I woke to another ugly day, Thursday, November 8. As I dressed, I noticed that my tricolor armband had disappeared. That was my mother's style. It probably was better that way, because I would not have taken it off on my own, and wearing it would have been an invitation to immediate arrest.
It was a long walk back to Budapest. When I reached the city, I could tell from the blasts that Pista Angyal had not gotten his cease-fire from the Russians. The cannon fire and the explosions were unceasing. This was a cloudy Thursday anyway, and the smoke that covered the whole ninth district made it even darker. It was clear that Pista Angyal and the boys at the Corvin were putting up quite a fight.
I let my feet do the thinking, and they got me to gate two of the Technical University. Only when I arrived there did I realize that my home base was gone. Russian soldiers and Pufajkas were standing at the gate. Russian tanks were everywhere. In spite of that, I could not help moving even closer and finally saw a familiar face, that of Zsiga Nagy, one of the MEFESZ leaders of the Agro-Technical University. He was approaching the gate from the opposite direction. His expression was the same as mine. When he got closer, I shook my head and pointed to the other side of the street. He understood and followed me there.
"So, what is happening?" I asked him.
"The Pufajkas paid my parents a visit, and I took off through the back door," he replied.
"Well, that is my story too. So what do we do?"
"Whatever it is, let's do it together," he replied. After that we did a lot of walking. At each street corner, before proceeding, we would stop and check for Russian patrols. Zsiga had heard that the Russians were deporting all young people they caught on the streets. As night fell, we saw a burnt-out bus on Karinthy Street and decided to make it our bedroom. I emptied a couple of garbage cans onto its floor to provide a softer layer. My corduroy jacket acquired yet another layer of dirt, and yet another night passed.1
The events of the days that followed are no longer distinct in my mind. They merge together into a couple of weeks of hopeless hiding, depressed wandering. Zsiga and I simply concentrated on avoiding all the places where the Pufajkas might expect us to go.
On each day in the early morning a Russian truck drove down Karinthy Street bringing bread to the troops. It had to make a sharp turn onto Budafoki Street. As it turned, it slowed down. I was a good runner. Even in boots, I could catch it on most mornings. Therefore, on my fast days, I grabbed a loaf of bread and we had something to eat.
As the days passed, we made contact with the remaining centers of resistance. The MEFESZ activity now was directed from the building of the former Piarist Gymnasium on the Pest side of the Danube. We spent a few days there, printing and distributing leaflets calling for a general strike and demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The city was full of graffiti reading "Russians go home!" What we posted in the morning, the Pufajkas ripped down by the afternoon. Gyurka Gömöri was one of the leaders. He wrote several of the handbills.2
We also ran into Igor Sík. His father was back as the foreign minister of Kádár's puppet regime and also acted as Hungary's UN representative. Igor was on our side and was still doing his Russian-language short-wave radio broadcasts in which he explained to the fresh troops that they were not at the Suez Canal and that they were not fighting Israelis or Nazis but were oppressing Hungarians.
On Friday, November 9, we held a MEFESZ meeting in the student dormitory on top of Castle Hill (see map). The attendees of the meeting appointed us (Zsiga and me) to maintain contact with the Revolutionary Workers Council of Budapest. When the director of the dormitory, a fellow named Kutassi, heard that we were living in a burnt-out bus, he forged some documents, and for a week or so we had our own beds in his dormitory.
On November 14 I participated in the meeting at United Izzó, which elected Sándor Rácz as the president of all the Revolutionary Workers Councils of Budapest. Sándor was a deeply religious twenty-three-year-old peasant boy. He was also a born leader, patriotic, and brave—and, most importantly, he understood that the job of a real leader was not to follow public opinion but to lead it. He stationed armed guards around the factory. No Russians were allowed in, and none even tried to enter the factory grounds. He ordered a nationwide general strike and started negotiations with the real seat of power in Hungary, the Russian military headquarters. He had a sense of history about him. What impressed me most was his inner strength. He always knew what was right, and if something was right, nothing else mattered to him.3
The last meeting of the MEFESZ leadership, which I participated in, was held on Saturday, November 17, on Virányos Street in a former ÁVH cottage that had been temporarily abandoned by its owners. At the meeting we learned that on the previous day several hundred people had been arrested on the Pest side. One of those arrested was my friend Pista Angyal. A participant of the MEFESZ meeting, Béla Jankó, the leader of the Medical University, suggested that we could do more for Hungary by escaping to the West and continuing our efforts abroad. He asked for and received authorization to represent the MEFESZ in exile.4
About half the delegates, including myself, voted against leaving Hungary and against disbanding the MEFESZ. The rest felt that resistance was hopeless, MEFESZ activity should be terminated, and we should disband. We debated our immediate plans into the night, and it was well after midnight when we, Zsiga and I, left the meeting. Next day we learned that those who stayed at the cottage were all arrested by the Pufajkas. So, by Sunday, November 18, the majority of the MEFESZ leadership was either in jail or on its way to Austria.
While I was hiding in the student dormitory on András Hess Square, Cardinal Mindszenty accepted asylum at the American Embassy, and the majority of the legitimate government of Hungary, headed by Imre Nagy, took up asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. On Wednesday, November 21, János Kádár, the head of the Soviet-installed puppet regime, sent a written guarantee to the Yugoslav government that Imre Nagy and his ministers would not be harmed if they left the embassy.
