I. Chapter 10B, Oct 1, 1953 to Nov. 21, 1956
A. Finishing university
For days after my release, everything felt foreign and very strange. I had to get used to eating regular food again, to the fact that I could clean myself without any limitations, that I could live a married life, and that I could go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. The terms of my amnesty also allowed me to finish the university degree that I had been working on when the ÁVH had taken me.
I started anew with designing and drafting a three and a half ton truck. That was my dissertation. The calculations were 80 pages on beautiful pale blue drafting paper. I drew the figures and diagrams, and my little Adi typed text. It was beautiful. I had to defend the dissertation before a committee, and the result was stunningly successful. The university asked to keep my dissertation to place on display because it was so incredibly beautiful. So it stayed there with them. All of my grades were with honors.
Upon receiving my diploma, Professor Jurek apologized that he could not give me a diploma “with honors” for my extremely beautiful work, but the Communist Party did not allow that recognition to be given to anyone with my political behavior. As a result, I only finished with “good” results, which is the second highest degree.
The excellent engineering work I accomplished during the next 40 years in Hungary, Canada and the United States confirm that I represented well the Hungarian reputation for developing excellent engineers. In many fields I later earned praise, recognition and government awards.
B. Employment
During the few months that I worked on my dissertation, I tried to find employment. But because of my prison sentence, nobody would hire me. As a result, all I could do was a heavy manual labor job in Budafok, where I worked the graveyard shift carrying 100-kg (220 lbs.) sacks of potatoes from a truck to storage rooms in the basement.
This was a very strenuous job, and along with the strenuous work I had as a coal miner, it caused heart enlargement that now causes me cardiac problems in old age. But even so, I consider my destiny fortunate because my life could have ended far more tragically.
Under Hungarian law, I had to spend the first year after my diploma working as an engineering apprentice. I was hired at the Hoffer Tractor Factory in Kispest for a monthly salary of 1,100 Forint. As a third-year university student before my arrest, I had been earning 3,000 Forint per month while still studying. In the tractor factory, I worked as a tooling mechanic (szerszám szerkesztö) for a few months. Aside from this, I engaged in public service by teaching young people to drive and leading a swim team, where I was also a competitive swimmer.
I must have done excellent work, because after five months they promoted me and offered me a job directing the engineering department at the AUTÓKER Company for twice the pay. This company handled the production, distribution, and sale of car parts throughout Hungary.
Hidden throughout Hungary, in the sides of mountains or buried underground, was a network of secret military production plants. Very few people knew these existed. These military plants were equipped with state-of-the-art machine tools designed to produce weapons, ammunition, and machine parts that might be needed in a war. But the war never came, so these factories equipped with modern machines hardly produced anything. Someone finally recognized they could be used to produce car parts that at the time we were buying from the West for hard currency. It was realized that this could greatly help the auto manufacturing plants not only in Hungary, but throughout all the socialist countries.
AUTÓKER had become the central company in the production and sale of car parts. It was my job to regularly inspect the production at various factories to ensure the parts were properly manufactured and to solve any technical problems.
[Antisemitic statement excluded. In essence, he states there were many Jews in this company’s management, and they had wanted to give his job to a young Jewish person, but none had the proper qualifications necessary for the job.] I felt that I would not be allowed to keep this job long among so many Jews.
During my third week I was travelling with one of the managers in a company car that he was driving. He drove so terribly that I spoke up several times when he passed a car on a blind turn or when going uphill, or when he drove too fast on a rainy road, or when the car slid, or when he passed another car in an intersection, or when he crossed over the centerline while driving down a mountainous road. I explained to him that these rules are designed to protect life, and by not following them, he endangered not only his life, but the lives of innocent people. And with that, my career AUTOKER was over. I guess he could not handle being criticized by a young nobody like me, and I was kicked out the next day.
Of course, their explanation for firing me was not the true reason. They said they had just discovered I had been in a political prison, and that nobody with such a past was allowed to work in such a confidential position. I knew this was a lie because it would have been impossible to hire me in the first place without the personnel office having first investigated my past, especially not for a job overseeing factories that produce military equipment.
But I did not regret this turn of events for even a single minute because I already had an offer to take another job. There was an automobile repair shop on Vésö street with 100 tooling machines and 300 mechanics who repaired auto engines. They hired me as an auto mechanic to manage this facility. Here I was truly working in my specialty and I loved it.
I worked there for half a year, until my relationship with the factory manager became unbearable and I resigned. The manager was a Jewish communist comrade without any engineering training and he demanded that I perform such impossible technical work that was humanly impossible. Because he lacked any technical training, he could not understand that his demands were impossible.
