The Bridge At Andau Part 12

Then he returned to Hungary, rolled his clothes in a ball and handed them to his son, whom he lifted high in the air for his second trip through the freezing waters of the ca.n.a.l. Again he stumbled up the steep and marshy bank and delivered his child to freedom.

Once more he sloshed his way back through the deep ca.n.a.l to lift his weary wife in his arms and bring her to safety. Not one of his family got even so much as a foot wet, and if this man lives today-it seemed doubtful when I last saw his totally blue body-he is a walking monument to the meaning of the word love.

Out of the reeds and out of the rushes, out of the mud and the muck, through the swamps and across the ca.n.a.l, over the rickety bridge they came-the finest people in Hungary. A Norwegian Red Cross woman once caught my arm as she saw them and cried, "How can a nation let such people go?"

How arrogantly they came, with honor stamped on their faces. Once I met forty-four of the most handsome, brave and c.o.c.ky young people I have ever seen. They had come from all parts of Hungary. No one had led them, no one had driven them, but from every type of home they had converged on the bridge at Andau, and as they pa.s.sed me on their way to exile I counted the things they had brought with them: these forty-four refugees had among them two girls' handbags, two brief cases and one paper bag of bread. That was how they left, in the clothes they wore.

I asked one of them, "Why did you bring so little?"

And he said, "Whatever the communists let us have, they can keep."

They came only with their honor.

The overpowering drama of this great exodus gripped me as previous evacuations had failed to do, and I went back night after night to help bring in the fugitives. Most of the stories told in this book were acquired initially at Andau. Many of the Hungarians I speak of here I first met in the night watches at Andau.

Boys like young Josef Toth, who fell wounded at the attack on the radio station, were helped here by their friends and limped to freedom. Married couples like Zoltan and Eva Pal walked to the border and escaped after their brief taste of peace. Csoki, the Little Chocolate Drop, strutted his way across the bridge, and so did Istvan Balogh, the university student-Peter Szigeti, the communist intellectual, had come out by another route. The most memorable family, of course, were the Janos Hadjoks and their crippled brother-in-law, but there were others whose stark drama shocked all who came into contact with them.

It was nearly four o'clock one wintry night when out of the mists came a man of middle size, his attractive, trim young wife and their two children. I greeted them at the edge of the bridge and said that Austria was just a few hundred yards away. To my surprise the husband said in excellent English, "That's good news." And his excited wife cried happily, "Now my two children are safe." Then the quartet pa.s.sed on to freedom with perhaps the most significant story of the evacuation, although I did not know it at the time.

For the traveler was John Santo, and soon his story was flashed around the world as indicative of what was happening in Hungary. Santo had once been secretary-treasurer of the Transport Workers of America (CIO) in New York and had been deported in 1949 on charges of being a communist. With a great flourish, Hungary had given him and his Brooklyn-born wife political asylum and then a top political position: dictator of the meat industry for all of Hungary.

His story was inevitable. He had become disillusioned with communism in practice and was now fleeing the country to seek new asylum in America, as a penitent communist who was willing to help unravel strands of the conspiracy in America. "Communism," he said, "is a dictatorship against the proletariat, against the farmers, against the former factory owners, against the aristocracy, against everyone." He had suffered the economic tyranny of the system as long as possible and had then walked out.

There were many curious aspects to this great migration. No one ever understood why the Russians allowed so many Hungarians to escape. On good days more than eight thousand walked across the border unmolested. They had been brought to points only a few miles away in trains and trucks which the Soviets could easily have intercepted, and the rumor became current: "The Russians are sending a hundred thousand spies into Austria." Certainly the bulk of the refugees moved with Russian knowledge, if not with their full approval. A likely theory developed that "the Reds have had so much trouble with Hungarians that they don't care if they all leave the country." Indeed, if the rate of exodus of the first two months had been projected into the future, Hungary would have been totally depopulated in less than eight years.

But on other days, and one never knew when this would happen, the Russians clamped down with machine guns, police dogs, phosphorous flares, road blocks, land mines and special patrols. Then either escape from Budapest or penetration of the border defenses became most difficult, and many would-be refugees either stumbled into AVO hands or were betrayed by their guides, and were sent, the survivors feared, to Siberia.

Thus one man might make the trip from Budapest in the manner of a gay excursion, whereas the next went through mud and h.e.l.l to gain freedom. It was truly said of the refugees, "Each man who crosses the border is a novel; any ten men comprise an epic."

