I had not been asleep, I just passed out. Laci Zsindely found me in the dean's office. He was on his way to the men's room and saw me sitting on the floor, slumped down next to a radio. First I saw his talking face, then I started to hear his voice, and sometime later I began to make sense out of what he was saying: ". . . also at Csepel. They were also beaten back on Üll_i Street. The streets of Pest are dotted with burnt-out Russian tanks. Their tanks have also been stopped at Stalin City and in the mining regions of Pécs. According to Radio Free Europe the Congress of American Veterans is demanding that NATO start mobilizing to help us. As of yet, there are no Russians in Buda. The barricades are almost ready on Móricz Square. Every minute, more and more people arrive to man the barricades."
Each news item was a straw to clutch. I wanted to believe that there was still hope. I wanted to do my part, but the first words and the first steps were so hard. If Laci had not been there, I could not have gotten started. Laci had such a warm smile. He knew that we would make it. So I stood up. He was much shorter than I, but somehow he managed to put his arms around my shoulders, and slowly, embracing each other, as if returning from an abyss, we walked back to the MEFESZ office.
The office I returned to was a totally different place. The people who were there were willing to put their lives on the line. We did not need a lot of hot air to communicate. We knew that life was about deeds, not words. There was Gyuri Egry, better known as Csámpi, or Men_. That was the last time I would see him.1 Gyuszi Perr was there with Marika. They were trying to take more of our tanks to Móricz Square. Fourteen of our tanks were parked next to the library, but with one exception: the rest of the tank crews (from Pilisvörösvár) had disappeared. A single lieutenant was commanding the one remaining tank, which we moved to Móricz Square. His brother had died two weeks before during the first attack. He would fight. Brothers of that sort do fight.
Ede Némethy and Gyurka Burger were listening to short-wave radio broadcasts, while Marika the gymnast left to get some bread. The bread was needed, because Gyuszi's group planned to retreat into the mountains if we failed to hold the square, and Marika wanted to make sure that they would have something to eat. While Marika was gone, I learned that János Kádár had become the Hungarian Quisling and had formed a counterrevolutionary puppet government. The Soviets had given him a radio transmitter in Szolnok, and he was broadcasting his pro-Soviet propaganda from there. This Hungarian Quisling intended to become the new boss of the Hungarian slaves.
To my relief, I also learned that there were no other traitors in Imre Nagy's government. General Király and our one hundred student guards were retreating through the mountains of Transdanubia toward Austria. Imre Nagy and the majority of his cabinet had taken refuge at the Yugoslav Embassy. Cardinal Mindszenty had asked for asylum at the American Embassy, and two brave leaders had not escaped at all but were still at their posts. Sándor Kopácsi was still at police headquarters, and a minister without portfolio (one who does not direct a particular government ministry), István Bibó, was still in the parliament.
While the Soviet tanks were destroying one of Europe's most beautiful capitals, István Bibó was writing a historic document, one that outlined a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict and listed the steps the Western powers had to take in order to meet both their legal and moral obligations. His handwriting was neat, unhurried. When he was done with the Hungarian version, he proceeded meticulously to translate the text into English, French, German, and Spanish. He used his thesaurus to avoid using the same adjective twice. He neatly addressed the four envelopes, packed up his papers, calmly passed the Russian soldiers at the gate, and walked to each of the four embassies. He hand delivered his remarkable document, this confirmation of courage and integrity, this proof that at least one person in Hungary still had faith in the international community, in the integrity and sense of justice of the Western powers.
