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Bulcsú Veress – Young foot soldier of the Revolution

I was a first year student at Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, studying nuclear physics. Students from Szeged University came to our Univesity on the 21st and reported their 16 points for university autonomy and asked our support. Next day there was…

Outside Budapest

Dr. Steven Julius Török – Debrecen

I was a first year student at Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, studying nuclear physics. Students from Szeged University came to our Univesity on the 21st and reported their 16 points for university autonomy and asked our support. Next day there was…

Through the Eyes of a Child

Martha and Kathy Takács – Memories of Two Sisters Fleeing Their Homeland

The Start of the Revolution I was 9 yrs. old and my sister Kathy was 8. We were doing our school homework on Oct. 23, 1956. My Mom came home from work, very excited, telling my grandfather, who was babysitting us, to…

Family Members

Endre Szentkiralyi – My parents fled in 1956

When I was growing up, it seemed to me that all of my parents' friends had done time in jail in the old country. For political crimes, not theft or burglary. They didn't all do time, of course, it just seemed that…

Adult Eyewitness History & Commentary

Balázs Somogyi – A Nation Ascending

EXPECTATIONS The summer and fall of 1956 were full of excitement and expectations in Hungary. Matyas Rakosi, “Stalin's Best Disciple” resigned from the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party, euphemistically named the “Hungarian Workers' Party,” in July .The month of August…

Through the Eyes of a Child

Péter A. Soltész – They never did give the shooter up

I had my summer vacation in the Tokaj region at my uncle's farm in the summer of 1956 with nary a thought or whisper of anything brewing in the country. Coming back to the big city in September, I was getting settled…

Through the Eyes of a Child

Tamás Rátoni Nagy – I fought them in Vietnam, because I was too young in Budapest

PRE-1956 CHILDHOOD MEMORIES My father tried to escape to the West through the Iron Curtain in 1950, but he was shot on the Austrian border. After treatment in the hospital, the ÁVO (secret police) put him in solitary confinement in a narrow cell…

Through the Eyes of a Child

Ország Tibor – My father and grandfather were both gendarmes

It started like any other ordinary weekday. Tuesday we awoke to a cool autumn morning in the 8-th district of Budapest, when I started to walk to school on Prater Street, which was next to the Corvin theater. We lived on Üllõi…

Adult Eyewitness

Edit Martha Novak – As I Remember

At work operating a drill How October 23rd started I can't recall but I imagine it must have been like any other. At the time I was employed by the Small Engine and Machinery Factory (Kismotor és Gépgyár) located in Buda. I…

Active Freedom Fighters History & Commentary

Károly Nagy – The Legacy of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Liberty, democracy, human rights are like health. Servitude, oppression, discrimination are like sickness. Totalitarian tyranny is death. A revolution that overthrows tyranny and achieves liberty is a resurrection. During the last week of October and the first few days of November, 1956,…