We often suspected that the Hungarian guards along the border were fed up with the evil system of which they had to be a part. One day while I was standing at the check point directing refugees where to go as they came down the ca.n.a.l from the bridge, a father appeared with two sons, the older a strong lad of about thirteen, the younger a boy of nine. The father was a sober-faced man in a fur shako, and after all the other refugees had been allowed to pa.s.s down the ca.n.a.l footpath and into Austria, the two Hungarian guards at the check point made him remain in Hungary with his two sons.

Those of us who were watching a.s.sumed that the guards had refused permission for this man to pa.s.s, and there was a visible mood of tragedy upon us all, but finally one of the Hungarian guards, slinging his sub-machine gun over his back, came to speak in German to Claiborne Pell, an officer of the International Rescue Committee who was observing the border.

To Pell's astonishment, the guard said, "The little boy is afraid to leave Hungary until his mother gets here, too. She may never get here. Won't you see if you can get the boy to join you. It would be better if he left Hungary."

I was given the job of talking with the boy, although I knew no Hungarian, but since I had on a good overcoat the child a.s.sumed that I must be a communist official, and when I bent down to talk with him he bravely opened his shirt and raised his hands to show me that he had no weapons or official doc.u.ments hidden on his person.

I knelt on the frozen ground and put my arm about the whimpering boy. "You better come on over on this side of the line," I said. The fact that I did not strike him, that I was apparently not an official, was too much for the boy and he collapsed in my arms weeping. I said to the father, "Tell him his mother may get out later."

The father and the older boy stepped into Austria and the Hungarian guard turned his face while I carried the weeping boy to join them. I had gone only a few steps when there was a shattering explosion of machine-gun fire, and I turned back panic-stricken. Claiborne Pell was laughing. He explained, "The guard wanted the other guards back in the tower to think he was on the job. So he fired a volley into the air."

When Pell and the shakoed father had left the frontier with the two boys, the communist guard and I looked at each other for some time, and after a while he took me by the arm and led me well into Hungary, right past the observation tower with its machine guns and across the bridge. There was a woman with two children, and one of the girls was unable to walk any further. The Russians might come along at any moment, and it would be wise if the family hurried on.

So the guard hoisted the little girl and put her on my shoulder. Then he hustled the woman and the other child over the bridge and led us all back into Austria. At the border he fired another blast to let his AVO bosses know that he was on the alert, and I carried the sick little girl to freedom.

And there was one freedom fighter with no legs, and no wooden legs to replace them. This man caught a bus ride from Budapest to a point about fifteen miles from the border. These last fifteen miles he covered by pulling himself along on his hands. When we got to him the stumps of his legs were almost rubbed raw, and his hands were cut and bleeding from the frozen soil. n.o.body said much about this man, for there was nothing that words could add.

One night at Andau an extremely handsome young blond giant of twenty-four came swinging down the path, as if he had not a care in the world nor any bad memories to forget. I got to know him and found that he bore one of Hungary's n.o.blest names-something like Festetich or Tisza or Andra.s.sy or Karolyi or Esterhazy. These are names which hold no charm for me, personally, because it was partly due to the reactionary principles of such n.o.bles that Hungary was prevented from taking the necessary steps that might have forestalled communism.

But I was impressed by this young man, let's call him Esterhazy. He was able, quick-witted, good-humored and not at all disposed to feel sorry for himself. He said, "My branch of the family dates back well before the sixteenth century. We wound up with fifty peasants and four thousand holds of land near Budapest. I was only fourteen when our land was expropriated, but I understood why that had to be done. Yet when my family of six was moved into a two-room peasant cottage I found that the peasants were very good to us, even though it involved some risk. They brought us food and clothing and sat around with my father as if he were an equal friend.

"It was when I started to grow up that I appreciated what had really happened. I started college, but when they found out I was an Esterhazy, I was kicked out. I had to live surrept.i.tiously with friends, but when anyone on the street discovered that I was an Esterhazy, I had to move. My friends were willing to take the risk, but I wasn't willing to subject them to it.

"I tried to go to the university but was told, 'There is no place in Hungary for people like you.'

"I asked, 'Then can I leave Hungary and get a job in America?'

"They said, 'No. In America you would tell lies about the new Hungary.'

"When I asked, 'Then what can I do?' they gave no answer."