When I heard that most of our tank crews had run off, it occurred to me that Uncle Feri, the husband of my mother's sister, Duduke, was a tank commander in World War II. "Do you think he would be willing to drive some tanks to the square?" asked Laci Zsindely. I had no idea, but I decided to check. So we dropped into the KA-51 lecture hall to pick up some powdered milk from the pile of Austrian gifts and walked over to 1 Béla Bartók Street, where they lived. Duduke was my mother's younger sister. Her baby was only a few weeks old. I was sure she could use the powdered milk.2
As we walked through the corridors, I also picked up some blankets left behind by the military cadets. They would come in handy either for us in the hills or for my family if Duduke was out of coal and their apartment was cold. As we walked to Bartók Street, I told Laci about Duduke's first baby, which was born some eleven years ago, at the end of the war.
We were in Sopron, and the city was already occupied by the Soviets. Duduke had no milk and could not buy any, because the Russians had commandeered all the cattle and had posted armed guards around the stolen herds. As the baby was slowly starving, Péter and I, ages eleven and nine, decided to steal back some of our milk from the Russians.
We got a white enameled pot, and after dark we took off to find the herd. Around their campfires, the Russian soldiers were drinking vodka while we crept on our bellies toward the herd. This was our first attempt at stealing milk directly from cows. In the tall weeds there was no place to put down the pot, and the cows were kicking and mooing—doing everything except standing still and giving milk. I must admit that our methods of milking were not conventional, and our pulling at their tender teats must have been painful. The end result was a couple of ounces of dirt mixed with milk, and eventually the baby died of malnutrition.
As we walked to Duduke's, we could smell the smoke and hear the unrelenting cannon thunder coming from the Pest side of the river. It was a terrible Sunday! We could also hear a few words from the loudspeaker on Móricz Square, which was broadcasting the transmission of Radio Free Europe. When the pedestrians saw our armbands and the submachine guns on our shoulders, they stared at the ground. There was no more approval or expression of solidarity in their body language. They were just scared.
On the marble stairs in the dignified stair hall of Duduke's house, we ran into scared tenants on their way down. They did not look into our eyes either. They were carrying food and other essentials into the basement. Their eyes blamed us for their predicament.
Even before ringing the bell, I could hear the crying of the baby. Uncle Feri's first words were, "Did anybody see you coming here?" I shook my head and placed the milk powder and the blankets on a side table. The BBC radio was on. It was rebroadcasting the plea of the freedom fighters of Stalin City. They were begging for paratroopers; their ammunition was low, and they were outgunned and outnumbered by the Russians. The appeal ended in English: "For the sake of God, for the sake of freedom and liberty, please help Hungary!"
Nobody said anything yet, but I already knew where we stood. The apartment was filled with terror. They kept staring at our guns. It was obvious that they wished us to leave. I said nothing about our tanks or about the upcoming defense of Móricz Square. I just mumbled something about the milk powder, and we left. As we walked back to the university, the same unrelenting thunder of cannon blasts could still be heard from the Pest side of the river. The intensity of the fighting was even greater now than when we had come. "Pista Angyal's welcoming party!" I pointed toward Üll_i Street.
"I'm glad you're in a kidding mood again," said Laci, and he winked at me.
The university was almost empty. We decided to evacuate it and close its gates so that it would not be damaged by the fighting. We walked through all the buildings, turned off all the lights, and locked all the doors. The few people we found—a fireman; two female medical students; Imre Majoross, Jancsi Danner's driver; and a few others—we took to the medical emergency room and told them to wait there until the fighting was over. By the time we got back to the empty MEFESZ office, it was evening.
Radio Budapest had gone silent in the morning, and by now it was in the hands of the traitors. Only BBC, Radio Free Europe, and a few short-wave transmitters were still broadcasting the voices of freedom. Radio Csokonai was still broadcasting from Stalin City, but we could hear the cannon fire in the background as the announcer begged for Western help: "The life of our nation is in the hands of the United Nations. Please save Hungary! Please Help!"
