Hungarian Revolution, 1956, by Gabor Hardy

From MemoryArchive

Who: Gabor Hardy
What: Memory of Revolution
When: November, 1956
Where: Budapest, Hungary

Days of Bombs and Bread

I am 5 years of age. We live in a large apartment overlooking the Danube river. My days are quite happy. My parents enrolled me in kindergarten class. I am making friends and learning about my role in this world. Little did I know that my life was going to be disturbed early.

One morning sirens awaken me. The low dull thud of artillery shells produce a sense of unease in me. I look to my parents for answers but there are none forthcoming. The lights go out one night. We moved through the rooms by candle light. Conversations are hushed. I know that something wrong is happening. Then, there is no food in the house. As a family we share the last can of sardines. My mother decides to venture out in the street. I accompany her. We are standing in line waiting for bread. A motorcyle comes speeding through. The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Everybody scatters.

A few days later, my mother and family take me for a walk. The streetlights are knocked down. Houses have huge holes in them. I can feel the sorrow of defeat enter the pores of all our people living in that fair city. A change is coming I know. The air is hushed. People's lives will be changed.

Later on that month, my parents tell me that we will be playing a game. This game consists of playing hide and seek with soldiers. We are going to visit some relatives. Our relatives tearfully come by. Precious things are handed to my mom. A gold bracelet to bribe the border guards with. Are you sure that you want to leave? I do not understand the implications of all this, however a vague sense of unease pervades me.

I have three other sisters. One must be carried...she is only 9 months old. I have a twin sister and another one, three years old. We pack up everybody and move to the border. We tell the people on the train that we are visiting relatives on the border. Finally, night falls. We walk and we walk, through plowed fields. I sense a pase life moving away. We walk through a hole in a barbed wire fence. Our sixteen year old guide wishes us luck, turns around and moves back to Hungary. We watch him go. Later, we learn that he stepped on a landmine...3 days later and bled to death.

We are not in Austria. Eventually we will move to the USA. My current home now is Carbondale, Illinois, where I am working on my Ph.D. I am in the communication department working on rhetoric and ethnograpy. I think of these long ago events. Political ideologies, human hopes and aspirations, and different interpretations of what constitues freedom; these are all fuel that feed the fire. The fire to know and experiece a living freedom. Today, what was once freedom has degenerated in the USA, people get disciplined for speaking out against war. Loyalty to the state and nation's propaganda machine is deemed the best way. God Bless America and Proud to be an American are messages I hear frequently. Is freedom owned by one country? Does God favor one country over another when HE or SHE distributes her or his blessings?

The times has come to bind up our wounds and learn the main lesson of war: wars create more wars. WE live on and in one world...and our aim is to populate the stars.

May the Blessings Be