William Penn Life, 2017 (52. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2017-10-01 / 10. szám

Tibor's Take with Tibor Check, Jr.

The orphan heroes of’56

THERE ARE MANY undocumented stories of heroism that took place during the short lived Hungarian Revolution of 1956, perhaps more than those stories that have been preserved for posterity. Many acts of gallantry were buried with the people who performed them, many of whom never lived past the few brief days Hungary was once again free. Thousands were brutally killed by Soviet-backed troops, the AVO (the secret police), or were secretly imprisoned in Siberia and never returned to the homeland.

Of the 200,000-plus Hungarians who fled Hungary during the final 10 weeks of 1956, about one-in-10 were children under 18 years of age. It is estimated that about 15% of those children were undocumented as they did not accompany a parent or guardian.

Within the confines of Budapest, Győr, Pécs and Vác were a series of orphanages and industrial training camps that housed thousands of children left parentless by the ravages of WWII. The communist regime saw these orphans as a liability to the collective goals of communism. Many of these young people were abused in ways that can only be imagined. Girls were often treated worse than the boys, as many became personal attendants to government officials.

Many of these orphans escaped from these schools/orphanages to become street urchins relying upon their wits to survive. Sadistic AVO agents and police officers would find and punish the vagabond youth. Of those caught, most were beaten and assaulted, some killed and a few were returned to their orphanages where abuse continued. Some of the fugitive students became petty thieves in order to survive.

As a result, an underclass of potential Freedom Fighters was simmering in the bogrács of rebellion. These maligned youth were ready and willing to give back what they had received from the communists and were willing to do the most daring of jobs. Many of these young soldiers for freedom were recruited to deliver messages to other hotspots of insurgency, since the streets of Budapest had become their home, giving them intimate knowledge of the neighborhoods.

Many of the stories of these orphan heroes of '56 and their acts of bravery have fallen through the cracks of history. Through research and interviews, I have compiled enough information to present four composites representative of these orphan heroes of '56: a 17-year-old girl; a young man who came from a family of considerable wealth; and two brothers just 16 and 15 years of age.

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Eva came from a family of Jewish textile merchants, tailors and seamstresses. Five generations earlier, her ancestors were hired by the Eszterhazy family as garment makers. As time passed, her family not only supplied the women of the royal enclave with exquisite wardrobes but also branched out into the retail end of the

business. WWI, Trianon and the extermination of the Jewish population by the Nazis left Éva as the lone survivor of the family.

Born in 1939, Éva was placed in the care of a family friend when her parents and older siblings were transported to a concentration camp, but eventually she was placed in an orphans home with hundreds of other girls. There, somewhat ironically, Éva was trained to sew and began working in a factory making suits for men. She was repeatedly assaulted by the shop foreman who was a staunch Communist Party member.

Early in 1956, Éva became pregnant and was ordered out of the factory. For weeks, she wandered the streets and eventually had a miscarriage. She became friends with a young lady who cleaned apartments in the area around Andrássy Utca, which was a stone's throw away from the AVO headquarters. Her new friend allowed her to stay in her apartment in exchange for Éva making alterations to and repairing the clothes of the people who lived in the apartments she cleaned.

Over the impending months, Éva, then 17, saw and heard first hand the midnight beatings and interrogations that were part of the everyday ritual at the "House of Terror," watching from the window of her temporary residence located less than 100 yards away.

One day on her way home from purchasing a few notions for her sewing duties, Éva encountered the very man who had assaulted her a few months earlier at the suit factory. "I thought you were dead," he said to her. He then had two of his lackeys escort Éva to the AVO for extensive interrogation. A few days later, Éva was released, beaten and assaulted, only to find that the friend who gave her a small space to live was no longer living in the apartment.

6 0 October 2017 0 WILLIAM PENN LIFE