Early on this Thursday, the first day of November, I went to pick up my national guard certificate. The red-white-and-green tricolor was printed diagonally across it, and its serial number was 8260. It was signed by Sándor Kopácsi. I was proud, very proud, to have it.
As I entered the MEFESZ office I heard raised voices. An intense debate was raging inside about the recent decisions of Prime Minister Imre Nagy to terminate Hungary's membership in the Warsaw Pact military alliance and to declare Hungary's neutrality. We all knew that these were decisive steps. Tibor Vígh believed that they would provoke the Soviets into attacking us. He believed that "their ego cannot allow for such a precedent to prevail."
Colonel Marián disagreed and argued that the Western powers have no legal basis to interfere in a dispute among members of the Warsaw Pact but could come to our defense if we were a neutral nation and asked for their help against an armed aggression. "In other words," he said, "Imre Nagy had no choice! He had to take these steps, because these steps were required in order to remove the legal obstacles from our receiving Western military help."
I did not know who was right and I did not understand the mentality of the Western leaders, but I did know that Hungarian public sentiment was behind Imre Nagy. I did know that Hungarians did not want to belong to any military bloc, that we wanted to be neutral. As the debate continued, the radio reported on a speech made by the new head of the Communist Party, János Kádár, who said, "Our glorious Hungarian Revolution is victorious. We have secured freedom and independence for Hungary. I am proud that the Communists fought in the front lines in this just Revolution. I will defend our achievement to my last breath, if necessary. I will fight for them with my bare hands."1
This made me feel good—not because I trusted this guy who still called himself a Communist. No! But because, if the chief of the Communist Party talked like this, and if there were peace and tranquility in the country, under such conditions the Russians could not possibly attack. "Can the Russians still attack after this?" I asked Gyurka. "Rule number one is that you never believe anything that a Communist says! You don't even believe the opposite of what they say. This Kádár, whose real name is Csermanek—just as the real name of our UN representative was not Koós, but Konduktorov, who is not even a Hungarian citizen—will say and do anything that his bosses in Moscow order him to say. Kádár learned the advisability of obedience when in jail—his communist comrades pulled out his nails. Believe me, he remembers that. Today he is with us because we are winning; tomorrow he will stab us in the back if a new order comes from Moscow. Just don't be so naïve!" Gyurka lectured.
Usually Pista just told me what my next job was, but this morning he gave me a typed and signed formal order. It read: "I authorize Béla Lipták to collect the weapons and ammunition in the interior ministry building and to bring them back to the university." This was the first and only time my full name was used on any of my orders during the Revolution. He also told me that we should take two trucks and that I should get the key from Sándor Kopácsi.
I assembled a couple dozen students, and when the trucks were ready we first went to the police headquarters to get the key to the building. Kopácsi greeted me like an old friend. He warned that this ministry was in fact the headquarters of the ÁVH and that no freedom fighters had entered that building yet. Therefore, he did not know what we would find there. Next, he handed me a gigantic antique key, probably hand made in the last century, and added, "If there is armed resistance, just turn around and come back."
The wooden door of the interior ministry building was at least twenty feet tall, was reinforced by iron belts and plates, and must have weighed several tons. I was tall, but the keyhole was still up at my eye level, and the door handle was even higher. This building used to be an Austro-Hungarian palace. It seemed that the aristocrats of the past wanted one to feel small when entering their palaces. I slipped the half-pound key into the lock.2 It turned smoothly, and I heard a tiny click as the door was ready to be opened. The ten-ton giant of a door was so well balanced that I could open it with one finger. Even under those conditions I felt respect for the craftsman who created that masterpiece.
Behind the door was a dark corridor. I had an eerie feeling that I was not alone in it. While searching for the light switch, I stumbled over a metallic object that turned out to be a machine gun. It was facing the door. Once we found the light switch and could see, it became obvious that the ÁVH defenders had retreated to the upper floors of the building, because only the heaviest weapons were left on the ground floor. The rest they must have taken with them. We had no floor map. As we slowly penetrated the building, I never knew if the steps I was hearing were those of my fellow students or those of the retreating ÁVH officers.
I did not know why the freedom fighters who had fought and beat the secret police had not occupied this building. I did not know how the siege had ended or who had locked the door. All Kopácsi told me was that we should be careful. So I tried to be. As we searched the ground floor, we found weapons in almost every office. I saw large quantities of used cartridge cases next to the windows, indicating that the fighting must have gone on for some time. The many personal belongings left behind suggested that the ÁVH retreated in a hurry. While my colleagues were collecting and carrying the weapons from the ground floor onto the trucks, I proceeded to the next elevation. In Hungary, the first floor is called the ground floor, and therefore I proceeded up to the "first floor."
