Whenever the kids at school teased us about our funny names and our parents’ accents, we shot back: “Leave me alone, my dad was a freedom fighter.” That shut them up, at least for a while. My sister and I want our…
My father supported the movement, as his brother did but I don’t believe they were actually involved in the fighting. They both left their village of Inota, Hungary, in 1956 during the uprising to come to America. My dad always recalled…
Remembrance of the Cold War given on Veterans Day, November 11, 2005 at Rutgers University By the time the Radio had broadcast at two o’clock on October 23 the Government’s decree forbidding any demonstrations, the column of marching students from the…
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…
I remember it as if it were happening today. On October 23, I was on my way home from work at Budapest’s Central Physics Research Institute. From the window of the tram I saw many people hurrying along the streets carrying posters…
The autumn air in October 1956 was filled with anticipation in the barracks of Unit 4055 of the work battalion in Komló. We had nearly completed our two years of compulsory military service in the coal mines and were eagerly looking forward…
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…
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,…
It has been 50 years since Russian tanks crushed the dream of a free Hungary. But it has not been long enough to forget. I was an artist. My job was to paint larger-than-life portraits of Lenin and Stalin. That…
He was a teenager who lived in Budapest during the fateful days of October, 1956. He attended gymnasium in Kispest and studied hard to be a good student. He despised the Communists for their godless ways and their hate of Hungarian…