HUNGARY/ FILE: Scars still remain for those Hungarians involved in the failed 1956 revolution in Hungary.

As Hungary commemorates the 50th anniversary of the failed 1956 revolution, when Hungary rose against Soviet rule and communist dictatorship, there are still scars and divisions that remain unhealed. The revolution that broke out on October 23rd was one of the rare moments of unity in Hungarian history. General discontent burst into a popular revolt against the communist government. It began with a student demonstration demanding reforms, democracy, and above all, independence. The demonstrations soon swelled to huge crowds marching onto parliament calling for Imre Nagy as prime minister. Part of the crowd went onto the Stalin statue and pulled it down, the other part marched to the Radio building to get their demands read on the air. Theresa Jilly was among the people at the Radio. Since she returned a few years ago from Australia where they emigrated in 1956 this was the first time she went back the Radio building. "Somehow we felt we gave back something of the frustration what they had given us, we gave it back to them. And I think they were afraid, they were afraid. Even when the fighting started, it started here. Around nine o'clock, I think, a woman got shot. Since I came back from Australia I heard there was a man as well before the woman got shot. And I think the hell got loose here because they started to fight," she recalled. Fighting between the Soviet army and the Hungarian state police (AVO) continued for days with heavy losses. Several street fighter groups were organized across the city and a National Guard formed. Imre Nagy became the prime minister of the revolution. Boys as young as 10-14 took up arms to fight Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails and cunning. In a few days time the Soviet tanks left Budapest. One of the main strongholds of the street fighters was the Corvin alley due to its unique position. Tucked into a narrow round-shaped alley the Soviet tanks could not enter or bomb it. The boys, or as they were known the "Pest lads" had one cannon and endless supplies of Molotov cocktails. From a cunning position they could hit the tanks with burning petrol and then fired at the tanks. Odon Pongratz, brother of the legendary commander of the Corvin alley, recalled how the lads fought: "They [the Russian soldiers in the tanks] opened the top and they wanted to climb out. But when they wanted to climb out, from there and there and there all the Pest lads could hardly wait for something to shoot at and poor Russian soldier could only climb out up to this waist when bang, bang, bang. 'I was the first, no, mine was the lethal shot', so quarrelled the Pest lads under the windows … and they did not know that they were writing world history." Several boys lost their lives in the fights and many civilians. There were several mass shootings at peaceful demonstrators across Hungary in the early days of the uprising. The worst massacre took place on the 25th at Kossuth Square in front of parliament. A huge crowd of peaceful demonstrators gathered to press on their demands when Hungarian state police (AVO) began firing from the top of one of the main buildings. Tibor Pakh was among the crowd and he survived by running for shelter and laying on dead bodies. "They were firing from all directions. I would compare this bloodshed to a round-up hunting when the hunters get closer and closer and at the end they shoot the animals in a small circle. Because the firing was continuous, the English call it, I think, volley but this was not volley but a continuous massacre," Pakh recalled. Within a few days, the Soviet tanks left Budapest and it seemed that the uprising succeeded. Nagy formed a multi-party government and sought to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. But in November, Soviet troops and tanks re-entered Budapest and other major Hungarian cities to quell the uprising. Within a week, the revolt was over. Some 25,000 died, and 200,000 fled Hungary. It was later revealed that over 1,000 soviet tanks and ten troop divisions had been used to silence the Hungarian people. Prime Minister Imre Nagy was arrested in mid-November and executed two years later. Janos Kadar, who had replaced Erno Gero as Communist Party Leader two days before the Soviet invasion, remained unchallenged. Hundreds were executed and tens of thousands imprisoned for taking part in the uprising. Maria Wittner fought in the Corvin alley along with the boys making Molotov cocktails. She was a 19-year-old single mother in 1956 when she joined the street fighters. Arrested after the revolution, she was sentenced to death and her two-year-old son was put in a state orphanage with mentally handicapped children. She spent 13 years in prison, only released as late as 1970. As a "56er", she could find only manual work and earned her living from sewing. "The retaliation suppresses for me the fast moving events of the revolution because the uprising was two weeks but the retaliation was almost 33 years. Because when one came out of prison in 1970 one merely came out of a narrow prison into a wider prison. In their [the communists] eyes we were not equal people," Wittner said. For people like Wittner and many other '56-er the present Socialists are mere successors to the communists who crushed the revolution. They say they cannot celebrate together with the present prime minister and his party because today's Socialists could only get a career in the previous regime if they condemned the revolution.

ITN Source | October 19, 2006

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