At the roadblock in Óvár the leader of the freedom fighters wrote down our license number, checked how many people were on our truck, and disappeared. A few minutes later armed students surrounded our truck, so Gyurka stopped the motor. I got out to find out what was going on. The reporter from Time magazine was scribbling furiously in his notebook. I could not even open my mouth when one of the students pointed at my boots and exclaimed, "New officers boots!" Another student pointed at my rubberized black raincoat: "No student has one of these!" I detected hostility and suspicion in the air but did not yet understand the reason for it. After all, I was dressed the same way when we were stopped on our way to Vienna only a few hours before.
Then I saw a car racing toward us. It was still moving when the mustachioed head of the Revolutionary Council jumped out. He was in a frenzy, screaming at the top of his lungs as he approached our truck: "You have smuggled the ÁVH murderers out of the country! You are ÁVH collaborators! You will hang for this!" It was only at that point that we realized what the problem was. We started searching our memories to figure out when had we last seen the two men whom we thought were policeman. We did not even remember if they had gone into Austria with us or not. All we knew was that they had disappeared.
The students let the Time reporter go and threw the two of us into the local jail. They told us that a court would decide our fate in the morning. It was dark outside. It was nearing midnight. I was walking up and down in the ten-by-ten-foot cell. Gyurka, this big bear of a man, was peacefully snoring on the floor. "Sleep never hurt anyone; sleep whenever you can" was one of his guiding life principles.
I kept walking up and down most of the night. I listened to the noises of the night: dogs barking, cars arriving or leaving, the inaudible murmur of our guards talking. I could see the first blush of dawn when I heard the phone ringing.
"I am Zoltán Kiss, member of the national guard," said a respectful and resonant voice, and after a pause, "Yes Sir, Mr. Szigethy, they are here. . . . Yes, Mr. Szigethy, they also said something about blood, but my commander thinks that they smuggled ÁVH officers to Austria. . . . No, Mr. Szigethy. . . . Yes, Mr. Szigethy. . . . I will! Right away Sir!" After that I heard footsteps and a door close, and by the time I heard the next telephone ring, I also heard footsteps coming toward our cell.
As the key turned in the lock, Gyurka woke up. His first move, as always, was to search for his cigarettes. The guards returned our papers and added, "Hurry up, so that the ice will not melt in the blood containers!"
"Your lunatic boss should have thought of that sooner," Gyurka grumbled.
It was midmorning on this Saturday, November 3, when we reached the city hall in Gy_r. The chaos we found was even worse than that of the day before. Two radios, tuned to Kossuth and Radio Free Europe, were blaring simultaneously, while two dozen people were all talking at the same time. We learned that while the Russians had formally agreed to withdraw their troops from Hungary, there were reports that in fact new troops were entering the country. Right now the Russian ambassador, Yuri Andropov, was meeting with Imre Nagy to discuss the details of the withdrawal, Khrushchev was visiting Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, and the Communist Party chief, János Kádár, had disappeared. Nobody knew where he was.1
Szigethy took us into his inner office, where his first question was, "Have you seen troops?"
"No, there are no Russians in that region," I replied naïvely.
"I mean Western troops, Americans, Austrians, anybody!" he said, almost yelling.
"No, only boy scouts, nuns, and reporters," I replied.
Szigethy's neck turned purple and his eyes flashed with outrage. "Those bastards, those heartless, spineless, goddamned bastards!" he hissed through his teeth, then he jumped up and without another word left us.
On the way back, we went in the direction of Komárom, and on that road there were no Russian roadblocks. "I don't know if this means that they are concentrating on the main traffic arteries or they are truly leaving." said Gyurka. It was lunchtime when we arrived at the hospital. They were very glad to see us. We had arrived at the very last minute. They offered us lunch, which Gyurka accepted but I did not because I had stuffed myself with Austrian chocolates during our trip back. So while Gyurka was eating, I grabbed some chocolates and oranges and visited the wounded.
