scrawls.

scrawls

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16.10.07

from mom, for the newspaper

I was not very much involved; I was a 9-year old kid in a small town near Budapest. There's a picture of my brother, T, and my cousin, M. They're paddling with this homemade oar on the Danube in an inner tube, a bucolic country life, as far as we could tell. There's another picture of me and T and the chickens. The adults did their best to protect the children. We just got kind of second, or third hand news.

I was nine, and we lived in Felsogod, north of Budapest, on the eastern bank of the Danube. Fifteen miles north of Budapest on a main highway. One day when I was going to school, instead of the usual haywagon or truck, I had to watch a hundred and twenty-five tanks go by. This was after the revolution.

During the revolution, a kid who always used to get into trouble was cheered on by all the teachers, and kids, as he climbed the obelisk memorial next to my school to the "Heroic Russian Army" that had "rescued us from fascism." He went up and tore down the red star.

The revoultion began on October 23rd. Everybody was all excited, and talking about stuff I didn't understand - I couldn't really get what was happening. I was a very protected child. I knew that there were a lot of family secrets I couldn't talk to people about, like when my friend's father asked me if we listened to Radio Free Europe I wasn't supposed to tell, or that I wasn't supposed to tell what my parents talked about after dark. One of my classmates' father always asked me when I was playing at their house whether my family listened to RFE; lying about it was an absolute rule for me, because my classmate's father seemed to be an informer. I had known other people who had disappeared, and I didn't want my parents or grandfather to disappear. This was just one of many family secrets we had to keep. Another was, what did my parents talk to each other about, after they turned out the lights? Or around the dinner table?

In Felsogod on the day of the revolution, I was home, and everyone was very excited, and the adults tried to keep all the kids, boys especially, at home. People were more open, more friendly, a lot more polite. I was living on the edge of a village, away from any media, so I only saw what was going on around me. After the revolution the trains werent running right, all the services were disrupted. My father couldn't get to work reliably, he was a lawyer, commuting to Budapest back and forth every day. IT didnt disturb him too much because theere were very few cases, in his cooperative there were thirty lawyers with fifteen desks and one secretary, so he coudln't do much for working in his office anyway. So he stayed home for part of that time. He would go and see if there was a train and wait a while, two or three hours, and if there was no train that day hed come home.

My grandfather came over every afternoon. I remember my grandfater listening to RAdio Free Europe with all the interference played over it, on the contraband Grundig radio that was buried during WWII, because having it would have been a death sentence. It was the only radio we knew of that pulled in Radio Free Europe. The signal wandered, and there was a lot of interference broadcast on the same frequency. It was mostly news with a very American slant, religious services. A lot of encouragement to the Hungarians to continue their valorous fight, that the West would be totally supportive. We were leafleted from the air that the west supports us, but there was never any material aid - I picked up multiple leaflets in my yard, that said the US specifically supported us, but there was never any material aid.

When the revolution appeared to be successful they threw out the hammer and sickle seal and put up the Kossuth seal - he was a hero of the 1848 revolution to become an independent, autonomous nation from Austria - in newspapers, in papers that were published. They were trying to establish a new constitution, to establish a new government, and so for a few days this Kossuth sign was used. IT was put on tanks that were captured. The symbol of the revolution was a Hungarian flag with the communist seal ripped out from the middle. So the reestablished flag had the hammer and sickle back in it afterwards.

Movement was even more restricted than usual - you weren't allowed to travel. That affected me when we were escaping to Austria in December, that you weren't allowed to go anywhere without a permit. Slowly I guess things went back the way they were, somewhat, but services were still not really regular. Even in December when we were starting to leave it was somewhat unusual to have a train in the morning. When they brought the wagonload of bread to the store they just distributed it, they didn't even bother to take money for it, but they couldnt come every day. It was kind of like a pall over everything, everyone was just sad. People began to leave, to try to get out of Hungary. So as far as i know about one out of ten people left.