I immediately got hired as a design engineer at a refrigeration machine company. I worked there for half a year, and then I got a call from my old workplace, the ATUKI research institute.
C. Back to ATUKI
ATUKI is where I had worked 20 hours per week during my third year of University, and where that communist spy Botka Gyözö stole my position. They finally discovered how stupid this Botka guy was and they fired him. They also knew that I would gladly return to my old position.
The institute received an unusually large and important assignment from the national government, along with the freedom to accomplish the task however it saw best. This is how the institute leader was allowed to bring me back in notwithstanding my political history. He knew that I could perform the job of leading the team of design engineers, which included two design engineers and two technical draftsmen.
In the entire country, there was only one CFR engine capable of measuring the octane of fuels for engines that were operating. A CFR engine could change the volume of pressure in the cylinders by moving the cylinder head upwards and thereby measure the self-ignition point of the petrol-air mixture. [VAS: I have no idea if this paragraph was translated correctly or what it means.]
A CFR motor was very expensive and could only be bought from the West, so the only way to solve this problem would be to design our own CFR motor. The assignment was truly difficult because we did not have any technical specifications for CFR motors, and we had to design everything from scratch, out of absolutely nothing.
But this much is certain, I could have designed a CFR motor and become a famous engineer and received high government recognition. And with this, Hungarian industry could have manufactured all aspects of CFR motors. I would have been the obvious director of this entire manufacturing process. I could not have had any better prospects as a result of my work with the CFR motor.
D. Another pregnancy
Adi desperately wanted another child, and was willing to do anything to get one after the death of little Adika. I did not want another child because the way I saw it, there was still enormous tension in the air, and great political uncertainty.
But during the lazy days between Christmas and New Years, Adi somehow became pregnant. The women always win if they want to have children.
E. Suspicion about Adi
Three nights a week I trained with my swim team from 6 to 9 pm, during which we swam about 2,000 to 3,000 meters. I noticed Adi was not walking home from her nearby office, but instead she was always riding in the back car of the trolley along with a tall young man. This made no sense is because it would have been much quicker for her to just walk home. Once I asked her, who is this man she travels with on the trolley? She replied it was her colleague that she works with. I always knew that Adi liked tall, dark-haired men, but I had never imagined that I should be jealous of her colleague.
One night at the swimming pool I discovered I had left my swimsuit at home, which was 15 minutes away by trolley. I hurried home to get my swimsuit. From the road I looked up to my bedroom and was surprised to see the light was not on. I thought Adi might be cooking something in the kitchen so she had left the light off in the bedroom.
When walked into the apartment, I could see she was not in the kitchen. I went to toward the bathroom, because that’s how we accessed the bedroom. As soon as I walked into the dark bathroom, I could see that the bedroom light was indeed off. I could not imagine where she was, because she was usually at home by this time and she hadn’t told me that she was going anywhere. The distance to the bedroom was barely two steps. By the time I got to the door and opened it, the light was on and I saw Adi and her colleague standing near the furnace by the door. It was the same guy I had seen her with on the trolley multiple times. Both of them were acting very strange.
I had not counted on this because I did not even know the man, but it was obvious that they had been in a dark room and that they had turned on the light in the last second when Adi heard that I was in the bathroom. I asked Adi why had the light been off? She told me that it had been on.
That day I did not return to go swimming. Minutes later the man left, leaving Adi and me to discuss this very compromising situation.
This was a very jarring event for me because many little suspicious and inexplicable behaviors by Adi had already answered my questions. For months I could not get past this event. But when Adi got pregnant despite all of this, I argued quite forcefully against having the child because I could not comfort myself from the suspicion that perhaps it was not even my child. Even today this question is even more troubling because my son Gabor’s behavior toward me during the past 15-20 years is unlike that of a loving child toward a father, which has ultimately resulted in complete cooling and the breaking of all contact between us.
[VAS: These past few pages provide troubling but accurate insight into Elek’s personality. He gave excuses for why he got fired from two jobs in relatively short order, but those excuses ring somewhat hollow. It seem that if he had taken a more diplomatic approach, he could have stayed in either job. Also, I don’t know exactly what to make of the story with Adi, but it is curious that many times he wanted to seek an abortion. He had already done so with Adi and would do so later with Sara. His questioning whether his 40-year old son Gabor’s is truly his child is utterly absurd; Gabor looks stunningly similar to Elek in many ways. Also disturbing is willingness to break off all contact with his child.]