We could still hear the intense fighting from the Pest side of the Danube, but now, suddenly, we could also hear the din of battle from the Buda side, from Móricz Square. We turned off the last lights, locked the main gate, and started toward the square. It was dark. It took us about an hour to cover the one-mile or so distance to reach the freedom fighters defending the houses of the square. This was because the Soviet tanks were already on the square itself and in the main streets leading to it. Only Gellért Hill and the side streets were still in our hands. My group had to approach the square through the gardens behind the houses on Béla Bartók Street. We were climbing fences and fighting off dogs in the process. As we got closer, the thunder of the cannons got more and more deafening. I had no idea that such loudness even existed.
Between the thundering roars we could still hear the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe amplified through a loudspeaker. At that moment a refined female voice was talking about Eisenhower's chances in the election on Tuesday. "Those damned idiots elected him once because he promised to liberate us. Now they will reelect him because he broke his pledge!" fumed Laci.
We were trying to get to the apartment house where Gyuszi Perr and Marika were fighting. They were on the first floor. First we entered the basement, which had been converted into an air-raid shelter and was full of residents. There was chaos, panic, and confusion. Just a few minutes before, the building superintendent was shot in the stomach as he was assisting the fighters near the entrance. He was lying on his back. There was a rattle in his throat, and he was bleeding profusely. "Would you take him to Orlay Street?" asked somebody, and without waiting for an answer, somebody else was pulling a medic's white smock over my head.
Laci found a short ladder that could be used as a stretcher. We tied the poor man onto it and started out through the gardens, the same way we had come. We were heading toward the office of Dr. Bakay on Orlay Street. It was a long walk and a very hard struggle. The dying man was heavy, the night was dark, and the terrain was impossible. It must have taken an hour to cover this distance of less than a mile. Bakay's office was full of wounded people. We left the poor man on the floor and turned to go back to the square. We brought our ladder-stretcher with us, just in case.
It must have been about midnight when we got back. On the square, all hell had broken loose. Houses were on fire, and muzzle flashes illuminated the sky. The detonations tortured my eardrums and paralyzed my mind. What I felt was more than panic or terror; it felt as if my mind has short-circuited and stopped functioning altogether, that I had turned into a vegetable from these piercing noises and blinding flashes.
The upper floors of the apartment house that Gyuszi Perr and Marika were defending were already ablaze. Cracking and crashing sounds mixed with the thunder of the tank cannons. The front of the building faced the square, and its back was toward Gellért Hill. On the back, or courtyard, side of the burning house an outside corridor ran along the whole length of the building. There I saw Professor Bónis from the metallurgy department on the second floor. He was running from one apartment to the next on that long balcony with his submachine gun at the ready.3
Most of the firing was by the Russians. In the center of the square the Soviet tanks stood in a circle, like the pioneers' wagons when attacked by Indians. The freedom fighters fired only intermittently; many of their guns had fallen silent. The tanks, on the other hand, were systematically firing their salvos at each window in which they saw movement or from which they received fire. We ran up to the first-floor apartment where Gyuszi Perr and Marika were fighting with their machine gun. The apartment had received several hits. The wall facing the square was gone, and the floor was knee-deep in debris.
The members of Gyuszi's group occupied several apartments on that floor. Every time the Russian gun barrels turned toward their location, they would run out onto the outside corridor in the back. Gyuszi's machine gun was still operational but was low on ammunition. He was working hard to pierce the gasoline container of the nearest tank, but on these new tanks, the gasoline reservoir was not on the outside but under the armor. Therefore it was next to impossible to puncture it. In spite of that, I could see four or five Soviet tanks that had been destroyed. The one tank that we were able to take to the square had done most of that damage, but now it was silent. Gyuszi's persistent firing at the gas tanks and the Molotov cocktails he lobbed at them afterward had done some damage, too.
Our one tank that had made it to Móricz Square, the one that was driven by the young lieutenant whose brother had died during the first attack, now looked like a pile of junk metal. Both our tank and our one anti-aircraft cannon were facing into Villányi Street's west entrance into the square (see map). So when the Russians attacked from Fehérvári Street to the south of the square, our fighters' backs became exposed. Still, they stopped the Bartók Street tank column. If we had had just one other tank at the entrance of Fehérvári Street, the outcome could have been different.