As in many major nineteenth-century buildings in Budapest, the stair hall was large and elegant. Next to the stairs was a perpetual-motion lift, a nonstop elevator, called a "pater-noster" because it goes on and on in a similarly nonstop manner as the continuous prayer of monks. I had never been in one before. I hesitated a bit as I stepped into a cubicle. Once the pater-noster was started, these cubicles formed a continuous belt, traveling upward on the left side and down on the right. Now, though, the pater-noster was still stationary, so it was easy to step into the cubicle. I pushed the up button, and the contraption started with a yank. I was traveling upward from the lit stair hall into the darkness, from our safe ground floor up into the unknown. The dark first floor was already approaching. Should I jump out, or should I stay and travel higher? The darkness was scary, yet the higher floors were even scarier, so in the last split second, I jumped out.
It was a strange feeling. Vertically, I was only a few feet from my friends below, yet I was totally alone and isolated. It was dark, and I had no idea where the light switches were. I heard some soft music coming from the right. So I kept one hand on the wall as I moved slowly toward the music. I felt a picture frame, then a door. The door was locked. I continued, but still found no light switch, no window. It was dark and quiet. The next door was open. My right hand was still sliding on the wall as I entered the room. Now, furniture blocked my way; I could not follow the wall anymore.
I felt a coat hanger and after that a desk. The desk was covered with papers and books; I touched a telephone and finally located a circular metallic object to one side. That could have been a lamp base, but there seemed to be no switch on it. An adjustable stem rose from the base, which did lead to a lampshade, and on the side of the shade I finally found the switch. I turned it, and after what felt like an eternity of darkness, I could see.
I was in the office of a secretary. Open on the desk was a schedule book full of names, telephone numbers, and notations. They all ended yesterday, on October 31. Today's page was empty. To the side of the desk was a calendar on the wall. One date was circled in red, and "Pista" was written above the circle. There was a leather-covered door behind the desk, and the pictures of the Hungarian Communist Party bosses were hanging over it. I had never seen a leather-covered door before. This one was soft to the touch, and it opened without creaking. Inside, the radio was tuned to a foreign station playing a French chanson.
On the floor next to a chair was a highly decorated officer's jacket. A pillow on the leather sofa indicated that somebody had slept there. The telephone on the big mahogany desk was off the hook, the receiver dangling in midair. The liquor cabinet was open. A half-empty bottle of French cognac was on the desk, but there were no glasses. I could see some file cabinets behind an open door; one of the drawers was pulled out, and paper folders lay on the floor. As I kicked at one of them a document slipped out. It had a big red stamp on it: "TOP SECRET."
Next to the file cabinets was a bookshelf full of what seemed to be large photograph albums. They were of different colors. I picked out a thick blue one. The label read: "Case of Class I Agent X. Y." (The actual name I have forgotten.) Below the row of blue folders was a section of black-colored albums. At random, I also picked out one of these. The label on it read: "Domestic Agents—7." I took a couple more albums and settled down in the big and inviting leather easy chair in front of the low glass table with the intention of reading them. As I did, I noticed a newspaper basket full of colorful magazines next to the chair. I picked one up and in a moment forgot not only the spy albums, but also where I was and why I was there, because I was seeing things I had never seen before.
The magazines were from Holland, France, and the United States. They were printed on shining, glossy paper, and they were full of sharp, colorful photographs. There were beautiful, partially dressed women on their covers. As I opened them, I could barely believe my eyes. The women were doing unimaginable things. One was standing on a fire escape of a skyscraper with nothing on except high heels and a feathery hat. As she was descending, she was giving a goodbye kiss to a young man in the upper window, while another man was already caressing her from the stairs below. As I turned the pages, my blood pressure rose and I got dizzy.
I saw women in leather outfits that left nothing to the imagination; I saw whips, chains, and strange devices that I had never seen before. I saw a woman reclining on a silver plate among the appetizers on a buffet table. Next to her was a plate of oysters. And I saw all kinds of people doing the unspeakable. I saw waitresses on billiard tables, secretaries on desks, sailors in nunneries; I saw German shepherds of both the two and the four-legged kinds, doing it. Some of the close-up pictures I did not even understand. So I was turning the pictures upside down and sideways when I heard a distant cry: "Öcsi! Where are you?"