The rooms were overflowing, and the less-seriously wounded were out in the corridors. Those who were conscious gladly accepted the chocolate bars, but some of them did not know what to do with the oranges. They had not seen oranges since the Soviets had occupied Hungary. On one bed a person with a head wound called out in clear American English, "An orange please." He turned out to be the very reporter to whom I had given a tour of the university a week earlier, the fellow who told me, "If it bleeds, it leads."
"Should it be a blood orange?" I asked with my sick sense of humor, but fortunately he did not understand Hungarian, and I did not speak English.
A young farm boy with a leg wound was sitting on the side of his bed. When I offered him a chocolate bar, he did not take it. "Don't you like candy?" I asked.
"Well, it's not that. The point is, you don't want to give me any; I served in the green ÁVH." (The "blue" ÁVH officers were volunteers who made up the political secret police, while the "green" ones were drafted and served as border guards.) I was not prepared for that. Neither did I expect the sorrowful yet accusing expression in his simple peasant eyes. I took the largest chocolate bar and put it on his lap. The farm boy did not return it.
Before going back to the university, we visited Gyurka's family. On the way we had seen a Russian tank captured by the freedom fighters. Gyurka had slept on the floor of the jail, and I had not washed since collecting the arms in the ÁVH headquarters. That was almost two days before. We were both dirty and needed a bath. When we got to Gyurka's apartment, the family surrounded us, wanting to know everything. Gyurka's beautiful sister, Mária, the ex-wife of Igor Sík, brought us some rum. I had not slept for two days, so the rum knocked me out. They noticed that I was about to fall off my chair and suggested that I take a nap.
Mária took me to the bedroom, turned away while I undressed and slipped under the covers. It seemed that I had not been in a real bed, under clean bedding, for ages. Mária sat down on the side of the bed. She was the loveliest, most alluring women I had ever seen. She noticed my stalk-eyed, devouring expression and responded with a mischievous wink. Then she leaned forward. It was an otherworldly sight. I could not speak, could not even stutter. She leaned even farther. I closed my eyes and felt a soft caressing, a kiss on my forehead, light as air, then she tucked me in, and while she quietly scuttled out, I sank into a deep sleep.
By the time I woke and we left Gyurka's apartment, it was about 6:00 P.M. on this Saturday, November 3. On the way back to the university we passed Corvin Alley. When I got back to the university I found our national guard division at full alert. Our ranks had swelled by the cadets of the Pet_fi and Zrinyi Military Academies. There must have been three or four thousand armed students in our buildings. I saw the old faces, the ones I had not seen since our initial march on October 23, two weeks ago. There was Gyuri Egry (Csámpi the Men_); there was Gyuszi Perr with his wife, the blonde little athlete Marika, who was rooting for me at the high-jump competition. There were Laci Zsindely and Attila Lipcsey; they all had come back, and now they were all armed.
In the MEFESZ office, next to Pista Marián, was a new face, that of General Görgényi. He was sent to us by the commander of the Hungarian national guard, General Béla Király. Görgényi looked a bit lost, and we did not understand why we needed him. In fact, we were a bit suspicious of his presence. Pista asked the same questions Attila Szigethy had asked me in Gy_r: "Did you see Western troops at the border? Were the Russian tanks of the same models that you have seen on the street corners of the city? Did the Russian soldiers look dirty or fresh?" I did not like these questions. I knew what he was driving at, and I could not say anything reassuring. When I told them that we had just unloaded a truckload of candy and citrus fruit in lecture hall KA-51 (where the ÁVH men were kept), Pista remarked, "That will do a lot of good against tanks!"
At about 8:00 P.M. the radio broadcast a proclamation by Cardinal József Mindszenty, who had been freed on November 1: "We are neutral, we have given no cause for the Soviet empire to wage war on us. But, has it not occurred to the Soviet leaders that we will respect them more if they do not shed our blood in an attempt to enslave us?" Although he was right, I did not like the tone of his speech. I felt it was too gloomy. I did not understand why this great cardinal, this saint of a man, was talking in such a pessimistic and skeptical way. After all, the Soviets were about to sign the final agreement concerning their withdrawal. So why the gloom?