F. Continued political turmoil
I was very tied down with my work because I desperately wanted to finish this CFR motor, but time was flying. The political situation kept getting more and more heavy. The population was becoming more daring, and protests happened more frequently, whenever they could. It was obvious that an enormous political storm was brewing, but we did not know exactly when it would hit or what it would be like.
[VAS: The remainder of this section is Elek’s explanation of some stuff happening in society. It discusses the changes of leadership in the USSR and Hungary and his brief take on how those people thought. For a bit it got better, then when it got bad again, it was overwhelming. He also discussed why the Hungarian people were fed up with the Soviets; in short, because they exploited the Hungarian people and tried to melt them into the Soviet style, not respecting the nation’s long, proud history. If you’re not interested in a bit more detail, skip to the next section, 1956 Revolution.]
In the years after Stalin’s death, Khruschchev’s politics became a bit more humane. They released many people from prisons (including me) and these people spoke about the torture and the cruel punishments that had been inflicted on us. Some writers who had been imprisoned penned articles opposing of the Russian oppression, and in those lines they awakened and fed a revolutionary spirit. They recalled the freedom battles from 100 years earlier in 1848, and this stirred strong feels among the population.
It felt intolerable that the Soviets had stolen everything from our country that could be moved. It seemed like the entire country was working for the Soviets. The Soviet’s had taken complete control of the world-famous uranium mine at Pecs, so much so that it was guarded by Soviets troops. The factories and plants worked for Soviet industrial production, and for an impossibly low price. And for all this, the Hungarian government got essentially nothing but the price of food that was paid out to the workers.
Hungarian soldiers were equipped in the Soviet way, all their clothing and equipment were in the Soviet-style, with red star displays.
This forced “melting” of the Hungarian population into a Soviet identity weighed heavily on a people. It was too much for a people with a cultural identity of more than 1,000 years. [antisemitic statement omitted.]
Rebellions broke out in the Czech city of Pilsen and also in East Germany. In Moscow, the hated GPU chief was assassinated, and the power of Rákosi in Hungary came to an end. At the behest of Khrushchev, they replaced Mátyás Rákosi with Imre Nagy, who became Hungary’s prime minister.
Nagy Imre was a communist of peasant origin. He was more humane toward the people. He tried to introduce a Hungarian form of socialism instead of Soviet communism. The terror eased, peasants who had been forced into communal farming through bloody terror campaigns were permitted to again start farming in private again, and the country's production of items needed for everyday living increased. In general, there was a general improvement in the quality of food and the standard of living.
Rákosi, who had remained the leader of the Communist Party, did not like what he saw with this expanding freedom. In 1955, he succeeded in getting Imre Nagy replaced by one of his own men, András Hegedüs. The ÁVH again started to imprison and torture tens of thousands of citizens. Their leader, Gábor Péter (Benö Eisenberger) became the most-hated communist in the country. Hegedüs had neither the ability nor the desire to improve the situation.
After the brief period when the situation had been relatively bearable, the renewed age of terror was even more difficult to tolerate. It was only a matter of time before the population exploded.
This was the political situation when our second child, Gabor, was born on Aug 26, 1956. Adi was happy. But it must made me all the more terrified about what would happen next.
Due to the new terror and displeasure throughout society, Moscow removed Rákosi at the leader of the Party, and replaced him with his subordinate, Ernö Gerö. But by this time, no amount of quick action would help what was coming.
G. 1956 Revolution
[VAS: In this section, Elek describes the early days of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, a pivotal event in the nation’s history. Sadly, he does not explain what role, if any, he played in these events. I believe he once told me it was nothing, because the earlier political troubles had left him with intense anxiety about not getting in that situation again, and it was obviously risky to participate in a revolution. If you are not interested in the events of the revolution, skip to the next section, H. Revolutionary Councils, where his story picks up.]
On October 23, 1956, tens of thousands appeared at the statue of Joseph Bem to protest the communist terror. No one had a gun. They were not attempting an armed rebellion.
József Bem had been a Polish general during the Hungarian War of Independence in 1848, which happened after hundreds of years of Austrian oppression and forced slavery. It was in this Hungarian war of independence that the famous Polish general Bem helped the Hungarians, which is why the Hungarians honor him as one of their own heroes.
The Hungarian communist party leader, Ernő Gerö, got on the radio to speak with this crowd. He showered them with insults. The crowd then moved toward the headquarters of the Hungarian radio station, so that they too could send a message back to Gerö by radio.
The AVH was guarding the radio building, and they started to shoot into the crowd. This was the spark that ignited a crowd’s anger into a revolution.
