Magyar News, 1998. szeptember-1999. augusztus (9. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1998-10-01 / 2. szám

for newly arriving Hungarian refugees.

Soon after, they were sent to Wienemeustadt Austria, then to Salzburg, via Vienna. At the Vienna train station they found Hungarian-Austrians whose work was to notify Hungarian families left behind of the refugees’ safe arrival in the west. Once in Salzburg, they entered an American Military Camp known as "Sitzenheim" where they met my mother's brother Imre, and his wife, Ibolya, who was pregnant with their first child. This couple had lived separately from my mother and her family, and during the early chaotic days of the Revolution, they did not even have contact with Imre. Independently they had chosen to make the journey towards freedom. Imre and Ibolya had already started paperwork for admission to the United States. It was at this point that the “family” of eight decided to immigrate to the United States, keeping the family intact. Their original plan had been to stay in Austria or to continue to Switzerland where many other Hungarians were taking refuge. (To this day, there is a considerable Hungarian population in both of these countries.) Bui my grandfather had asked, above all else, that they stay together, and they were going to keep that promise.

Finally, it appeared, my parents could be married. Because they wanted to begin their new life in freedom as husband and

wife, they sought out a Hungarian priest in Salzburg and asked him to many them. They were told that the Pope, fearing that quick marriages would end in quick divorces, had issued an order against marrying refugees. Even when they appealed to the Bishop of Salzburg, they were told it would be better to marry in the United States. Regardless of their marital status, my parents wanted to be processed together. They explained their situation to an official in charge of processing, and he agreed to hold their files together with a rubber band. This method proved useless. In the end, Alajos Bauer and Ilona Vajda faced even greater disappointment for the order of departure was to be alphabetical. Amid the heavy stream of refugees leaving Austria, each would depart and arrive in America weeks apart.

In early December, my father was sent from Salzburg to Linz and then by plane to McGuire Air Force Base and finally to Camp Kilmer in Piscataway, New Jersey. Weeks later, on Christmas Eve. my mother left Salzburg via Munich for Boston, then to McGuire Air Force Base, and finally Camp Kilmer. Not knowing when she would arrive, for weeks my father met every one of the 4-5 buses arriving daily at Camp Kilmer. Soon familiar faces appeared among the refugees pouring into the camp. The three sibling couples Piroska and István, Ibolya and Károly and

Ibolya and Imre - as well as many other acquaintances were able to give my father constant updates. “I saw her in Linz,” one said. “We met up with her in Munich” an other added. "I think she is on the next plane.”

Camp Kilmer was a military camp, albeit unused at the time except for the refugee program, and for this reason, refugees were not permitted to wander freely. The camp was divided by a road, the two sides of which had distinct purposes. Those already processed were waiting on one side; new arrivals and the infirmary were on the other side. Convinced that my mother had arrived, my father feigned an illness to get to the other side of the camp. Checking die list of new arrivals posted daily, he found her name. Still uncertain where to find her, he made his way to the chapel. Just as he turned to enter, my mother emerged. Had it been providence again? No matter. They were together once more.

Beginning amidst falling shells in Budapest their long journey toward freedom ended beneath a gendy falling blanket of snow in New Jersey. They were married five days later. New life was just beginning.

Alice Bauer Montgomery was raised in Connecticut, then with the family moved to New Jersey. Presently she lives and works in Texas.

by Kate Serédy

TODAY another tragic chapter is being wriden into die history of Hungary, written in the blood of my people.

What is happening in Hungary today lias shocked and horrified you, men and women of an unsuppressed country. You watch die people of Hungary in their desperate bid for freedom, for self-respect, and you pray—as I do—that this heroic selfsacrifice of a tiny nadon has nursed the beginning of that which will end die brutal, treacherous tyranny we all despise

In one spontaneous, warm gesture you offer the only help possible in these tragic darts: shelter for the few who have escaped, sustenance and medical aid for the many trapped in that desolate land.

Now the world realizes that the pathetic remains of a once proud and free nadon have never deserved the dreadful epithet: Satellite.

For sixteen long, terrible years, from 1940 through 1956 the Hungarian people have borne up under tyranny, helplessly caught between the mercilessly grinding millstones of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. They hated and dreaded both; yet defeat of one monster made them victims of the other—the very same monster that had all but destroyed them nearly thirty years before.

Only those who have lived through the Russian Communist regime of 1919 know the full horror of that reign of mad, naked terror. The inhuman brutality was such as to leave all who survived it forever in dread of Communism.

I lived through it and I know that during the past tragic years of slavery to Russia that dread has never abated, that the love of freedom and the willingness to die for it have never left the people. They have fought and sacrificed their lilies for freedom all through their turbulent history. Like a small, unquenchable flame it has burned in every heart. It was the Hungarian heritage, passed on from generation to generation for more than a thousand years.

These people, within the formidable rampart of the Carpathian Mountains, were able to turn back wave after wave of attacking forces from the East: Mongols, Tartars, Turks, Mediaeval Russians. Thus they served as the buffer state between

Eastern armies and Western Europe. That invincible entity, formidable mountains and valiant people, was shattered in the tragic aftermath of World War I. Yet that small flame, love of freedom, has never been extinguished.

Now you have seen the proof; you have seen that small flame become a torch. You saw the brave, brief light—then stood aghast at yet another evidence of the brutal treachery of the force that sought to extinguish it forever.

Once again there is only darkness in that small land—a darkness made more grim by smoking ruins and the agony of scores of thousands.

And by the light of that pathetic, brief blaze you also saw my people as they always have been: proud, undaunted— brothers to all the free, the valiant, the humane.

This article was written in November 1956 by Kate Serédy, a well known author and illustrator of children’s books in the United States. One may find detailed information on her in the July-August, 1998 issue of the Magyar New« p g