[This is an excerpt from the autobiography of my father, Ervin Williger-Varnagy), who died in 2003. It was December 1956, and Bela Barsony, my mother Ily’s brother, and his wife Erzsi had just fled Hungary. This is how they went from Hungarian…
Now that the 50th anniversary of the Revolution and Freedom Fight of 1956 approaches, I reread the relevant books that through the years have found their way onto my bookshelves. I consider myself lucky to have lived to see the regime change…
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…
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…
On October 23, 1956, in Budapest, the largest demonstration occurred in front of the Parliament. In the large square in front of the monumental building there was room for tens of thousands of people. I went there by myself, not with an…
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…
1956 was a very special year. In the first few days of January, an early morning streetcar derailed and plunged from the Margit Bridge into the Danube. A few days later, Budapest was shaken awake at daybreak by the earthquake…
Szabadságunkat köszünjük nektek, 56-os hõsök” “For Our Freedom We Thank You, Heroes of 1956” These are the words engraved on the stone monument on the grounds of the Philadelphia & Vicinity Hungarian Sports Club. The Club’s membership dedicated it on…
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…
A burst of gunfire shook the windows. It was midnight in Hungary, December, 1956. “Good God, curfew time lasts till seven in the morning. What am I going to do?” I shook my husband, John. Startled from his dream, he reached…