The AVH sought reinforcements, and two troop transport trucks arrived. But when those soldiers arrived, they did not shoot into the crowd; instead, they shot back at the AVH.
Then these soldiers distributed weapons to the crowd, and with a combined effort, they occupied the radio building. A Hungarian flag was lifted, with a big hole right in the middle because they had cut out the red star; it looked like a cannonball had torn through it. This flag, with the hole, became the symbol of freedom fighters.
Through the radio broadcast, the whole country learned what had happened and why the revolution had broken out. Within a day, military and police officers everywhere fought on the side of the revolution and they defeated the ÁVH and Russian troops.
In most places, they went into Soviet barracks with white flags and negotiated with the Soviet commanders, telling them to turn over their weapons and to then they could remain in the barracks, where they would get food and protection while arrangements were made to have them leave the country. Free Hungary would recognize them as soldiers who had only been following orders. Those who had no weapons were guaranteed free passage. For the most part, the Soviets agreed and there was no problem with them.
The communist party leader, Ernö Gerö, announced on the radio that all Soviet armored divisions in the nearby countryside should immediately move on Budapest to quell the rebellion and beat it down.
On the second day of the revolution, a crowd gathered at Városliget, where there was an 8-meter-high bronze statue of Stalin.
In 1951, the communists had demolished a beautiful old Catholic church, the Regnum Marianum, so they could erect the Stalin statue in its place. In every great city they erected a statue of Stalin in a huge square where they held parades on communist holidays, which were watched by hundreds of thousands. But the real purpose of these huge concrete-filled areas to converted them in minutes into aircraft landing sites just by removing the powerlines.
The Stalin statue was so strong that they could not knock it off its pedestal by using trucks. But then someone brought welding equipment and the two legs of the statue were cut under the knees. By tying a rope around its neck they pulled it down onto the concrete, where the statue crashed with a huge noise. With trucks, they dragged it around by the neck until it broke to pieces. Those larger pieces were carved into small pieces, and the people took it home as souvenirs.
Meanwhile, in response to Gerö’s request, Soviet tanks arrived from the countryside. But the tanks were not very useful in the city. Even 8-10 year old kids made sport of them. They poured gasoline onto the roads in front of where the tanks would go and then ignited it. Or they would make Molotov cocktails (a glass jar filled with gasoline and stopped with a rag that sticks out 10-15 cm). The rags were lit with fire and then thrown into the side of armored vehicles, preferably at the rotating tank turrets. The glass shattered on impact and the burning rag ignited the exploding gasoline with a deadly force that reached inside the tank, which typically resulted in the tank becoming a total loss.
It was that same day, October 25, 1956, that the revolution suffered its bloodiest losses at Parliament Square, where tens of thousands gathered with peaceful intent to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops from Hungary. From the roofs of the nearby tall buildings, the ÁVH and Soviet soldiers poured machine gun fire onto the defenseless crowd, and murdered about 500 people in cold blood before they could escape to nearby streets and alleyways. This was a characteristic cold-blooded massacre by communists, and it stirred an incredible hatred in the soul of the Hungarian people. It destroyed any hope of peaceful negotiations. The revolutionaries then turned with extraordinary rage against the ÁVH. They besieged the headquarters, and then occupied it after a great firefight.
The crowd had no mercy for the ÁVH members. They were shot on the spot, or dragged out of the building and hung from nearby trees. They hung one of them by the feet and stuffed his mouth with the money they found in his pockets, and then they smashed his head in with stones.
During the fighting, famous gathering areas emerged, such as the Killian barracks where Colonel Maléter joined the revolution with his soldiers. There was Corvin Köz (Corvin Passage) where young children aged 8-10-12 tossed Molotov cocktail at Russian tanks. There was the underground Totony building at Széna Square where Uncle Szabó's group fought, and many more locations that I can't remember.
By October 29, it was clear that the revolution had prevailed. Gerö and his band had fled to the Soviet Union (from where they had come) and Nagy Imre was reinstalled as the government leader. The Soviets promised that they would withdraw from Hungary. The AVH command went into hiding and begged for mercy for their 10,000 officers, who said they’d surrender in exchange for amnesty from the Hungarian people. It was not given, and remained in hiding.
Kádár János escaped from the ÁVH prison where he had been tortured. All of his fingernails had been pulled out with pliers, and he suffered similar tortures, all because he was suspected of spying on Tito, which of course was not true. Even though Kádár had been part of Rákosi’s communist gang, Rákosi did not like him for some reason, and he fell. Now, in the revolution, they made him the leader of the remaining communist Party as Gerö ran to Moscow. Thus, the two old communists Imre Nagy and János Kádár became the leaders of the Government and the Party.
