of political parties, the hundreds of newspapers and publications and the many radio stations that cropped up during the revolt, groups on the radical right also appeared in the public arena. These included war criminals who until then had been in communist prisons. Nationalist and anti-Semitic messages started entering the discourse.
This was only 11 years after the end of World War II, during which more than half a million Hungarian Jews were killed. The fascist Hungarian government then in power looted their property, enclosed them in ghettoes and deported them to concentration camps.
After the war, the Jews who remained in the country were in profound denial about their past and identity, and they repressed the betrayal by the Hungarians. They saw in communism a way of reintegrating into society, and the regime suppressed any attempts to create a collective Jewish memory. The identification of the 1950s dictatorial regime with Jews also influenced the Jewish experience during the time of the revolt. In Stalin's day, the top communist leadership in Hungary consisted mostly of Jews, as did the top echelon of the AVO, the cruel and hated secret police. The Jews feared acts of revenge. During the 13 days of the revolt, until the Soviet invasion, the Jews lived in tension and feared the unknown, says researcher Zvi Erez.
"They knew that in every riot and every political reversal, sooner or later anti-Semitic voices would be heard. Anti-Semitic feelings have very deep roots in everyday Hungarian life," says Erez.
The fear of revenge-seekers was less significant, asserts Erez, since as early as 1953, a short while after Stalin's death, the Soviets deposed a number of Jewish ministers who had stood beside party secretary Matyas Rakosi, and the Jews were pushed out of the top ranks. Rakosi, himself a Jew, was deposed from power, to be replaced by the reformer Imre Nagy - the only non-Jew in the senior leadership - who eventually became the hero of the revolution.
Many Jews took advantage of the uprising and the central regime's tenuous hold to flee to the West. About 200,000 Hungarians fled the country at that time, including a disproportionate 15,000 Jews - who comprised less than 1 percent of the population. About 12,000 refugees came to Israel.
Yaakov Golan, a researcher and commentator at Israel Radio, experienced the revolt as a Hungarian and even participated in the historic demonstration in front of the parliament building on October 23. Golan, then called Perer Gero, was about 19, and alongside his work as a welder he served as a sports reporter for two newspapers in Budapest. The press had already dared to publish implied criticism of the regime, he recalls, and was reporting on the mass forums of the Petofi circles, a group of opposition writers and journalists, many of whom were Jewish. The snowball had started rolling.
"I was assimilated, an enthusiastic youngster, and I identified emotionally with the revolution of 1848, the Hungarians' war of independence from the Austrians [during which Hungarians and Jews fought side by side; in 1867 the Jews won emancipation - R.G.]. I felt the struggle for freedom and liberty would heal my childhood wounds from the Budapest Ghetto during the war."
On October 23, demonstrators gathered around the statue of General Bem - a man with Polish roots who fought alongside the Hungarians in 1948 - in solidarity with Polish workers who had been shot by the Polish police several weeks earlier.
"Later we were joined by students exiting the Technical University," relates Golan, "and they had already formulated 13 points that included, among other things, a demand for a Soviet withdrawal, freedom of political organization and the elimination of the secret police. The students had worked hard behind the scenes before they came out to demonstrate."
The next stop was Parliament Square. Golan remembers masses of people trying to break into the square by force, and the great fear that the secret police would open fire at any moment. "When the square was full, they turned out the lights. We felt this was the end, that the fusillade was coming. People lifted their arms like the Statue of Liberty and burned newspapers. This made an impression on the AVO police, and they turned on the lights. They understood this was something strong."
After the initial enthusiasm, he became very afraid and decided to leave the scene; that summer he had been arrested for participating in an illegal demonstration. He got on the metro to go home. "I shook as the metro passed the secret police buildings on Andrassy Street, and then I saw a man in uniform standing next to me - and I still had the free-Hungary symbol on my lapel and the 13 points. I was shivering with fear. I got off at the first stop and walked home."
The next day he went back to work. He remembers the sense of euphoria. Newspapers changed their names and editorial desk heads were dismissed. Workers' committees began to organize outside the aegis of the Communist Party, as did formerly illegal political parties. People ran to open the secret police files. "Of the country's 10 million inhabitants, 1.8 million were under surveillance. It was a huge apparatus," Golan says.
He remembers an atmosphere of hope, exhilaration and unity, with no manifestations of anti-Semitism. After the invasion of November 4, he escaped with some friends to Italy. In fact, he encountered anti-Semitism among the refugees escaping with him. He later came to Israel.
He recalls that most of his classmates, including the Jews, identified with the revolt. "We felt Hungarian then. At that time, a few of my friends were looking toward Zion, people who were not involved in the revolt and were waiting until things calmed down to move to Israel."
The recollections of Andor Kalmar, a retired mechanical engineer who came to Israel in October 1957, a year after the revolt, are different from those of Golan. He found it hard to identify with the revolt, which thrust him back into the horrors of the past. Kalmar was 29 at the time, an officer in the Hungarian army and the married father of a young daughter. Throughout the revolt, he continued going to work at the Technical Institute in Budapest, and he heard about the events via radio.
"There was tension in the air, a lot of arguments, and we hardly managed to work," he recalls. "A short time after the revolt broke out, demonstrators started calling for the hanging of the AVO members - when a Hungarian in the street said AVO, he meant Jews. We heard that they were hanging secret police officers from electric wires in the streets, out of revenge."
Kalmar, who had survived the concentration camp at Birkenau and was liberated from Sachshausen in Germany, says the uprising reminded him that he would be better off not remaining in Hungary, and that he was a Jew and not a Hungarian.
"I was never a Communist or a member of the party, but when I heard talk against the Jews, I was not in favor of the revolt. Based on my bitter experience in 1944, I knew that if they were to start talking and inciting against Jews, it wouldn't stop there. We heard there was graffiti in the streets, 'Jacob, this time we won't take you as far as Auschwitz' - that is, they'll hang you on the spot. Suddenly, all the Jews became communists, and again they were blamed for everything."
Kalmar was afraid to flee because he knew that as an officer, if he were caught he would be severely punished.
When the regime stabilized somewhat, the officers in the Hungarian army were asked to sign a document expressing their support for the Soviet army, which had suppressed the counterrevolution. Kalmar said he had no problem with that, but asked to be released from the army. In January 1957 he and his family stole across the border to Austria. His wife was pregnant. They managed to cross safely, even though they were discovered during the crossing and Hungarian soldiers fired at them. On the other side of the border, the Red Cross was waiting.
