Fraternity-Testvériség, 1956 (34. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1956-06-01 / 6. szám
4 FRATERNITY REMARKABLE DETAILS FROM THE SPEECH OF AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN In the following few lines we give excerpts from the speech of Dr. Richard Shackelford delivered on the March 15th festivity in Washington, D. C. Dr. Shackelford was the Chief of the American Medical Mission in Hungary in 1945 and 1946, thus, these remarks are coming from a highly educated man who had every opportunity to observe the Magyar people during those dark and desperate years right after the Nazi destruction and under the Bolshevik yoke. I had visited Budapest briefly as a tourist in 1924 so was already familiar with its beauty and great charm. It was at first a sad sight indeed to see the great destruction when I arrived again in 1945. The beautiful bridges were all gone, the Hungária and the other neighboring hotels along the Pest bank of the Danube, and the Gellért Hotel on the Buda side, as well as the palace and all the buildings of the castle hill were nothing but rubble. Living conditions were horrible with adequate food, clothing and fuel unobtainable at any price, no glass to repair the shattered windows to keep out the cold and a wild inflation in the making. The hospitals were in miserable shape with no medicines, surgical instruments, X-ray machines, anaesthetics or gauze. Old newspapers had to be used for surgical dressings. Infant mortality was 67 percent because of the lack of milk and the mothers were too starved to produce any. Inflation was so rapid that the pengő which had been five to the dollar had risen within a year to five with 18 zeros after it to a dollar and was worthless. There was no transportation. Every weekend the Budapest citizens would stream out of the city on foot with ruck-sacks on their backs and wander miles over the country side bartering some personal possessions to a peasant in exchange for eggs or a chicken or some other type of food, often sleeping in the fields overnight. I frequently gave small groups of them lifts in my jeep and was amazed at the distances they had covered in this frantic search for food. The country people were in only slightly better circumstances. It was a pitiful sight. However, in a short while even my untrained powers of observation recognized the most cheering and hopeful signs. The people were not despondent, gloomy and lethargic. They were vigorous and determined to rebuild their country. Unlike other overrun nations they were cheerful and kept their chins up with a sense of humor that was remarkable under such adverse circumstances. I remember very well a Hungarian servant employed to keep my house. He spoke no English and I no Hungarian. (Why should I learn a language in which it is more difficult to say yes than no.) Every morning when he awakened me, he ceremoniously closed my bedroom windows, although there was not a pane of glass in them. I never knew whether he was pulling my leg or not. Another bit of what I suspect was subtle humor was the fact that the only inhabitant of
