Category: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Every time I tackle this, I stop and work out how old mother was. The result always takes me by surprise. In the autumn of ‘fifty-six, as I remember it: an old lady. Nervous, timid. She sits by the radio, listening to the Voice of America. She doesn’t set foot

Every time I tackle this, I stop and work out how old mother was. The result always takes me by surprise. In the autumn of ‘fifty-six, as I remember it: an old lady. Nervous, timid. She sits by the radio, listening to the Voice of America. She doesn’t set foot

And there was one among the twelve whowas called Thomas, the Doubting, andwhen Jesus said, “And whither I go yeknow, and the way ye know”,he answered, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest;and how can we know the way?”and Jesus said to the poor Doubting, “Iam the way, the truth,

In the morning the hangman took your measurementsthen cursed ‘cause he got it wrong,and hanged the kid from the neighbouring cellthe one they brought in last night,who screamed all night, pounded on the doorthat he wanted to live, threw up on his bunk,passed out in the end, they dumpeda bucket

I have lain down on the filthy floor,My head leaning against the wall.The pain… perhaps strongerThan my poem? I have been trying to recall the smile of my mother.What I would like to do is pourThese poems over her soul,This sobbing which has already lost its form. Lord, now I

CHAPTER 10 WAR The Soviet Union attacked Hungary in the early hours of 4 November. Its leaders probably committed themselves to that attack on the night of 30–31 October. It was carried to a militarily successful conclusion by 11 November. At the time and afterwards, the Soviet leaders had every

LIBERATION CANCELLED! US Policies towards Central Europe in 1956 and After1 … the region lies beyond the reach of American power. […] Does this mean that Poland and the Danubian states and Balkan states have no prospect of assured independence, and that they are destined inexorably to become satellites of

As a second year student at the Technical University in Budapest in October 1956, I worked for the Revolutionary Student Committee in the student dormitory where I lived. I also became a member of the National Guard. Though I was not a freedom fighter, like so many others, I also

“freedom for the future by payment of the dead” Neil Bradford Olson, “To Hungary, that America Might Explain” In 1956 after eight years of dictatorial Russian-imposed Communism, one in ten Hungarians had been imprisoned, sent to a concentration camp or executed. As a result virtually every family in the country