Kati Marton: Hungary 1956, from a young child's perspective
[Kati Marton is the author of “The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World.”]
THE first time I saw deep joy on my father’s face — the kind that comes from within and which is a child’s most reassuring signal from a parent — was on Oct. 23, 1956. It was at Bem Square, on the right bank of the Danube, where thousands of students, a sprinkling of workers and even some young soldiers still in uniform had spontaneously gathered to hear the students’ list of demands for reform by Hungary’s Communist government.
I was holding tight to his hand when a woman appeared on the balcony of the Foreign Ministry, which faces the square, and waved the Hungarian tricolor. The hated Soviet hammer and sickle had been cut from the center. Thus was the symbol of the Hungarian revolution (and so many others still to come) born. When someone in the growing crowd brazenly shouted, “Ruszki haza!” — “Russians go home” — the revolution had its slogan, as well.
I had no notion during those 10 days, from Oct. 23 to Nov. 4, that I was experiencing history; the excitement felt very personal to me. I was a small child, just recently reunited with my parents, political prisoners freed by the state. My mother, Ilona, and my father, Endre, correspondents for the American wire services United Press and Associated Press, respectively, had, until their arrest on trumped-up espionage charges in early 1955, covered the major political trials of Stalinist Hungary. Almost two years in the secret police’s fortress on Budapest’s main boulevard had turned my father’s hair gray and lined my mother’s face. We were thrilled to be a family again, but prison had left more than surface marks....
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THE first time I saw deep joy on my father’s face — the kind that comes from within and which is a child’s most reassuring signal from a parent — was on Oct. 23, 1956. It was at Bem Square, on the right bank of the Danube, where thousands of students, a sprinkling of workers and even some young soldiers still in uniform had spontaneously gathered to hear the students’ list of demands for reform by Hungary’s Communist government.
I was holding tight to his hand when a woman appeared on the balcony of the Foreign Ministry, which faces the square, and waved the Hungarian tricolor. The hated Soviet hammer and sickle had been cut from the center. Thus was the symbol of the Hungarian revolution (and so many others still to come) born. When someone in the growing crowd brazenly shouted, “Ruszki haza!” — “Russians go home” — the revolution had its slogan, as well.
I had no notion during those 10 days, from Oct. 23 to Nov. 4, that I was experiencing history; the excitement felt very personal to me. I was a small child, just recently reunited with my parents, political prisoners freed by the state. My mother, Ilona, and my father, Endre, correspondents for the American wire services United Press and Associated Press, respectively, had, until their arrest on trumped-up espionage charges in early 1955, covered the major political trials of Stalinist Hungary. Almost two years in the secret police’s fortress on Budapest’s main boulevard had turned my father’s hair gray and lined my mother’s face. We were thrilled to be a family again, but prison had left more than surface marks....