But because he had dared to ask about leaving Hungary-a fearful crime in a land where the leaders say everyone is happy-the AVO began to torment him and he was thrown into a forced-labor gang to work in the sugar-beet fields. I don't know whether this next statement is true, it sounds so unbelievable, but young Esterhazy said, "We were hauled out of bed at three o'clock in the morning and we worked with only one decent meal till midnight. Three hours later we were hauled back to work. This went on for three months until the AVO felt that we had been properly indoctrinated. Then we were set free.

"But we still could take no job, find no place in society. I asked in despair how I was to spend my life and they said, 'In the labor battalion.'

"My life in this army was one of long persecution. Officers would see my name and call out, 'All right, Esterhazy! You clean out the sewer.' Day after day they found joy in a.s.signing me to such jobs, but I found that my fellow workers in the labor battalion took no part in the persecution. Their att.i.tude seemed to be, 'So he's an Esterhazy. But that's no reason why he shouldn't live.' "

Yet in the revolution against the Soviets these same labor battalion men, who were among the most furious fighters, would not permit Esterhazy to aid them. "We don't want anyone to say that former n.o.blemen helped us," the fighters told him. "Wait until we have won, then things will be better for everybody."

I hesitated a long time before including the story of the young n.o.bleman. I reasoned, "If I even mention an Esterhazy the Russians will say, 'See, he wants the old regime back.' " But then I thought, "My former students in Colorado, who remember how I argued in 1938 that if the n.o.bles of Hungary did not distribute their lands there would have to be revolution, will know that I never had much sympathy for the Festetichs and Esterhazys." I was glad to find that young Esterhazy did not have too much sympathy for them, either.

For the important aspect of this story was that the young man I met at Andau was a marvelous human being. He could have made a fine engineer, or a good professor, or an excellent manager of a freight office. He had an affinity for machines, taught himself German and French, seemed to be promising in mathematics. No one I know in Hungary wants to put young Count Esterhazy back in control of his 1938 peasants, or even to restore to him his four thousands holds of land near Budapest. Those days are gone, and he knew it better than I.

But for a society conscientiously to degrade human beings because of their accidental birth is disgraceful. For any nation to deprive itself of the capacities of any man is really a sin against the entire society. And if a system not only refuses to use native capacities but establishes a regime for stunting or destroying those capacities, then such a regime is doomed.

Young Esterhazy played no part in organizing or operating the revolution. That was done by others who were disgusted with the way their nation in all its aspects was being criminally abused. When I last saw Esterhazy he was on his way to Great Britain. "Maybe plastics or automotive engineering or electronics," he said. "Anything that's useful to the world."

No matter how long one stayed at the border, he was constantly surprised. One night a Hungarian man of thirty who spoke English helped me with translations and I sought to repay his kindness.

"Do you need any money?" I asked him as dawn came over the frozen marshes.

"Not money," he replied. "But I have always wanted to see the Vienna opera."

"You shall, tonight."

Like everyone else, he had come out with one suit, but somehow that first day he got it pressed, and as we entered the bright new building of the Vienna opera he said, "I've heard about this new production of Carmen. In Budapest we were hungry for any news of European art."

"What new production?" I asked.

"Vienna has hired a brilliant young Russian, Georges Wakhewitsch, to design a completely new Carmen. It's supposed to be glorious."

When the curtain rose, Wakhewitsch's Carmen hit me right in the eye. It was dazzling. First, the designer had built on the stage several complete houses with roof-top patios, and large plazas hung midway between the village street and the roofs, so that action took place on three levels. Next he had dressed literally hundreds of extras and chorus members in brilliant costumes, so that as the action swirled about the stage, there was a constantly changing kaleidoscope of color harmonies. Finally he had arranged the opera so that there was a great ebb and flow of human beings, more than I had ever dreamed Carmen could accommodate.

Wakhewitsch's Carmen was not a Spanish opera, but it was grand opera. Micaela was a winsome little German girl down from the Alps in a dirndl. The big blond chorus girls were German girls come to Seville from Munich. And the pace of the opera was heavily deliberate, with the best notes hung onto by both orchestra and singers until the spirit of the action was lost.

"I don't mind the words being sung in German," my Hungarian whispered. "Gives a kind of Spanish effect." I agreed with him. They sounded more Iberian than the customary French words.

And I thought that Wakhewitsch had been downright brilliant in his staging of the toreador's song, during which the top tier of the stage was filled with Spanish dandies dressed all in black and lighting the song with dozens of candles. My refugee thought the third act was best, when no footlights of any kind were used, only traveling spots which followed the princ.i.p.al figures from above and made Carmen's song of fate and death immensely powerful.

