Szittyakürt, 1981 (20. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1981-12-01 / 12. szám
Page 2 FIGHTER DECEMBER 1981 “Minden ország katonája menjen saját hazájába!" (“Soldiers of each country should go to his own country!’’) On the Bern Square, Péter Veress read the program of the demonstration from the pedestal of Bern’s statue. Behind the statue we noticed a military barracks and the chant started: “Katonánknak magyar ruhát!” (“To our soldiers Hungarian uniforms!”) Representatives of the Writer’s Union asked us to converge on the parliament by 8:00 P.M. With Jónás, the secretary of the Petőfi Club, we stopped a truck and with a group of young people we went via the Árpád Bridge to inform the working class district of Újpest of the planned demonstration at the Parliament. Our chanting got very bold and the old windows started opening as we shouted: “Vesszen az AVÓ.” (“Down with the AVO!”) and “Gyertek a Parlamenthez!” (“All come to the Parliament!”) The demondstrators blocked the street thus, I reached the Kossuth Lajos Square on foot. The crowd was very tense and people were pressed so close to each other that in spite of the cool night we were perspiring. We started chanting our slogans again. They were centered around two points: a) Demands for non-Moskovite politicians to appear: “Nagy Imrét akarjuk!” (“We want Imre Nagy!”) “Mindszenty, Mindszenty!” ("Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, 1st Prince Primate of Hungary.”) “Kovács Béla, Kovács Béla!” (“Béla Kovács!”) b) Political demands: “Szabad választásokat!” ("Free elections!”) “Ruszkik haza!" (“Russians go Home!”) "Erre jó a Szabad Nép!” ("The Free People newspaper is good only for this!”... and they were lit up as torches.) To calm the crowd, Erdei appeared on the balcony of the Parliament. Knowing his unprincipled subservience to Rákosi, we did not want to hear him and thus started to chant: “Hazudtatok tíz évig!” (“You have lied for 10 years!”), Erdei gave up and retired. Finally around 10:00 p.m. Imre Nagy appeared on the balcony. He seemed disoriented, afraid or misinformed. Instead of showing leadership, he let the people on the streets take the initiative in their hands. He stated: “Dear Comrades.” The crowd roared back: “Nincs elvtárs polgártárs!” {“There is no comrad here but Hungarian brother!”). Nagy still did not get the message and continued: “The 10 year’s achievements of the People’s Democracy are in danger.” We roared back instantly with unity and as-TIGHTCK We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our friends and patrons all the joy, the hope and the wonder of Christmas. May the meaning of the holiday be deeper, its friendships stronger, its hopes brighter, as it comes to you during the New Year riGHTW .AND VARIED NEW FRIENDS] founding intensity: “ÁVÓ, ÁVÓ, ÁVÓ...” Then as if his real Hungarian feeling came back to him he started anew: “Kedves Magyar Testvéreim!” (“Dear Hungarian Brothers!”). The response of the crowd was as if a father and son finally found each other. Yet what followed was very disappointing and tragic for Hungary. He said that he just got readmitted into the H.D.P. (Hungarian Workers Party—Hungarian Communist Party), had no position, could not do anything, but he might try to transmit our requests to the leadership of the government and party. He finally asked us to go home... In spite of the large turnout (I estimate one hundred thousand people) and enthusiasm, it appeared to me that we accomplished nothing. I reasoned that after the crowd broke up, the ÁVÓ would start arresting the most visible members of the demonstration. To keep our people together and achieve some result we chanted; “Let us go to the Radio Station!” We started to march on Alkotmány Street. Someone suggested to print our demands and made a small diversion to Lander er’s Printing Shop (Szikra Nyomda) where the Youth of March had done the same thing one hundred and eight years earlier. This few minutes diversion saved our lives. After we were assured that the demands of the demonstration would be printed we resumed our march via Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Street. We marched arm in arm covering the full width of the street towards the Museum Ring. At the rhythm of our steps we were shouting: “Ruszkik haza!” (“Russians go home!”), “Holnap sztrájk!” (“Tomorrow we strike!”). We swelled into an anormous crowd again. After every chant our voice reverberated from the houses lining the boulevards creating a psychological effect of confirmation of our strength and determination. This march was the emotional apex of 1956. We felt our strength, filled with hope and perhaps euphoria that after eleven years of Hell we soon would be in Heaven. For some this expectation was fulfilled within minutes! As we were approaching Kossuth Lajos Street I heard the sound of rifle and automatic weapons. Upon entering the Museum Ring (near the central radio station) the crowd grew silent and became filled with anxiety. We passed burning vehicles in front of the University. I was in the front row leading the march and we were ready to turn into the Bródy Sándor Street when we heard intense shooting. In the next few minutes people started streaming out of the street some bleeding, some being carried out wounded or dead. Suddenly I found myself standing alone at the end of Bródy Sándor Street facing a row of enlisted ÁVO men pointing their submachine guns in my general direction. My legs grew heavy, my heart in my throat, I stood there in dead silence. Then I became overcome by the sense of our glorious past, the recent humiliation and suffering of my people