William Penn Life, 2010 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2010-06-01 / 6. szám

telegram carefully, including a passage in which he was instructed only to use his six-shot, 9-millimeter service pistol if he or one of his men was attacked or was forced "with physical violence" to leave his post. At 2:55 p.m. on a sunny Saturday in August, Lieutenant Colonel Bella saw a crowd of people — men, women and children — walking uphill towards him.

Within seconds, says Bella, it became clear to him that this could not possibly be the delegation that had been registered to cross the border. And within seconds Bella realized that everything threatened to spin out of control. It was his wedding anniversary and the day before his 20th service anniversary, and he wanted to get home on time. But now they were bearing down on him, 100 or more people, pushing past him and forcing open the old wooden gate toward Austria.

Lieutenant Colonel Bella was a career officer, a man who had served the Hungarian People's Republic in exemplary fashion. In secret, however, as he says, he "did not believe that socialism was capable of making the Yenisei River flow in the opposite direction." With a family to feed, however, Bella was never one for rebelling or an advocate of "kamikaze actions."

But now he was standing there at the border, already overrun by the first wave of East German refugees and watching as the second one approached. He thought about his standard orders, which required him to fire a warning shot first, then release the guard dogs and then resort to more serious steps. It took him 10 seconds, says Bella today, to reach his decision: "I don't want to be a mass murderer." He issued the following orders to his team of four border guards: "Face Austria and check passports if anyone comes from that direction. We don't see what happens behind us."

On the Austrian side, Johann Göltl was soon surrounded by weeping, speechless East Germans. The head of the Klingenbach customs inspection office, Göltl had been Árpád Bella's counterpart on the border for two decades. The men knew each other well, even eating their meals in the same cafeteria. But now Göltl was beside himself. "Are you out of your mind," he shouted at the Hungarian officer. "We already discussed this, and then you send me 600 people out of a cornfield." Lieutenant Colonel Bella swore that he had known nothing about it.

By the evening of Aug. 19, more than 600 East Germans had crossed the border to Austria, in a mass exodus never before seen in Cold War-era Europe since the construction of the Berlin Wall. Lieutenant Colonel Bella is convinced that the very last people one should have thanked for the fact that not a single shot was fired and no one was killed were those in the Hungarian government. "Prime Minister Németh says today that an order was given at the time. But what happened to that order?" he asks.

‘Keep Your Eyes Shut and Let Them Through’

A stone apparently became caught "in the chain of command," says Németh, referring to the top-secret operation. And then the former prime minister explains what the actual plan was for the picnic.

According to Németh, a general from the Interior Min-Arpad Bella (R), former army officer of the Hungarian troops at the Hungarian border to Austria, and Hans Göltl, former officer of the Austrian army troops at the Iron Curtain, pose next to the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, April

istry had been chosen to give the following instructions - discreetly, but nevertheless on behalf of the Hungarian government — to the border guards' high command: "If, during the course of the picnic, a few hundred Germans managed to get across the border, we would have no objection." For the officers this meant, in the language of politicians: Keep your eyes shut and let them through.

According to Pozsgay, a former member of the Hungarian politburo, a small group of senior government officials agreed that the following approach would be taken: If possible, the Hungarian government was to come across as "an injured party, not as a participant" in the East German citizens' penetration of the border during the picnic. The government officials had entered into a conspiracy of sorts with the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service staff and church representatives to circulate the message.

But at the Hungarian Interior Ministry, what had been intended as an order was perceived as pseudo-intellectual babble — and was ignored. Former Prime Minister Németh, without naming names, assumes that those responsible for ignoring the order belonged to circles whose members held internal security as more important than anything else. To this day, those people treat him as a "traitor to the international proletarian friendship."

Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Bella recognized

16 0 June 2010 0 William Penn Life