In the intermission following this gloomy act my Hungarian said quietly, "You cannot know what it means to come back into the full world of art. A modern production of Carmen. How we used to long for communication with the rest of Europe." He sat literally bathed in the joy of hearing Bizet, and toward the end of the intermission he said, "And to see as my first opera one in which a new artist is trying to accomplish something new. This is very exciting."

But neither of us was prepared for the last act of this bright new Carmen. From Bizet's Fair Maid of Perth the music for an extensive ballet had been lifted, and now as the curtains parted we were thrust into the middle of Seville. The entire depth of the stage was used, several house fronts having been built, and the rim of a complete bull ring. To the left a chorus of many Spaniards stood vocalizing the borrowed music, while from the distant rear of the immense stage at least sixty ballerinas approached from so far away that they looked like children. After them came sixteen separate groups of bullfighters, followed by officials, townspeople, hangers-on and finally Escamillo and Carmen. And from the rafters that crossed his stage, Wakhewitsch had hung some two dozen great chunks of cloth in brilliant colors, draped like bullfighters' capes. It was an overpowering scene and prepared one for the magnitude of the final tragedy.

If the reader is surprised that I have interrupted my account of the revolution so long to speak of Carmen, I would say only this. Those of us who met the refugees at the border or in Vienna were unprepared for the spiritual hunger with which these people wanted to talk about art and ideas, about politics and the nature of man's experience. One of the most promising aspects of the Hungarian revolution was that it was initiated by men who wanted the human spirit to be inquiring and free. They wanted the simple rights of talk, and honest newspapers, and respect for differing opinions.

The aspect of the revolution which surprised me most was the profound longing with which Hungarian intellectuals wanted to return to the community of European nations. Many spoke of this with fervor. "Of all that Russia robbed us of," my chance interpreter said that night, "the most precious was communication with our fellow citizens of Europe." Shortly before the revolution broke out, a Hungarian poet, Tamas Aczel, expressed this longing in his "Ode to Europe," pa.s.sages of which have been translated as follows: Europe, our common mother, we return to thee.

Set an example, show us how, As you have done for centuries ...

Be with us, Europe, Common fate, love, work, future.

Oh, beating heart, pure truth To plow, to sow, to harvest, to die and rise again a thousand times.

After the opera my companion observed, "The intellectuals inspired the students and the students inspired the workingmen from Csepel. But do you know why the students felt they had to revolt? Because whenever they wanted to read one of the world's important books they were forbidden. But they were free to read some communist's critique of the book. I know what communism thinks is wrong with Schopenhauer. But I don't know Schopenhauer. Only what some third-rate communist thought about him.

"For example, Georges Wakhewitsch is a White Russian. I'm sure that in Budapest I could have read everything that was wrong with his version of Carmen. It would have been a corrupt capitalist work that offended the great soul of the workingman. I like things better the way you do them in Vienna. You don't lecture me about what's wrong with Carmen. You let me see for myself.

"Does all my talk about Carmen bore you?" the refugee asked finally. "You don't know how wonderful it is to be able to sit here with a gla.s.s of beer and talk. And if discussing Carmen leads you to get mad at Eisenhower or Bulganin, you can say so, and n.o.body arrests you. How delightful it is to let talk lead on to new ideas. In Budapest if you talked about Carmen you always stopped with the music, and even then you had to be careful to say what was accepted at that moment."

If Americans forget that Hungary rebelled against communism primarily because the young people of the nation wanted intellectual freedom, we would miss one of the focal truths of this revolution. We must remember that there are men in this world who are willing to fight for the right to read newspapers and to argue about what has been said. There were young men in Budapest who laid down their lives because they wanted to return to a system in which a man could sit with friends over a gla.s.s of beer and let the wild flow of ideas lead where it would.

At one camp near Andau, a Catholic priest visited a group of refugee students and asked, "Now that you are free, would you like me to conduct religious services here next Sunday?"

The boys were embarra.s.sed, but finally one said, "Father, we thought we'd just sit around and talk."

The priest understood and laughed: "Yes ... after so much silence."

The climax at Andau came on Wednesday, November 21, when the maximum number of refugees came into Austria across the Einser Ca.n.a.l. It was a cold, crystal day of memorable beauty, and thousands of Hungarians sought refuge. They resembled the procession of prisoners who march into daylight from the dungeon in Beethoven's Fidelio.