A few minutes later, General Király called. He wanted a contingent of one hundred students from among us. We agreed, but that call also bothered me. Why would the commander of the Hungarian national guard need our students as guards? Did he not trust any of his own units? What was the big hurry? Did we not have tank battalions? Did we not have an air force? Were we, the students at this university, the only people he could trust? While General Király was on the line, we asked him about the talks. He sounded, or tried to sound, reassuring. "Our minister of defense, General Pál Maléter, has just left. He will sign the final document, which guarantees the safe departure of all Soviet military forces from Hungarian soil. All the details have already been agreed to, so this will only be a formality, a signing ceremony at the Russian military headquarters in Tököl."
What he said reassured us a bit, but it also made me nervous. Why would the minister of defense go to Tököl? What would happen if the leader of the Hungarian military were needed in the meantime? Why did we not send a politician? Why was this meeting not in the daylight, and why was it to be held in the Russian military barracks? Did such ceremonies not belong in the parliament, in front of the cameras of the international press? We had a lot of questions, a lot of doubt, but we also knew that General Maléter was a brave and competent leader who knew what to do, and it was not for us to question his decisions.
Just as in Gy_r, now in the MEFESZ office too, all radio stations were tuned in simultaneously. We were listening to Radio Budapest, Radio Free Europe,2 the BBC, Voice of America, and the short-wave stations, which were reporting troop movements in eastern Hungary. The bits and pieces of the news did not add up to a logical overall picture: the United Nations had delayed the security council meeting on Hungary until Monday, November 5. Hungary was still represented at the UN by a Soviet citizen and KGB agent in spite of his dismissal by Prime Minister Imre Nagy. It seemed that the United Nations still recognized that man as Hungary's representative. The attention of the American people was on their election, on the following day, Tuesday. President Eisenhower was on the campaign trail. The American secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had been hospitalized. The fighting at the Suez Canal had intensified. It seemed that nobody was in control. God, what chaos!
Each news item sounded like a thud, a hammer stroke driving yet another nail into the coffin of Hungarian freedom. Together they combined into a terrible rattle. It was maddening, infuriating to hear, yet I could not tear myself away. I still hoped for that one sentence that would announce the arrival of some UN observers in Budapest. I was still waiting for the formal recognition of Hungary's neutrality by the great powers. I was waiting, waiting for some sign of human decency.
Instead, at about 11:00 P.M., the radio announced that contact had been lost with our minister of defense, General Pál Maléter. As the news was announced, there was deadly silence in the MEFESZ office. We could not get our breath. We stared into nothingness, our fists clenched, lips quivering. We all knew that the beginning of the end had arrived. We naturally stayed up. From midnight on, every ten minutes or so, we heard the same announcement: "General Maléter is requested to call the prime minister's office immediately!"
That was the worst night of my life. Nobody slept. We were all dazed and overcome by a sense of total abandonment. At about 2:00 A.M., the guards from the KA-51 lecture hall reported that the ÁVH prisoners wanted to go home. "Let them," waved Pista lethargically. At about three o'clock Pista called a meeting. He reported, "It seems that General Maléter has been captured by the Russians. Twenty-six tank battalions, twenty-five hundred tanks, and one thousand other vehicles have entered Hungary from Romania and Ukraine. This is the largest Soviet tank concentration since the German-Soviet confrontation at Kursk. Our airports are surrounded. Any minute now the attack against our capital can start. You know all the details of our defense plans. If you don't feel sorry for your mothers, you can implement it. Remember that you can only die, you cannot win! I am leaving for a last meeting with General Király. Those who decide to go home should leave right away, while the bridges are still open. Those who decide to fight will have plenty of time, because the Russians are coming from the east, so they will first attack Pest. The attack of Buda will come later."