It's interesting that they could not find a few non-communists to lead the country. These people could have stamped out the communists into the ground where they belonged.
H. Revolutionary Councils
[VAS: An important consideration during a revolution is who assumes power over various governmental functions. There were pressing immediate needs such as military and security concerns, but also the endless day-to-day tasks that governments usually perform. In Hungary, within just days, hundreds of Revolutionary Councils were formed almost overnight. These consisted of small leadership groups established in plants, mines, factories and other organizations, typically selected by members of the organization. The councils could assume virtually any power they wanted because the new ad hoc national government was preoccupied with national issues. One of these was formed at ATUKI, where Elek worked.]
Revolutionary Councils were set up throughout the country in offices, plants and factories. My institute employed more than 200 people as engineers, technicians, electricians, engine mechanics and office staff. We decided to create a revolutionary council with six members, who would be elected by the workers. It was widely discussed that we should elect council members who had never been communists and who were decent and trusted citizens.
At my workplace, I was the only person who had been a political prisoner, proving I was a genuine non-communist. Furthermore, I had attended the Royal Hungarian Air Force Academy during the war and had fought against the Russian enemy when I was only 15 years old. As such, I could not avoid getting elected to serve as the head of the Revolutionary Council for my institute.
The other five council members were each excellent patriots, but they had not served time in political prisons.
We decided that the first order of business for the council must be to discover and root out the many ÁVH spies who had been planted among us; those who had been placed there to report everything to the party. We found secret documents that revealed the names of 20 people working among us.
I immediately announced that we should not imprison anyone, even though they had been our enemies. But to ensure a minimum level of protection for us, I recommended we should not let those people work among us. We agreed that the people on the list should be given one-month’s worth of salary and then consider themselves immediately terminated. There could not have been a kinder way to get them out of the workplace.
Afterward they were gone, anyone could share their own thoughts and ideas about what should happen. Many spoke up, but one person genuinely surprised everyone.
Of the original four university students the Institute hired during their third years to work 20 hours per week, for which they had been paid 600 forint, one was Otto Flamish. He had sat next to me during the last two years of university after we had specialized. He also became an auto engineer. He was a very quiet, well-behaved boy who studied well and got along with everyone, and everyone liked him. He had grown up in Szombathely and his father was a simple cobbler (shoe repairman). He never displayed communist leanings, and throughout the years he behaved like a person who had no interest in politics from any side. Well, Otto stood up and explained that he had never been political, but now that the revolution had happened, he would become a communist because he believed the communist principles, it’s just that they had not yet been correctly applied in practice. He spoke calmly for about ten minutes and convincingly outlined his future ideas. He finished by staying that if his coworkers did not agree with him, then he would be willing to leave the Institute.
During the entire night, he received the largest ovation. Everyone was caught up in a generous spirit and many others spoke to assure our friend Otto that he could continue to live peacefully as a communist and that nobody would bother him for it.
All this happened on Wednesday, October 31, 1956. We agreed to take the rest of the week off and to return for work on Monday, November 5. We hoped by then the problems with transportation would be solved and we would be able to get to work. With this, we separated. For me, that was the last time I ever went to the office; I never returned.
I. Life during and after the revolution.
At home, I had an exceptionally good world-renowned radio that even received broadcasts from America, although I mostly listened to Voice of America on BBC broadcasts from London. My son Gabor was two and a half months old Adi was nursing him, so fortunately his needs were taken care of. But ours were not.
At the time, there were no refrigerators and every day everyone cooked only as much as they could eat because there was no way to store leftovers. An average pantry might have a little flour, sugar, butter, sausage, beans, potatoes, dried noodles, maybe a few crackers, and various preserved items for the winter. Adi was an excellent cook and she made all kinds of preserved foods like jams, tomato sauces, and pickled goods. At the time we had no bread, milk, meat or salami.
The revolution had been going for week, and all of the stores were shut. We were fortunate because it had been our practice to collect bread crusts that we would take to relatives in Debrecen to fatten their swine; dried bread crust was a delicious additive for their slop. That dried bread crust became our bread for three weeks until it became possible to find bread again in a few places. The many preserves, jams, and tomato sauces helped get us through these lean days.
