HUNGARY: Young people at the Sziget Music Festival encounter the history of 1956 revolution.

The annual music festival Sziget is mostly the scene of rock concerts with a kind of commercialised Woodstock feel. Most people say they attend the six-day festival for the music and the special atmosphere. But this year Sziget-goers can also encounter unusual history lessons about the 1956 Hungarian revolution. This year Hungary commemorates the 50th anniversary of the revolution when Hungary rose against Soviet rule and communist dictatorship. It seems however that the younger generations know very little about the revolution, therefore a couple of historical institutions and historians decided to use the opportunity of the music festival to bring the topic of 1956 closer. One of the scenes at the festival is organised by the Terror House Museum, a European award-winning museum dealing with the history of totalitarian regimes. On a quieter lawn of the festival a screen on top of a red and black container van shows archive films and witness accounts for several hours a day. Inside the van people can play with the demo version of a brand new computer game called Freedom Fighters 56 invented by a Hungarian-American computer specialist and teacher, Andrea Lauer Rice. The game is part of the Freedom Fighters 56 educational oral history project, dedicated to gathering testimonials from '56 fighter to commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary and preserve the spirit of 1956 for future generations. Lauer's mother was a 56er so she grew up on stories about the revolution and was raised to be proud of it. But when she came to teach in Hungary in the 1990s she realized that most of her students did not know much about the revolution and some of them did not even care to. Lauer decided to try and do something about it and approach the new generation with a computer game that helps them imagine what it was like to fight against the Soviets and also teaches them about the history. "The great thing about 1956 is it's filled with compelling small stories. And I had a German group the other and they said oh, I'm not so interested in this, and I said, you know what, let me tell you a story about something that happened in 1956. They were kids who really went up against T-34 tanks at the beginning, they turned upside down soup bowls to make the tank commanders think that they were mines, then the tank commanders would come out and see what was going on and they would be jumped by seventeen 11 year olds. So I was trying to paint this picture and they said oh, my gosh, why haven't we heard about this? I said well, now you have, so come and play the demo version and you can commemorate in this 50th anniversary year," Lauer said. According to a recent study, the young generations learn very little about the revolution at school. Twenty percent of 700 high school students who participated in the study never learnt about 1956. Even among those who did learn about it many were confused and mixed up 1956 with events a hundred years ago. Some even thought it was a conflict between Turks and Austrians. One cause of the problem lies in the way history is taught with little time remaining for the 20th century. "It's terrible that the teachers get so behind with the schedule in the final year that we barely have any energy left for the 20th century while in the first year we learn ancient history in great detail. So many guys of my age simply don't know anything about the history of the 20th century or the 1956 revolution," Levente Loki, a student said. The other cause of the problem, historians say, is that for decades 1956 was a forbidden topic so generations grew up without hearing about it, even from their own family. "Until the change of regime, until 1990, people could not talk about 1956, not even in the family because if someone did talk and it leaked out one could get into trouble. After the change of the regime 1956 immediately got loaded with a current political tone because all the parties and groups that took part in the change of regime considered 1956 as the focus of their legitimacy, and that greatly divided society," historian Gabor Tallai said. Another glimpse of 1956 history at the Festival is set up by the 1956 Institute along the civil organizations road. Tucked inside a small tent is an exhibition of 1956 as witnessed by children. Two diaries written by teenagers in 1956 were recently published. One of them was written by Gyula Csics who was 12 during the uprising. The pages of his book along with archive photos form the exhibit and also serve as material for a test visitors can fill out. "We knew what to expect that the young people won't have time here. Our tent is the smallest grain of dust around here, the music and all the programmes take the attention of the young people. But despite this we have had positive experiences, many people came in and we noticed that several people spend up to 20 minutes which is a sensationally long time in this case. They got their photos with the Stalin boots and filled out our tests," Andras Lenart, historian of the 1956 Institute said. Historians hope that the occasion of the 50th anniversary year will serve as a good opportunity to make up for some of the lost decades in remembering 1956.

ITN Source | August 15, 2006

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