I was not directly involved in the revolt; my brothers and cousins were. One of those days my cousin J was supposed to be going to school in Vacs, five miles up the road, by bicycle. He was sixteen or seventeen. And instead he went with his friend fifteen miles south to Budapest to look at the statue of Stalin that had been pulled down, since it was such a big symbol of the communists, to seeit for himself. Like when they pulled down the Saddam Hussein statue, it was something like that. Very reminiscent. They were trying to chip pieces off the bronze statue. They heard tanks rolling towards them on the cobblestones, and so they dropped thier books and ran for cover and the closest cover they could find was inside Stalin's head. The tanks came by spraying bullets, and when it was quiet J and his friend came out and their books were crushed. They managed to get a few small pieces of the statue and rode their bikes home, real fast. My mother had a piece of that statue and every time she got homesick, she took that piece out, to remind her of why she dragged our family out of Hungary, why she'd uprooted us.

My brother T was thirteen and one day he went to the bank to pretend to shoot at the tanks. Of course the russians wouldn't have known that he and my cousin didn't have real rifles. They pretended to have Molotov cocktails too. They were hidden in the tall grass by the side of the highway and the tanks didnt see them, that was all. In Budapest thirteen-year old boys were blowing up tanks, they could have been shot. The rest of the time, the adults just about tied my brothers to chairs. I can't remember L getting out, he was sixteen.

The revolution was successful for about a week. One Sunday morning at about 4 am. the Russian tanks came in past our place toward Budapest. There was lots of stuff on the radio about Imre Nagy trying to organize a government and appealing to Western countries to help us. I remember hearing Nagy on the radio, begging for help before we were beaten down again. The adults had been very hopeful and optimistic sounding.

After November 4th, after the tanks had come in, the mood became very subdued. One day my school started up again, November 7thish. This was the morning with the hundred and twenty-five tanks. There wasnt any school in between, during the revolution, with all the adults jubilant. School started up again afterwards. I remember feeling rooted to the ground, knowing the tanks were going to Budapest to shoot up my people. School was very humdrum and drudgy. Everyone looked like they were carrying tons of weight on their shoulders. The communist principal went around visiting every classroom, throwing his weight around. I guess he was telling us that things were going to be back to normal. I think my teacher cried that day - she looked like she was on the verge of tears the whole day. I can't remember the substance of school at all at that point. We had to start wearing scarves again - when we were inducted to the Pioneers, which was supposed to be an honor but was compulsory, they said the scarves, the red kerchiefs, were a part of the red flag, were as good as wearing a piece of the flag around our necks, and i didn't see why Hungarian kids had to wear part of the Soviet flag. We had to wear the kerchief every day, we'd been inducted to the Pioneers at the beginning of fourth grade, a month before the revolution. A very fat Russian officer gave a brief talk, reminding us that the red kerchief represented the world socialist brotherhood, which was realized in the USSR. If you didn't wear the scarf they'd send you to the principals' office and he'd switch you with whatever his nearest piece of equipment was - a ruler, a paddle, his belt, his shoe, whatever he had. He was a brute. They would slap you across the palm with a meter stick; the teachers could be quite physical. The Pioneers didn't have any activities but every month you had to buy a stupid stamp for your membership book. The membership book had some intersting stuff, like a Boy Scout book, but also a lot of Commnist crap. This was the year that my history book had sixty pages of text missing, starting in September, that they'd changed their version of history again and the first sixty pages were missing. There was a uniform set of textbooks across the country for every grade but they'd printed them before they decided what to teach, so they had every teacher rip out the first sixty pages. After the Revoultion they didn't rip any more pages but there were parts where teh teacher was supposed to say, well, that's not true. They denied having had kings in the past, you know, csars.

On the way to escape from Hungary in early December, after the revolution had been crushed, we first went to Budapest to say goodbye to my aunt's family. Trains were running randomly, whenever an engineer was available, when there were a lot of passengers. In Budapest, I saw a lot of buildings that had been severely damaged, there was rubble in the streets, and there was very little traffic. There was a curfew after dark, which was in midafternoon. My brother snuck out with my younger cousin to hunt for some chocolate; when they returned a good hour after dark, my aunt was hysterical... and then beat them soundly.