On my radio, I heard that notwithstanding all of the promises that had been made by the Russians, the Soviet powers had gathered and were organizing to move on Budapest. Through all the negotiations with the new Hungarian government, the Russians had lied in the most treacherous manner. New Soviet troops appeared around Debrecen (in the East) and the Austrian border (in the West), they started moving toward Budapest. They assured the Hungarian government that those troops were only there to secure safe passage of the Russian people in Hungary as they left Budapest and returned to the Soviet Union.
On November 2, the new Hungarian government asked the United Nations to recognize an independent Hungary into the family of the United Nations.
Kádár János, the leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, unexpectedly disappeared, and nobody knew what had happened to him. But it wasn’t only Commrade Kádár who had unexpected disappeared from Hungary, tens of thousands of others had too.
Mines had been picked up at the western border, and trains had taken them to only 1-2 km from the Austrian border. From there, they could easily walk to Austria, where the Austrians embraced them to their breasts as Hungarian freedom fighters, even though those fleeing at the time had done nothing for Hungary, and certainly not for Hungarian freedom.
Jewish organisations took Jews to Vienna and placed them in hotels. They received a spending money that was the equivalent of a monthly salary, and they did not need to pay for their hotel or food. From there they went to any country they wanted, as if the whole world was theirs. For the most part, they emigrated to America, which also received them with enormous celebrations and showered them with gifts as “freedom fighters.” They received specialized degrees from universities and good jobs in all practice areas, welfare, and furnished homes.
The true refugees only learned about this weeks and months later. These were the true freedom fighters who left later by the thousands, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, without anything else. I was among these when I arrived to Canada on December 12, 1956, with nothing but a toothbrush and an empty suitcase.
[Pointless paragraph about Jewish people removed.]
J. November 4, 1956.
November 4, 1956, was a terrible day throughout the entire country.
Before dawn, 16 Russian mechanized divisions, including 2,000 tanks, began an attack throughout the entire country, but especially in Budapest where 1,000 tanks advanced in rows down the main roads with four tanks side-by-side. They fired at each house and through each window. This was the same size force that Hitler had used when attacking France in 1940!
Early in the morning, Nagy Imre declared on the radio to the entire world, and especially to the United Nations, that the Russians had started a general attack throughout the entire nation, and begged for assistance from everyone.
But nobody came to help. During the revolution, America had sent $20 million dollars in assistance, but other than that, they sent only encouraging words and statements of appreciation to the those who had risen up.
As has happened so often in Hungary’s 1,000 year struggle, nobody helped us in our life and death struggle against an enemy that was many times more powerful, and we did not even have weapons. Within a week, the terrible might of the Soviet power crushed the rebellion in the entire country.
Khrushchev invited Imre Nagy, who had asked for the UN's assistance, to come to Moscow to discuss the situation. János Kádár invited the Soviet military to the country. Kádár ended up becoming a murderous warlord over Hungary for another 33 years. But at this time, the world’s attention had turned to a crisis at the Suez Canal, which it considered more important than destroying communism throughout the world.
Aside from the awful bombings, 25,000 had been killed, and 20,000 had been disappeared to prison camps in Russia as slave labor. Another 500 people were executed in the weeks after the failed revolution, and 300,000 fled west, including many engineers, doctors, technicians, and intellectuals.
K. After the revolution was crushed
Budapest was full of Soviet tanks and no one dared to go out on the road. There was no radio or any other news service, other than foreign radio that everyone listened to. The BBC and the Voice of America knew the situation better than anyone inside the country. Their diplomats travelled the country in diplomatic vehicles from their embassies and provided diplomatic reports to their governments. From there, it was broadcast on foreign radio stations.
This is how we learned that Soviet troops were guarding all roads leading to the west, and that they jailed everyone they caught trying to escape to the west. They took these people by the thousands to the various mines and slave labor cames throughout Russia. Those 10,000 AVH members, who only days earlier had been in hiding and begging for forgiveness, emerged with renewed strength to gather up all those who had taken part in the revolution in any way.
II. Escape
A. Alone or with Adi
I knew my life and freedom were in enormous danger, but it was incomprehensible to me that Adi did not believe this. She was preoccupied with her 11-week old son Gabor. Even though I had been constantly telling her for 15 days that we must escape before they capture me, she did not dare leave the home for fear of what might happen to the child.
Many times in the early morning hours I visited the bakeries on the nearby roads and tried to obtain bread. I got used to stumbling through the ruins and Russian armored vehicles, exposing myself to the possibility that some nervous young Russian soldier would shoot me, or grab me by the neck and force me into a column being marched off to one of the countless coal mines in Russia. If they were a few people short, they could make up the shortage by abducting anyone from the road.
