Magyar News, 2001. szeptember-2002. augusztus (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2001-10-01 / 2. szám
OPERATION SAFE HAVEN General George B. Dany remembers Christmas 1956 PRESIDENT EISENHOWER called the Hungarian-Airlift, "the greatest humanitarian airlift in history." For the Air Force “Operation Safe Haven” certainly was not the largest - the Berlin Airlift generated far more impressive statistics. The key word in Ike's evaluation is "humanitarian", and herein lies a Christmas story. The streets of Budapest were lined with Russian tanks on the eve of Christmas, 1956. The last defiant shot had been fired, and the freedom fighters had either gone underground or fled across the border to Austria. The West had not answered their cry for military intervention. However, the response to their ensuing plight as refugees was immediate and open armed. Austria, having made a courageous decision to open its borders, called upon other nations to share in the tremendous task of rehabilitation for upward to 100,000 Hungarians who had abandoned virtually everything in their flight to freedom. The U.S., accordingly, offered to provide new homes for 21,500. The situation in Vienna had become acute, with refugee organization hard pressed to provide temporary shelter. President Eisenhower, therefore, directed that the first 9700 be flown to the U ,S. prior to the new year. The first Hungarians departed Munich, the German refugee holding point, on December 11th. By Christmas Eve, some 6000 had been airlifted. However, this total was short of the proport of the airlift, it was gratifying to know that as long as we had to be separated from our families on this Christmas Day, at least it had been a productive one. Unimportant as it was at the time, the thoughts of this accomplishment certainly would not prevail through the intervening years to mark this day as a day apart. As professionals we were doing a General Dany and one of the 9700 Hungarian refugees airlifted from Munich to the USA in 23 days. General Dany returned to the states on the last aircraft with the title “.Honorary Refugee 9701 Below: A group of Hungarians arriving in the USA job, tempered somewhat by the spirit of Christmas. Singlemen and crew members of the Jewish faith volunteered for the holiday flights so that more “Air Force families” could be together. However, it was just these Air Force families, stationed at nearby Neubiberg and Erding Air Bases, who broke up the family circle to make that Christmas Day at Munich some morable. No one knows how the idea started. Somehow it was agreed that the Hungarians, who would spend this day crossing the Atlantic, should know something of the spirit of Christmas in their new homeland. Time had been so short that fund raising campaigns and organized shopping tours were out of the question. Therefore, it was decided that each child and adult of the Air Force would give up one present in order that every departing Hungarian could, in turn, have a gift. Hence, each boarding refugee was presentgrammed lift. Seasonable fog had blanketed the Bavarian landscape most of the day, sometimes completely. As it stood, the combined MATS- commercial airline task force could only meet its deadline if reasonable weather prevailed during the remaining days. Christmas Day was a day so clear that, for the first time, the snow-covered Bavarian Alps seemed to engulf the airport. On this day, a record one thousand were airlifted. We were back on schedule! To those of us indirect sup-Richard M. Nixon, then the Vice President, arrived at Munich Riem on December 22, 1956 to observe Operation Safe Haven. He is being greeted by General Dany.