There were no Russian infantryman on the square yet; they were waiting next to the tennis courts at the Bottomless Lake. They were waiting for our small-arms fire to subside. Behind all the thunder and chaos, when the noise subsided for a few seconds, we could still hear the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe. It was now Monday morning, November 5, the morning of the day before election day in the United States. The radio was broadcasting a speech by Eisenhower, which he had made four years ago during the previous election campaign, when he announced his "policy of liberation." This policy was our last straw of hope, and we hung onto it. We fought on to give him time to make his move, to support his words with deeds.
Now Gyuszi Perr had noticed the movement of a tank cannon toward the window of our own apartment and yelled, "Escape to the back corridor!" We scrambled out of the room and ran toward the entrance of the apartment on the balcony in the back. When she reached the door, though, Marika turned around and ran back for the bread. "Come back! Leave it!" roared Gyuszi, but it was too late. All we saw was one blinding flash, all we heard was one piercing blast, and a second or two later we saw a puff of smoke and dust billowing out of the apartment door and rolling down the side of the building.
Gyuszi was out of his mind. He was down on all fours, groping and fumbling around, coughing his lungs out. His face was covered with black soot except for the two lines that the streaming tears had washed on his face. We all tried to find Marika. I had covered my mouth with my handkerchief, so I was not coughing too hard. Lacikz, also down on all fours, screamed. He had grabbed a piece of red-hot metal, either a piece of the exploded shell or the barrel of Gyuszi's machine gun. As I crawled blindly in the smoke and dust, I almost fell out onto the square, because the front wall of the apartment, the wall facing the square, had completely disappeared, and the smoke was so thick that I could not tell the inside from the outside.
Suddenly there was total silence. We held our coughing, and during this temporary lull we all could hear a slow dripping noise coming from the back of the room. We all crawled into that darkest corner, and then Gyuszi reached into something sticky. As he did, we all heard a pained, animal squeak. It was Marika's leg that he had touched. She was half covered by plaster, her clothing was in shreds, and the wound on her leg was so deep that the knee bone was visible. She was still holding on to the loaf of bread she had gone to save when the tank fired.
The little blonde gymnast was white as a sheet—white as my medic's smock. She was limp and light as we carried her down to the basement. We bandaged her up to stop the bleeding and started out once more with our ladder-stretcher toward the Orlay Street office of Dr. Bakay. Our load was much lighter than during the previous trip. Marika was still holding onto the loaf of bread. We covered her closed eyes so that the flashes of the cannon blasts would not frighten her. Our progress was faster than before. By now we had learned the way, and Marika did not weigh much at all.
Dr. Bakay's office floor was completely covered with the bodies of the wounded. We were stepping over people as we finally found a bit of room in one corridor where we managed to put her down. Gyuszi was talking to the doctor. Marika had lost consciousness. As we waited for Gyuszi, it appeared as if her eyelids moved. I knelt down next to her. Her mouth also moved a tiny bit. I put my ear to her mouth to hear her frail little whisper, "Öcsi, there is some candy in my right pocket; take some."4
My heart was in my mouth. I did not know what to say; I did not know what to do. I felt this enormous anger and frustration. It would have felt so good to be able to cry, to weep over my little sister, to cry over our dreams, the dreams of the millions who had dared to give everything they had, who believed—but I could not. I could not because of an anger that was welling up inside me. I wanted to call down the wrath of God on those Red butchers. And I wanted to do the same to the idle bureaucrats of the UN and to the oil-hungry businessman manipulating the Suez crisis. I wanted to curse the rich and heartless leaders of the West and the lying American president. And I wanted to curse myself, most of all myself, for having talked this little girl and so many others into believing that there is justice, that we could win, and that liberty is more precious than life itself, when all I really did was to talk them into committing suicide.

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