On some days Adi wanted to escape to the west with me, but then the next day she withdrew because of the child. One day she agreed that we would take Gabor and leave him with my parents, and she would escape with me. But by the next day, she didn’t want to hear about it again. This is how it went from November 4 through 19.
[VAS: It is clear that Elek was suffering intense anxiety from this experience as a political prisoner, and who can blame him? In addition to that, he had particiapted in a Revolutionary Council at work where they had dismissed spies, making it too dangerous to return to work. What propects did he have in the state of terror that existed throughout Hungary? It is disturbing, however, to think how willing he was to leave his child with grandparents; it is a thought pattern that repeated with Peter a decade later during far less trying circumstances.]
B. Making plans
Another tenant in my building, Mr. Göndöcs, had been born and raised in Kapuvár, and had come from there to work in Budapest. He knew that I had to escape, and he told me that the only place I could cross the border was near Kapuvár, because to the north of that village there was an impassable swampy-forested area where Soviet tanks could not enter without sinking in the swamp. He made drawings of the area, and told me the most important features in the area.
Kapuvár was 15km (9 miles) from the Austrian border, but it was through a swamp. Only those who grew up there could reach the border, which was a 30 meters wide river that was about 1 to 1 ½ meters deep. He told me that local residents would take people across the border for money. But first I would need to get to Kapuvár somehow, which was not an easy task.
Trains and cars were not allowed to move. And I knew it would be impossible to walk because the Soviet armored divisions had created a ring of steel that was impossible to get through. Also, Kapuvár was 200 km (120 miles) from Budapest, and I could not even imagine what I might find on those roads.
A few times in the early morning, I had dared to walk a few hundred meters on the roads around my home in search of bread. During the daytime hours I never dared to go any further. When I did this, I came to understand why Adi was deathly afraid to embark on a dangerous and completely uncertain 200-km trip with a child, or even without a child.
On the evening of November 18, BBC Radio announced that the Soviet troops had shut down the western border and that nobody should try to escape through Austria because the Soviet tanks and motorized units had sealed off all the roads. I knew that I had arrived at the final few hours to save my life from the clutches of the ÁVH. I would either succeed, or maybe I wouldn’t, but I had to try.
C. The escape
On the night of November 18, I tried again to convince Adi to escape with me. But she had already decided that she was prepared for anything that might happen in Hungary, but she would not join me. She told me that if I ever wanted to leave, I should leave, and that she would follow me when the child was older and travel could be arranged.
I could barely sleep that night. My mind constantly turned as I debated whether to go or not. By the early hours, I knew I had to leave.
The next morning, on November 19, 1956, I left for Déli (Southern) train station, which was about 2 km (1.2 miles) away. I had only one sandwich for food. I wore only a pair of jeans and a warm jacket because I tried to look like a common civilian out looking for food; I did not want to attract attention from Russian soldiers.
I had left my house keys on the kitchen table, which Adi immediately noticed when she woke up.
At the train station, there were only freight trains on the tracks. I saw an open door on a box car and could not see any human nearby. I lifted myself into the car and hid in a corner. Each minute felt like an hour. Then, all of a sudden, the train started to move. With that, I knew that I’d get at least as far as Székesfehérvár. And sure enough, the train arrived at Fehérvár by early afternoon. And there it stopped.
I heard railroad workers shouting to one another that they had to separate the cars. I thought I would get stuck here, so I had to find something else to do.
I saw on the next track over a train of gasoline tanker cars. I did not know where it was going, but I could tell from the position of the shock springs that the tanker cars were empty, and I figured there would be no reason for empty gasoline tanks to be taken to Budapest. I quickly climbed into one of the tankers.
Between the trains, there was a large piece of waste lumber board. I grabbed it, thinking that if there were a few centimeters of gasoline at the bottom of the tanker, I could sit on the board instead of in the gasoline. My logical engineer’s mind was good for something. And sure enough, when I got into the tanker, it did not have only a few centimeters, it had at least 10 cm (4 inches) of gas. Without the board, it would have been impossible to travel in it.
My logical deduction about where the train was going had also been correct. Within an hour the train set off to the south for Sárbogárd. Since I had attended the flight academy in Székesfehérvár, I knew a map of the nearby countryside by heart, and I also knew the approximate distances.
Sárbogárd was 50-km (30 miles) from Fehérvár. I could hardly wait for the train to stop so I could get out.
It was the end of November, and outside it was dark and raining. I was thankful for that because it washed off some of the stinky gasoline that had gotten onto me.
