Magyar News, 2002. szeptember-2003. augusztus (13. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2002-11-01 / 3. szám

the $30,000 we had collected. At the same time, we attempted to make arrangements to go down to the Austro-Hungarian border to see the entire operation from the time the refugees crossed into free territory. We wanted to do this so that we would be able to report on the entire operation from beginning to end.

As members of a military force, we knew it would be difficult to obtain permission. However, our good friend, by now, Mr. Shaeffer, came up with a solution. We were made temporary members of the Red Cross, equipped with Red Cross armbands, and provided with a Red Cross car and escorts in their grey Red Cross uniforms.

Our guides were Mrs. Marguerite Wilson, Information Officer for the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Red Cross, and Mr. A Batten, of Hamilton, also an executive with the CRC, both of whom were on loan to the League of Red Cross Societies.

With Cpl. Dick Thibault, of Air Div HQ, we set out at 9:30 p.m. for the two hour drive to Andau, the point where the majority of the refugees cross. We arrived shortly before midnight and were taken to what was once the dancehall of the town gasthaus.

The mud was ankle deep along the roadside and the heavy mist was raw and penetrating.

Andau is an overnight stop for the escapees and it is not a very pleasant one, other than the fact that they are at least out of strife-tom Hungary.

When we entered the gasthaus, operated by the Austrian government, we saw a large, cement floored room, with a high raftered ceiling, garish open lights hanging down, and furnished only with a few rough hewn benches and empty beer barrels. Heat was supplied by one pot-bellied wood stove at one end of the room, plus the human heat of the people.

Straw had been strewn around the perimeter of the room and refugees were sleeping the sleep of the dead on it, crowded body-to-body. Those who had not been fortunate enough to get space on the straw were sitting vacant-eyes, faces grimy, clothes mud-caked, looking into space. Others, too tired to sit up, were curled against doorjambs, or stretched out on the bare, cold concrete, sleeping, oblivious to the glare of the overhead light or dampness of the floor.

We talked, through a Red Cross interpreter, to one woman in her early twenties who had walked 35 kilometers that day carrying her husky year-old baby in her arms, and with a five year-old boy tugging at her skirt. The woman was dressed in clothes that we would throw in the rag-bag, and on her feet she was wearing old soccer shoes, with string for laces. Her cotton stockings and lower skirt were soaking wet and covered in mud. A face that with makeup would have been pretty was grey

Photos starting at the top: Refugees mounting an Austrian train. Center: A happy father and his curious daughter. Bottom: A long line of refugees patiently waiting at the Canadian Consulate

and haggard, the lips as white as chalk.

We learned that the boy had been handed over to her by his parents. For some reason they could not get away and asked that she get the boy to freedom. He sat all night, holding back tears, obviously tired, but refusing to go to sleep in the hope that his mother and father would arrive. We came back to Andau at 4:30 am and he was still keeping his flickering eyes open. His parents had still not shown up.

Despite the language problem we learned of many other harrowing experiences. One man, leaning against the door jamb, nervously chain-smoking, told us he had been separated from his wife and young daughter by Russian gunfire and he had escaped into Austria two weeks previous. First he waited at the reception center and then started the rounds at the refugee camps, vainly seeking his family. Now, he had returned at Andau and intended to stay every night in the hope that his wife

and daughter would somehow get through.

Another young Hungarian told us about his escape. After the revolution failed, he and his fiancée were imprisoned by the Russians. They were held for a week and then turned over to the Hungarian secret police who interrogated them in a fiendish manner. His fiancée had been driven insane, so, knowing her could do nothing more for her, he made a break and managed to escape.

Two nights prior to our visit, Mrs. Wilson, of the Red Cross, had been at Andau, and had been astonished to see a fifty-year-old man come hopping in the door without legs or crutches. He had lost one leg above the knee and one just below. Despite this handicap, he had made a 17 kilometer walk through the woods to the border, with the aid of nothing but a short, foot-high stick. While the condition of his stumps was appalling, Mrs. Wilson was amazed by his cheerful attitude.

We also learned from Red Cross workers of another woman who escaped, then went back into Hungary when she found that her 16 and 18 year old sons had not made it. Both boys had been active in the rebellion and had been captured by the Russians. Ordered deported to a Soviet concentration camp, the boys were rescued from a Russian truck by an entire village who surrounded it. The mother escaped at the same time but when she learned that her sons were still with friends to in Hungary, she made her way back and personally guided them to Austria.

There is no running water in the "reception center". In the alley at the back is a barrel of water. When the refugees arrive they use this water to wash the grime from their faces and hands, and the mud from their boots. You see them standing around in groups, propped up so they can scrape the thicker layers of mud from their boots with sticks. The escapees consider their boots their prize possessions

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