On Thursday, November 22, at 6:30 P.M., a bus was sent by Ferenc Münnich (another Hungarian traitor) to take the Nagy group from the Yugoslav Embassy to their homes. When the group boarded the bus, Soviet military personnel surrounded them, forced the Yugoslavs to leave, and took the members of Hungary's government and their families, including fifteen women and seventeen children, to Romania.5
Imre Nagy thus joined his predecessors, Lajos Batthyány, the prime minister who had paid with his life for the Hungarian fight for freedom in 1848, and Pál Teleki, the prime minister who had committed suicide when the Germans forced Hungary to give passage to their troops in 1941.6
It was late in the night on Thursday, November 22, when Aptyi finally found me. He had been searching for me all that week. He started looking when Radio Free Europe reported that Hungarian refugees were arriving in Austria. The radio gave the names of some relatives who had already arrived in the West while the fighting was still going on in Budapest. In his search, Aptyi visited our various relatives in the capital, visited the Technical University, and finally decided to check in the student dormitory on Castle Hill.
When he finally found me, he was very worried. He told me that since I had left, the Pufajkas had visited them again in Kerepes and had also tried to find me at the university. "They do not know that you are the Öcsi who worked with Colonel Marián. It also seems that they are preparing some kind of a show trial for the Marián group. There is no question that they are on your trail and that you must escape!"
I must have given him a scared and shocked look, because he turned away, but he repeated it once more: "You must escape!" I had never contradicted my father in my life. It never occurred to me that I ever could, but now I said, "I cannot do that, Aptyi. Please do not make me do that!"
His eyes filled with tears as he said, "I will not survive it if they capture you. You and Péter must escape!"
"But I do not want to live as an alien. I cannot! I just cannot!" I continued pleading. He looked at me for a long time. He was slowly shaking his head, tears flowing on his sunburned cheeks, as finally, with much effort, he said, "Shortly I will tell both of you when and where you should meet."
Friday, November 23, was another dreadful day. I knew that I had to obey my father's orders, yet I was hoping that he would change his mind. I spent the day wandering on the narrow, medieval streets of Castle Hill. There, every stone was a history book and every window a witness to the survival struggle of this orphan island of Hungarians, besieged among Germanic and Slavic seas, eroded by the heaving billows of a tragic history.
When I got back to the dormitory, a message was waiting for me. It was in Aptyi's handwriting. "Péter and I will be waiting for you tomorrow at 9 A.M. at the Kelenföld Railroad Station." My breath failed and my heart stopped. What should I do now? I could not think straight. Perhaps Ágnes could help. Maybe she could give me some advice.
It took me an hour to get to her building. The apartment was empty. She was still not home; nobody was. What should I do? It was late in the afternoon. I had to think. I needed peace and quiet. So I walked into a church. As I wandered inside, a priest stepped out of a confessional and asked, "Do you want to talk?"
I grabbed the opportunity, and he pointed me into the confessional. But we did not communicate. He was an older man, and he wanted me to confess, but I did not want his forgiveness—I wanted his advice. He was a talkative person, and what I was in need of was not a talker, but a listener.
He thought that I came in to confess, but I did not want to talk about my sins. He thought that I was silent because my sins were too great. So he tried to console me: "You know son, if one is defending one's homeland and kills in that process, that person is a soldier and the Church does not condemn soldiers. Freedom fighters are also defending their families against aggressors, and as such, they have no choice." The old man kept talking, and I did not say anything. He eventually absolved and blessed me. I left without having said a word about my problem.
I was awake all night. In the morning of Saturday, November 24, I arrived on time at the Kelenföld railroad station. The sight was reminiscent of Hungarian railroad stations during the war: parting families, crying mothers, grave and morose fathers. Péter was ready; only Aptyi came with him: "It would have been too much for your Mother," he said. I cannot describe our good-bye; there are no words for that. After that, Péter and I hung out of the window for many miles, straining our eyes to see that tiny white spot, my father's waving white handkerchief, which had long disappeared.7
The train ride to Óvár was uneventful. Most of the passengers were on their way to Austria. Some still carried their guns. On the train, no Pufajkas and no Russians dared show their faces. They felt safer behind the inch-thick steel plates of their tanks. I do not recall now if the train went only as far as Óvár or if we got off there for some other reason. In any case, we did. The Pufajkas had not arrived yet. Only a few Russian tanks stood on the main square. Their hatchways were closed. They had no contact with the population. The main road leading to Austria was full of refugees.
As the crow flies, we started walking toward the border. We had seen no border guards, no Russians, nothing. We had walked for about ten miles when on the hillside behind us we noticed dark figures running towards us. There must have been a hundred of them. It was early Saturday evening. This was the area where we expected to come across mine fields (all the western borders of Hungary were mined), yet we started to run toward Austria. As we ran, I looked back and noted that the dark running figures were gaining on us. It was at that point that we both heard sheep bells.
A shepherd boy was running in front, followed by his herd. When he reached us and stopped, so did his herd, and we were surrounded by sheep. The boy told us that during the previous weeks he had given a lot of people directions to Austria, and those people usually left their Hungarian forints with him. "You can't pay with forints in Austria," he said. "On the other hand, I can use them just fine."
So I reached into the outside pocket of my corduroy jacket and gave him the twenty-forint bill that I had not been able to spend for a month—for a glorious and unforgettable month.
On the other side of the border the haystacks smelled of peace. The haycock felt invitingly soft as we settled in for the night, and I slept, hoping that I would never wake up.

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