Temetni tudunk - the Hungarian uprising of 1956

By Bart Hall, who has a very personal connection to these events. See also Winds of Change.NET's earlier articles from Hungarian Ambassador Simonyi about rock n' roll and the quest for freedom in Hungary during Soviet occupation & servitude. Joe also recommends George Gabori's memoir "When Evils Were Most Free" (or audio version) very highly.

Autumn in Hungary is often short and nearly always unpredictable. Sometime by late October or early November the weather turns foggy-damp and cold. It is a brooding, mournful season, and in historical terms has been profoundly and repeatedly tragic -- temetni tudunk [ TEH-metnee TWO-doonk ] loosely translates "we sure know how to bury people."

The failed Revolution of 1956 began fifty years ago today (October 23, 1956), and by the time it was crushed a few weeks later nearly 30,000 people, most of them civilians, had been added to the long burial lists of late autumn Hungarian heartbreak. Yet Oct. 23 has become a national holiday...

In October 1849, most leaders of Hungary's failed War of Independence were executed and any semblance of freedom vigorously crushed. The dream remained, and twenty years later many of their basic requests were granted. The Great War ended in November1918 with the precipitous collapse of Hungary's 400 year-old monarchy, descending into a winter of chaos, anarchy, violence and terrible hardship.

In October 1944, concerned that Hungary would attempt a separate peace, the Germans installed the viciously repressive and anti-Semitic 'Arrow-Cross' government. Some 80,000 Jews were murdered in a matter of months. In November the Red Army began the Battle of Budapest which claimed over 160,000 lives, most of them civilians, and gathered Hungary firmly into the Soviet Bloc.

By 1953 about 200,000 Hungarians were in political detention, farmland had been collectivised and all businesses with more than 100 employees had been nationalized without compensation. Since the war, there had been very few moments of joy. The Hungarian water polo team won gold in the 1952 Olympics, and in 1954 Hungary competed in the final for the World Cup. That world cup team was drawn heavily from the Ferencvaros (FAIR-ents-va-rosh) club, based in a working class district nearly leveled in the Battle of Budapest.

Still, by 1956 Hungarians had had enough. Their first glimmer of hope arrived in February when the new Russian leader, Khrushchev, publicly attacked Stalin and his policies. In July the brutal Hungarian Stalinist, Rakosi (RAH-koshi) was removed from office and Hungarians began to dream. Poland, after all, had gained some rights and relief after a series of street protests and minor uprisings.

Autumn 1956 was particularly cold and wet. The harvest was terrible and food was already in short supply following repeated failures of central planning in the agricultural sector. Fuel, too, was in increasingly unavailable. The situation was so bad that the Viennese, themselves having gained freedom from Soviet occupation only the previous year, were as generous as they could be in sending aid and relief to Budapest.

Hard as things were, life continued as close to normally as possible. On 20 October a young student, Ferenc Kaltenekker, received his diploma as a Doctor of Medicine. On the 23rd large numbers of students and workers took to the streets of Budapest and issued a series of sixteen demands including greater personal freedom, more food, removal of the secret police, and so on.

As pressure built, Moscow appointed Imre Nagy (NAHJ) as prime minister and Janos Kadar (YAH-nosh KAH-dar) as foreign minister. They were viewed as "liberals" and it was hoped this would be enough to settle down the "hooligans" as Moscow saw them. The Red Army pulled out and Nagy allowed the renewal of political parties.

On the 31st Nagy declared Hungary 'neutral' (like Austria) and announced that it would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Kadar resigned and set up his own government in eastern Hungary, backed up by the Soviets. After racing across the Great Hungarian Plain the Red Army and its tanks attacked Budapest with remarkable brutality on 04 November.

The US, Britain, and France were occupied with the Suez Crisis and Israeli war, and thus did nothing, but the Hungarians fought back with everything they had and casualties mounted rapidly on both sides. Kaltenekker, the newly graduated doctor, patched up the wounded as quickly and as best he could in the circumstances; Russian or Hungarian, it didn't matter.

After being accosted by Russian patrols in spite of his work and having decided that the Revolution was failing, he took his medical bag plus a very few personal things and lit out for the Austrian border - one of 200,000 making the same decision, a third of whom ended up in the United States. He never saw his mother again.

For a more detailed vignette of the times, Peter Schramm, who was a child in 1956, has recently written a wonderful account of his own journey to the States.

The Hungarian Olympic water polo team was already en route to Melbourne when the Russians invaded, and they were kept ignorant of the outcome during their training. The 06 December match against Russia in the semi-finals is legendary because even though the revolution was lost at home the team saw it as their only chance to fight the Russians. Hungary won 4:0 and the match was called early to prevent a riot by the fans, who by the end were completely on the side of the Hungarians. Hungary went on to take gold in the finals. To prevent further incidents the Australians initiated the now traditional closing ceremony in which athletes mingle completely, without flags.

One of the Hungarian athletes, bleeding badly at the end of the match, eventually went on to coach the great American Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, who has made a film called 'Freedom's Fury,' about the match.

The tenacity of the '56 freedom fighters in the face of a remarkably harsh Soviet reaction pulled the rug right out from under previously strong Communist movements in both Italy and France. The Hungarian Revolution exposed the true face of Communism for all the world to see, and though there were a few more Communist gains here and there, the high-water mark had been reached.

Kadar gradually granted many of the revolutionaries' demands and remained in power until he was forced out as a doddering old relic in 1988. The next summer, his successor ordered removal of the border fence and allowed Hungarians to emigrate. The dam had finally burst. In October 1989 the communists held their last party congress, and Parliament declared Hungary a democracy.

As for the young doctor, Kaltenekker, he worked as a physician for a year in the refugee camps under US embassy supervision and was offered a permanent visa to the States, where he went on to a career as a pathologist. Partly out of gratitude for freedom and opportunity in America he spent his last ten years of active practice driving 55 miles one way to work as a clinic physician in a very tough section of Chicago.

He is my father-in-law.

As this is being written, he is in Budapest with his surviving classmates from all over the world. The university is giving them golden copies of their original diplomas to honour the fiftieth anniversary of their graduation. To this day, two of his most treasured possessions are that original black medical bag and the worn, soft leather shoes in which he walked to his freedom. In a couple of weeks I shall once again ask to see and touch them, for in their very humility they symbolise most powerfully what it means to yearn for freedom.

Join me, then, in a toast to the '56ers and their courage: Szabadsagra [ SAH-bahd-shahg-rah ] … to Freedom to Liberty. And thanks, once again, for reminding us just how much it's really worth.