As if waking from a nap, I was dazed for a moment. When I finally came to my senses, I grabbed the agent albums and in total embarrassment raced to the pater-noster. As my cabin on the continuous elevator descended to the ground floor, I heard the excited murmur of the students below. Now I also saw their worried faces. "What happened? Where have you been?" asked Gyurka.
"Oh, I just checked out the next floor. If you are done here, you can start collecting the guns on that floor. I will just take these albums to the truck," I replied.
While the students worked on the first floor, I proceeded to the next. Now I was a bit more comfortable in searching for the light switches and less jittery when I heard the sounds of dripping faucets or creaking windows or doors. Now I heard the telephone ringing in a distant office of the second floor. As I proceeded toward the sound, the offices grew larger, more elegant. Now I was standing on soft Persian rugs when I finally picked up the gold-plated telephone on this enormous mahogany desk.
"This is captain so and so, reporting from Kistarcsa," said a deep, military voice.3
"Well, this is Öcsi from the Technical University," I replied.
"I would like to receive new orders for my unit," the man said.
"Listen, I am here only to collect the weapons left behind by the ÁVH. I don't give orders to ÁVH captains."
"Well, I would still like to ask for your advice on what to do," said the captain.
"All I know is that we have some fifty ÁVH officers under detention at the university. I know that they are safe there. So, if you want to, you can join them."
I heard a "Thank you" and then a click. Only then did I realize that I was probably talking to the head of the political prison camp at Kistarcsa.
As I had expected, the porno magazines delayed the collection of guns on the first floor. Gyurka, who was in his late twenties and therefore more experienced than the rest of us, finally just collected all the magazines and promised to distribute them among the students who collected the most guns by the end of the day.
It was getting dark by the time we started collecting the guns on the fourth floor. As a blond architecture student was rushing to become one of the best performers, he managed to destroy the pater-noster. He jumped into the moving cabin while carrying four or five guns, and as his cubicle descended, the muzzle of a rifle got caught between the sinking ceiling of the cabin and the floor as the cabin descended. Fortunately, we managed to fish him out safely, but a fuse was blown or the motor burned out. In any case, the system broke down. So from then on we had no elevator. We had to carry the guns down the stairs. It was exhausting.
When we finally reached the attic, I felt that my legs were made of rubber. I could barely stand up. In the dimly lit loft, the panic of the escaping ÁVH officers became obvious. The floor was covered with uniforms, torn-off rank tabs, identity cards with the photographs removed, eye glasses and other personal belongings, and, of course, guns and ammunition everywhere. I was thinking that this must have been the end of the road for them; this must have been where they made their last stand against the advancing freedom fighters. But I was wrong.
In the back of the loft, we found the copying machine on which they printed their new, fake identity cards. Dozens of discarded ÁVH cards covered the floor, and stacks of blank, unused, regular police cards stood nearby. Only the photographs were missing from the ÁVH cards. They must have reused the photos as they changed their identities. I went down on all fours to collect a few dozen of the old ÁVH cards and the new but unfinished police ID cards. As I collected the cards, I noticed a door behind the copy machine. It led to a corridor that in turn led to the attic of the next building. So that was the escape route these skunks had used. That was where the owners of the porno magazines and the gold-plated telephone had disappeared. "They went directly to Russian headquarters," said Gyurka.
We loaded three trucks with the guns collected in that building. It was about 10:00 P.M. when I finally locked that colossal door and returned to the university. I left the albums and the fake IDs in the truck, planning to look at them during our trip to Vienna. They would make good reading during the long drive. But our plans changed. As I arrived to report to Colonel Marián, I found the MEFESZ office in total chaos.
Pista's door was closed. Kati was in tears. Jancsi Danner was nowhere. "What has happened?" I asked Kati.
"Pista had a nervous breakdown. His wife got an anonymous telephone call. She was told that Pista will be hanged. So she came in to take Pista home. It was a terrible scene. She was wailing that the Russians will return, that the tanks will come again, that she does not want to be a widow, that Pista will be her murderer if he does not come home. When she left, Pista collapsed. He has locked himself in his office. He doesn't answer the phone. Right now, Jancsi Danner and Sándor Varga are substituting for him at a meeting in the ministry of defense. Imre Majoross drove them there. I am scared. I fear the worst."
"So what can we do? What can I do?"
"Well, one thing you could do is to get Pista some medication, some sedative or tranquilizer from the Tétényi Clinic."
"Well, Gyurka just left. He wanted to visit his family before we leave for Vienna. So I will have to go on foot. I'll be back as soon as I can."
My legs were so weak that I could barely stand, but I set out for the hospital anyway. It was a dark night and I was so exhausted.

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