56 izzó ősze volt… Pillanatképek a forradalom napjairól - It was the fervent autumn of ’56. Snapshots on the Days of the Uprising (Budapest, 2006)
BEVEZETŐ
In this album the Budapest City Archives show the photos that were attached as manifestes to the court proceedings of the revenge. Beside the photos there are archive leaflets, communications, parts of diaries, newspaper articles, poems and other documents compiled by the police and attached to the trial, which are all prints of the culture of the era. The book titled Snapshots on the Days of the Uprising shows the events of the '56 uprising mainly taking place in Budapest in thematic chapters. We get to know about the euphoric moments of The first days in the first chapter: marches, demolishing the symbols of the personality cult and burning the brochures and books popularizing the ideology of the communist dictatorship. The next part of the book presents the events of the street. Groups curiously watching the events, passers-by, smiling faces, people queuing up at dawn, armed girls come to life in the photos. Yet a shot up church dome, a scarecrow clad as a Soviet soldier, demolished and burnt down buildings can also be seen in these snapshots; all that belonged to the view of the street that time. In the third chapter we are shown the armed centres of the capital such as the Hungarian Radio playing a significant role in the first days, the "Kilián" barracks that have become the symbol of the uprising and Corvin Close or Széna Square. The next chapter of the book presents the vehicles of war and guns of the uprising. We can see the wrecks of the shot up and burnt down Soviet heavy tanks, panzers, trucks, police vans and cannons especially at the places of big armed fights: the "Kilián" barracks, the surroundings of Corvin Close, Széna Square, Móricz Zsigmond Circus, Kálvin Square, Ferenc Boulevard - the surroundings of Tompa Street and Práter Street. Browsing the part titled Faces of the uprising the photos of those people appear that were significant during the revolution, like Sándor Kopácsi and József Mindszenty, or its aftermath, like Péter Mansfeld and Mária Wittner. The chapter titled The Sentence of the people throw light on the other side of the revolutionary events, where we see the victims in Köztársaság Square and Nagykörút. Our book closes with "the historical memoirs written in photos" of the martyrs of the uprising. The majority of the 200 photos published derive from four proceedings documents. The booklet containing 148 photos of the street with archive captions can be found in the trial of György Fáncsik and accomplices 1 . These small size photos are supplemented by a collection of jokes, leaflets and poems that well represent the ideology of the uprising. The album was compiled by László Fettich, from whom the police confiscated the "anti-revolution" stuff in January 1957. Fortunately the album was preserved although the court of first instance sentenced it to annihilation.