I saw a few freight trains on the tracks, and having grown up as a railroad kid, I knew that at the end of each train was a brake car, with the brake located in a small compartment at the end of the car, and this compartment had a door. So I went to the end of the train and I shut myself into this brake compartment. I listened to what the railroad workers were yelling to one another, and I learned that one of the trains was about to leave in a few minutes for Veszprém. When I heard that, I climbed over onto that trian and got into the similar brake compartment, where it was nice and warm. I know that in the middle of the night, or by early morning, I’d be in Veszprém.
[November 20, 1956]
I ran into a railway worker and told him about my escape so far. I asked if he could help me get to Kapuvár. He told me that a train was leaving for Győr in the morning. Until then, I slept for little while in the nice warmth.
I got onto a freight train and arrived in Győr that morning. While there, I saw a train with cars loaded with sugar beets. I knew that there was a sugar factory somewhere to the west, in the direction of Kapúvár, so I figured this train could only be going there. With great difficulty, I lifted myself onto this train and I ate some sugar beets.
The train stopped in Kapuvár. My senses were heightened and I was trying to be careful. I did not get off on the station side, but instead got down on the other side where it was dark and I immediately started to run into the darkness, away from the station. I looked back, and saw that many others who had gotten off the same train ran toward the station, and there were soldiers there who grabbed many of them. The lucky ones ran into the darkness and escaped.
Mr. Göndöcs had told me that the border was to the north of the station. Making a large circle, I returned back to the village near the station. It was 6 pm and there was plenty of activity in the village, but it was raining and a cold wind was blowing.
Within a few minutes, I saw a small group bargaining with a man to take them to the border. I joined the group. The man demanded 2,000 forint per person. I had no money, but he agreed to take my watch as payment.
[VAS: Elek mentioned this watch in Chapter 9 when the AVH came to arrest him and take him away, saying, “I intentionally left my watch there, which I had just bought a few months ago and it had cost me a month’s wages. I thought if anything happened to me, it would be better for it stay with my family.” He later used that watch to buy his passage to freedom.]
The border was a quite far away, about 15-km. Without the guide, it would have been impossible to get through the swampy areas. At times, we walked knee-deep through the swamp. Many times, Russian tanks fired lantern rockets into the air, and then soldiers would shot at anything that moved. When we saw a lantern, we dropped to our stomachs and did not move.
We had to cross bridges between the Rábca and Ikva rivers, which were also guarded by Russian soldiers. As it rained, they sat inside their guard booth. Our guide went to them and offered them brandy. While they drank, we ran by the stall.
[VAS: Elek told me this story multiple times with more detail about this. He explained that the guide told his group to hide in the brush by the side of the road. He explained that he would go speak with the guards, and while he did, they had to run across the bridge one by one, hoping they did not get noticed. Elek explained the absolute terror he felt at the idea of emerging from the darkness and running by a guard shack with armed soldiers who could step out at any moment and shoot him down. As he watched a few other men run across, his heart pounded, knowing he also had to get across. Finally, he emerged from the darkness and ran across.
[VAS: As I’ve thought about this story, I imagine the guide had worked out some bribe with soldiers, maybe just to provide them brandy, and it is likely that young soldiers were far more interested in preserving their access to free alcohol than in shooting down random people trying to escape.]
Finally, we arrived at the river that marked the border with Austria. We could already see the water when two soldiers stepped out of the woods wearing raincoats, holding weapons. We figured this was the end, that we’d get gunned down in the last meters before freedom. But they were Hungarians, and they let us go.
There were about ten of us in the group. The guide shook our hands and we went into the ice cold water up to our shoulders, and we sloshed across to the other side.
Austrian youth were waiting for us on the other side. They reached down and pulled us out of the water. They threw blankets over our shoulders.
I cannot describe in words the happiness I felt.
[VAS: Multiple times he explained to me this river crossing with different details. He said that it was pitch black and freezing cold when they arrived at the river, and that they could hear the water flowing with a deep sound, which in the conditions was very frightening. He explained feeling terrified to get into the freezing, black water, but having no other choice, he did. He also mentioned swimming (pointing out that his years on a swim team had helped him). He told me that after he was in, he got disoriented in the pitch blackness and got confused about which way he was going. While in the water, he saw what he believed were Russian soldiers calling to him and believed he had been caught. Freezing and confused, thinking they were targeting him, he believed he had no choice but to get out. He went toward the soldiers, and they turned out to be the Austrians. These extra details are not necessarily inconsistent with what he writes, but it is interesting he did not mention them here.]
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