Magyar News, 2000. szeptember-2001. augusztus (11. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2000-10-01 / 2. szám

'1000th ANNIVERSARY OF HUNGARY)

Dr. Steven C. Scheer:

I REMEMBER. I WAS THERE

An American Professor looks back to the time when he was 15 years old

I don't remember getting up in the morning. I don't remember getting dressed or eating breakfast. I don't even remember whether I had walked to school that day or took the streetcar. All I know now when I look back on that day from the vantage point of 44 long years is that the day itself was soon to become etched in my memory with a staying power immune to the ravages of time.

My memory picks up from;the moment the day became extraordinary. I don't know at exactly what time of the day this happened, but I still remember distinctly that the entire student body of our high school (the Eötvös gimnázium) was suddenly called to the courtyard to hear the principal make an announcement. All I remember ofthe speech is that school was dismissed and that we were encouraged to join the demonstrators who were even then marchmg up Kossuth Lajos Road 'to where it becomes Rákóczi Road at the intersection of Múzeum Boulevard on the right and Tanács Boulevard on the left.

By the time we left school and walked the one short city block from Reáltanoda Streets to Kossuth Lajos Road, countless demonstrators were walking in rows wide enough to form an unbroken chain from one side of the street to the other, and neither the beginning nor the end of the line could be seen by the naked eye. The undulating crowd moved slowly. As we passed by the famed Hotel Astoria, foreign visitors waved at us with smiling faces from the large street-level windows The crowd then turned left onto Tanács Boulevard and proceeded toward the part of the street where, at Deak Square, its name changes to Bajcsy Zsilinszky Road. I was one of that crowd.

Many people had, by this time, begun to display the Hungarian flag with its familiar tricolor’ scheme of red, white, and green draped across the front of their balconies, with the hated communist emblem ("coat-of-arms") of the red-star-topped hammer and sickle cut out from the middle The marching crowds cheered this gesture, which later became one of the symbols of

the Hungarian Revolution (the other being Beethoven's Egmont “'Overture” which was played on the radio frequently during the freedomfight to avoid “dead air”).

At the next major intersection we turned left, onto Saint Stephen Boulevard, where we were now movmg back towards the Danube, which we crossed on Margaret Bridge to the Buda side, to the small park where the statue of Admiral Bern stands, the Polish hero of the Hungarian Freedomfight (or War of Independence), which followed another famous Hungarian revolution, the Revolution of 1848.

Having listened to speeches at the small park where Admiral Bern's statue is located, the crowds turned around once more and headed back to Pest across Margaret Bridge, this tme to Kossuth Square, the square behind the ornate Parliament Building. I was still one of that crowd.

By the time Imre Nagy spoke to us, night had fallen over Budapest. Soon I was on my way home in an elated mood. I no longer remember what time it was, but it was fairly late in the evening, much later than my usual return home from school. People were outside in the open-air corridor on the secondfloor of our tenement building. It seems that all of our neighbors were outside and that they knew that something big was happening in the city, but no one was sure just what exactly it was.

I shall never forget the horrified but delighted look on their faces when, to the astonishment of one and I loudly proclaimed that communism was over. “Shut up”' they said, "somebody migkt hear you!” “That's okay," I said, with my 15-year-old enthusiasm. “I just came from the Parliament where Imre Nagy spoke to us. Communism is over!”

Little did I know that not long thereafter, on that same evening, gunfire was to irrupt on Brody Sándor Street, in front of the Radio Station, just blocks from where I had first joined the demonstrators earlier ' in the day. Those shots were heard the world over.

I don't remember going to bed that night, nor do I remember getting up in the morning on the following day, but I do remember that I was still naive enough to think that things were back to normal and that I was to go to school again. It wasn't until I got down to the ground floor and the main entry into our tenement building that I knew this wasn't to be. Submachine gun fire rattled ominously in the vicinity. And people were standing in the doorway, talking of the revolution that was already in fill swing.

The day before was a sunny Tuesday. It started out like an ordinary day, but it ended in bloodshed and a heroic fight for freedom. Many thousands died in the days that followed and 200,000 of us left Hungary after it was all over, never to return except for brief visits decades later. I was 15 years old at the time, a sophomore in high school. But nothing in my life, or in the life of my beloved native land would ever be the same again.

[Formerly a professor of English, Dr. Steven C. Scheer is now a writer. Many samples from his writings, including papers on Hungarian literature, can be found ön his web site at http://www. stevencscheer. com]

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