There was stunned silence in the room. We were all thinking the same thing: "Pista is not staying with us?! He is not going to lead our defense? Who will take his place?" We were all pondering those questions, but nobody spoke them out loud. There were no comments, no debate, just silence, desperate and maddening silence, the type of horrifying silence that precedes the worst act that a human being is capable of. As my dazed mind began to clear, as I finally looked around, Pista was already gone.3
A few minutes later I saw General Görgényi slowly walking out through the main entrance. He was embarrassed, his briefcase was in his right hand, his eyes stared at the ground, and he did not know what to do with his left hand. He said nothing, and he did not look anybody in the eye. He just walked out, as if this were a movie or something and the show was over. "The skunk!" I said to Gyurka, who was standing next to me, but I heard no reply. I turned to Gyurka, and his eyes, too, were staring down at the floor. He could not, he dared not, look me in the eye, and this idol of mine, this brave and bright bear of a man, just mumbled to nobody in particular, "I am going home, too!"4
It was nearly 3:30 A.M. on that dark, ugly Sunday, November 4. The hundred volunteers who would guard General Király were lining up in front of the library. The cadets of the Zrinyi and Pet_fi Military Academies and the tank crews from Pilisvörösvár were packing up and walking out. Their equipment stayed, but we did not know how to operate it. László Bónis, an assistant professor of metallurgy, was leading the first group of defenders, who would take up positions on Móricz Square, which was protected by barricades built from paving stones. The morning was still dark. At that instant I heard the first thunder of the guns from the Pest side of the Danube. It was four or five o'clock. The roar of cannons seemed to be coming from the area of the Kilián Barracks, the Corvin Cinema, and Üll_i Street region. "Pista Angyal's coffee kept his fighters awake!" I said to no one in particular. After all, nobody there even knew who Pista Angyal was.
At about five o'clock I heard the voice of Imre Nagy on Radio Budapest: "This is Imre Nagy speaking, the chairman of the council of ministers of Hungary. Today at dawn, Soviet troops attacked our capital with the obvious objective of overthrowing the lawful and democratic government. Our troops are fighting; the government is at its station. I inform the world and my nation of these facts." His announcement was followed by the national anthem. After that, they broadcast the message of the Hungarian Writers' Union. The writers appealed to all intellectuals of the world, begging for military help and for UN observers. These announcements were repeated in four languages, interrupted only by our two national anthems, the Himnusz and the Szózat, and by Kodály's choral work that has the refrain, "Don't hurt the Magyars!"
I could not stand it. I ran out of the MEFESZ office. I was overpowered by a crying fit, and, like a whipped dog, I retreated into the corner of a semidark corridor. I wanted to throw up. I had lost my interest in life. I was burying my dreams, burying my faith in humanity, burying the person I used to be. I was burying myself.
Like a zombie, for hours I just sat there. The noise, the tramping of footsteps, gradually subsided. Only one radio remained on in a nearby office. It kept repeating the appeal of the Hungarian writers to the world: "Help Hungary! Help Hungary!" it cried into the ether. My throat was dry, my shoulder was hurting from the pull of the submachine gun, tears were streaming from my eyes, and I repeated for the millionth time, "Please God, don't let it be! Don't let them betray us! Please make them help!"
My only contact with life was that radio. While it was on, there was still hope. We still had a voice, a radio. As long as Radio Budapest was on the air, there was hope. Then the radio announcer spoke in Russian, begging the Soviet soldiers not to shoot. My crying face twisted into a grimace. "Not to shoot?" I mumbled, as the windows of the corridor vibrated from the detonations on the other side of the Danube.
Now, suddenly, something changed. I did not know what, but something was different. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. Yes! What had happened to the national anthem? I did not hear the national anthem. I jumped up. My legs had gone to sleep, and I almost fell, but I kept running anyway. I reached the office where the radio was. I shook the receiver, thinking it must be a bad battery, but then, over the background noise, I began to hear gunfire. The fight was on for the radio station. Radio Budapest was off the air. That was the last thing I remember.

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