My name is Tibor Sarkady, or if you wish, Sarkady Tibor. I was born in 1936 and as we near the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, I am approaching my 70th birthday. As I was growing up in Budapest, my…
I was not into politics As a student of steel structures in my final year at the Eötvös Loránt Technical School, I was not interested in politics. I knew what you could and could not say outside the home, and adhering…
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…
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…
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,…
In January 2005, the Hungarian daily newspaper, Népszabadság, published an article by Katalin Jánosi, Imre Nagy’s granddaughter, who described her reaction to a recent film by Márta Mészáros, “The Unburied Dead.” Katalin Jánosi was a small child when she witnessed the…
On September 1, 1956, I was released from the prison of the communists. As I arrived at the train station in Budapest, my friend, Erwin Baktay, was on hand to meet me. From the station I went home to Szentkirályi Street. In…
In the autumn of 1956, a small nation along the banks of the Danube stood up almost to a man, woman and child and struggled for a breath of freedom.
This story tells of this struggle. But it is not the real…
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On October 23, 1956, the Hungarian nation awakened to the most glorious day of its history. The nation – having had enough of decades of slavery, physical and spiritual assaults and terror – shook off its chains and turned against…
The Revolution of 1956, because it was so unexpected, because of its sequence of events, because of the triumph of youth guided not by persons or organizations, but by the very spirit of freedom, the collapse of the allegedly invincible Communist power,…