and a chance, that may never return, to change the course of history. I was compelled by these thoughts and emotions to walk forward half way down the street until I was looking into the barrels of their guns. Mysteriously they did not start shooting again. Gradually the empty street behind me filled with people and started pushing me against the guns and bodies of the ÁVO men. These group of A VO men could not bring themselves to fire at us close range and under pressure they were shoved back and split into small isolated groups. The demonstrators engulfed the streets surrounding the radio station. Negotations to enter the building and transmit the program of the demonstrators was started without any success. Waiting at the corner of Bródy Sándor and Puskin Street I heard a murmur and the pavement started trembling under us. Suddenly three tanks appeared. They stopped at the intersection and the commanding officer asked in an obscene but friendly language to stop the fighting. We told him that we were unarmed and that it was the security police (ÁVO) who was firing their weapons at the radio station. He sent one of his tanks to block off the door of the radio building and had the other two driven around until quiteness settled on the streets. The demonstrators were very angry about the killings and not having a chance to transmit their demands. Thus, we were milling around in front of the building and chanting our slogans. A returning theme of which was: “Testvér-gyilkosok!” (murderers). The building of the radio was filled with A VO men. At first there was no response. Then they were throwing tear gas grenades from the windows. In the mean time motorized infantry units were sent to disperse us, but instead many of them dispersed in the crowd holding on to their weapons and joined the revolution. Around midnight I heard a burst and saw the muzzle fire of an automatic weapon from the top left hand floor of the radio building. We ran for cover back into Puskin and Szentkirályi Streets. In Puskin Street, I found myself among armed soldiers. After some lengthy persuasion I got one of their bolt action Russian made rifles and thus, the armed uprising was started on my part also. I scouted the area for more rifles and ammunition and found none. Thus, we started a systematic disarming of ÁVÓ men among the crowd. We got a number of submachine guns but no ammunition. Around one o’clock in the morning of 24 October a man ran into the stairway of the house located at the corner of Szentkirályi Street and Bródy Sándor Street carrying a metal box on his shoulder. He told us it contained ammunition for submachine guns. None of us knew how to open it. I stuck a bayonett into it. A police officer rushed up to me yelling stop, stop. I thought I was being arrested... Instead he told me that I was about to blow everybody into pieces. He showed us how to open it like you open a box of sardines. None of us knew how to fill the submachine guns either. The ÁVÓ men refused to help load them in the beginning but when I got an empty pistol and I put it to their heads, they complied. Thus, the fight for the radio building started in earnest. Around four o’clock in the morning we were warned by a Hungarian officer that Russian tanks were encircling the areas. To my surprise that did not stop the fight and the radio station was liberated! From there on the armed uprising of 1956 in Hungary took a new turn! * JOHN ASHBROOK ln 1978, Ronald Reagan again came to campaign for John Ashbrook. This picture shows old friends meeting on the stage at Mansfield, Ohio during the Reagan* Ashbrook rally. Congressman, Ohio MY FELLOW PATRIOTS, You know, that’s about the best way you can address anyone throughout the world, as a “fellow patriot.” If there’s anything that we’ve learned in the past twenty-five years, indeed we should have learned in the last five thousand years, that anyone of us who fights for freedom is our brother and sister, a fellow patriot, and anyone who has their freedom taken away diminishes the freedom of each of us! Maybe that’s one of the messages of the twenty-fifth annivarsary of the glorious Hungarian uprising. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that and maybe in those lessons and teachings of history will come the eventual freedom that we all pray for, not just for Hungary but for people throughout the world. To me, as an American, born on this soil, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution is a time for reflection, for resolve, and for dedication. And I might add, with a somewhat sad and wistful tone, its also a time of shame. Its a time of shame for the West, for all of us who have honored and cherished freedom. For all of us who have come from the Christian heritage, the Western tradition, the belief in the gradual, eventual civilization of the entire world where we become decent people who could live with each other. Its a time to recall the shame of many of us, particularly in my country, in the West, which did not respond when those glorious freedomfighters did precisely what most of us had urged them to do. How many times I listened in the late forties and fifties as Americans would encourage captive nations to rise up and throw off the bondage of their oppressors but then we did nothing. I think one thing that history is showing to many of us who thought that perhaps it was just an idle, unfortunate, lazy reaction, we have now found as we see paper after paper come out of our State Department, that its just possible that there was really a bit more complicity there. I have seen papers that were sent to the Soviet Union, in my