From Budapest we took a train to about 35 km from the Austrian border. There was a 30 km restricted zone all along the western border. In fact, people were not allowed to travel more than a few km from their home, and so for every stretch of the train ride, we had to memorize various alibis. We got off the train in the dark, and immediately we were grabbed and dragged away by people in trench coats. My mother was frantic; my father and older brother had gone off to look for lodging for the night. A few blocks from the train station, we were told that someone would go back to get my father and older brother. We were taken to a home, fed hot soup, and put into beds with clean sheets, while the family doubled up in a couple of the beds.

The lady with the trench coat was a nurse in the railroad workers' hospital. She arranged to get us on a special train in the morning. This train left at nine am, and before it entered the restricted zone, two freight "mail" cars were loaded with 60 people each, out in the country; as many more were turned away. At the next station, the passenger cars were removed. Mind you, that much mail was highly unusual; the wagon we were put in had a tractor for delivery. From then on, we had to be extra quiet. A playful little boy was given liquor to put him to sleep.

At every station, a railroad worker greeted the train from the platform, with his hat either on his head or in his hand; one of these gestures meant that there were AVO (secret police) or Russian soldiers near the train. In fact we did have one stop like that. At every stop, the door was slid open, and mail was taken out. At one stop the doors were opened very wide to remove the tractor; the 60 of us were huddled in the dark shadows at the ends of the car.

Finally the train stopped, and the engineer revved up the steam engine. On that brilliant December morning, this created a dense cloud around the train. Fifteen people were let out of the railway car, including the five of us. Once again, we were grabbed and dragged away by strangers; and in that thick cloud, my mother gripped me with an iron clasp in one hand, T with the other. She was frantic again, couln't see my father and L. We were led to a house, through a long strip of back yard. Finally my mother was reassured when she saw the guys coming, too. My father, ever an outdoorsman, offered to chop the wood outside the house, which belonged to an attractive young widow, but they urged him to go right in.

The house had three rooms: the fancy room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. We were in the bedroom, with only a thin lace curtain and a broken pane of glass concealing us. I heard hooves, and I heard the train pulling away. My mother shoved me behind her, to shield me. I tried to push her aside to see what was happening. When I could see, I saw a large horse wheeling in front of the window with a large uniformed man on it; the head was out of sight. As the horse wheeled, the sun glinted on his AK 47, and for one frozen instant, it pointed at me. The others later talked about people from the train, a second group that had gotten out before the train could get away; that group was led past our window. We heard that the train let the other people out in a field somewhere, and they were left to their own devices. We were 500 m from the border.

After dark, the village was searched. We could hear them coming nearer and nearer. They served us some soup, but no one could eat. The tension built, and finally the searchers came to our house, and we were about to give up. But then, for the next hour and a half, our hostess, the 30-something widow, entertained the officer in the fancy room, while the granny in our house ran in every ten minutes or so with her rolling pin all evening crying, "We're lost, we're lost!"; the railroad man that had joined us sent her back out to the kitchen each time. We had brought liquor with us to bribe guards... so the widow plied the officer with many drinks, and threatened never to see him again if he bothered her house. So in the end he and his party departed.

We were to leave as soon as the moon went behind clouds, or nine o'clock came. There was a clear sky when we set out at nine. Scouts from the village had gone across the border and come back; they had memorized an exact path through the minefields, which were re-laid every day. We were to follow silently, exactly where the three guides went, in a narrow line. If there were any flares or shooting, we were to flatten ourselves on the ground. We walked incredibly fast, at times silhouetted on the crest of the hill, our boots clomping on the frozen ground, the moon casting long shadows. In the end there were neither flares nor shooting; we just saw the silhuettes of the guard towers, Sometimes we walked through tall rows, mostly vineyards, that looked like corn in the dark. We heard a church nearby tolling ten o'clock, came through a gap in a sandy hill, and were in front of the church, which was all decorated for Christmas. We were in Austria. We were photographed with little numbered signs; we were about 879th across at that village that night.

From Vienna, we were able to send a coded message via Radio Free Europe; this is how our relatives learned that we had made it to the West safely. RFE was always talking about the United Nations. When I arrived in New York City, just in time for my tenth birthday, my uncle asked me what I wanted to see. I asked him to go to the United Nations, the only place I knew about in NYC. At the United Nations they were just debating "The Hungarian Situation..." I never saw my grandfather again.

Labels: drama, family

scrawled @ 13:50