Then, as dusk fell, there was an ominous halt to the procession. Figures already on the ca.n.a.l bank pa.s.sed us ... but no more came. A whispered rumor flashed down the ca.n.a.l: "The AVO have arrived." There was a silent half hour as cold winds from the marshes moaned through the bare branches of the white birches that lined the ca.n.a.l, and those of us who were watching tried to penetrate the faltering light to see what was happening at the bridge.

Suddenly there was a dull, distant garrrummmph! We peered into the darkness and saw nothing, but a refugee who had been waiting for a chance to escape came rushing down the ca.n.a.l bank shouting, "They dynamited the bridge!"

In order to find out how much damage had been done, two daring spies wormed their way along the ca.n.a.l and well into Hungary. By the dim light of flares which the guards in the watchtower were using they saw that the bridge at Andau had indeed been destroyed. The two rude pillars on either bank were standing, and part of the bridge itself, the southern span, if so inconsequential a bridge could be thought of as having spans, had been blown apart. Gloomily the spies confirmed the bad news. "The bridge can't be used."

Night now enveloped us, and we thought of the thousands of refugees who were huddling in chilled groups throughout the Hungarian swamps. They were only a few feet from freedom, seeking desperately some way to cross that final barrier of the ca.n.a.l and the steep banks they must negotiate before reaching Austria. But the bridge was useless, and unless some alternative was discovered quickly, these refugees would be stranded in sight of freedom but powerless to attain it.

The moon rose over the silent ca.n.a.l. Frost grew mysteriously on the frozen marshes and reeds crackled when a man walked through them. We were about to experience one of the fabled white nights of Central Europe, when the birches and the shimmering icy swamp and the pale, powdery moon combined to make one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in nature. This was not only my opinion; five different war-toughened reporters from countries around the world reported the same fact. The silence of this magnificent night, following the joyful chatter of the day, created an atmosphere of almost unbearable emotional intensity.

For several hours we listened in real agony as the escape route remained empty ... the great flood of humanity finally cut off. I cannot explain the pain we felt that strange night, for in contrast to the empty footpaths, the heavens were a thing of crowded glory. There was a shining harvest moon, a wealth of stars, a white glaze over the world. The night was bitter cold and had therefore precipitated a h.o.a.rfrost that covered both the rushes to the south and the Austrian swamps to the north. But most memorable of all was the tragic silence, for where there had been the laughter and uncontrolled joy of people finding safety from communism, now there was only silence.

Toward midnight a brave team of three Austrian college students decided that something must be done, and they lugged logs into Hungary and repaired the dynamited bridge-not well, but enough for a precarious foothold-and by this means they saved more than two thousand people that night alone.

They were just college kids with earm.u.f.fs and no caps, but they had abundant courage, for after their wet clothes had frozen on them, they crossed their own improvised bridge and combed the Hungarian swamps, dodging communist guards and Russian outposts. They led many refugees to their bridge, and we marveled at their daring.

Then came the floods! Hundreds upon hundreds of refugees came across the frail footbridge. They would come down the ca.n.a.l bank in an excess of joy, having found rescue when all seemed lost. They would hear the Austrian students cry, "This is Austria!" and they would literally collapse with gladness.

But as they walked along the ca.n.a.l bank, another more cautious student would warn them, "Don't walk on the bank. It's still Hungary, Russians have been shooting at the silhouettes." And the refugees would climb down the bank and fan out across the frozen, snow-white marshes of Austria. One aspect of their flight had given them a weird, ethereal being: they had come so many miles through the crisp night air that h.o.a.rfrost had formed on their backs, and they looked like bent-over snow men from a fairy tale. Mists rose from the bitter cold ground and enveloped them, but still they moved on under the silvery November moon, like ghost figures from another world, walking neither in time nor in s.p.a.ce but in freedom.

I have never seen anything more beautiful. Not only was nature dressed in cold perfection, but the emotion of that starry night was beyond the capacity of a man to absorb. Once a woman nearly fainting from hunger and exhaustion came down the trail and I thought she was going to collapse, but when she heard the word "Austria!" she summoned up her last energy and rushed across the line. There, as if by some supremely appropriate accident, she ran into Barrett McGurn, who had done so much to explain Hungary's plight to the world. In his arms she collapsed, kissing him a dozen times on the forehead and cheeks and lips.

"Oh, G.o.d! I reached Austria!" she cried.

McGurn, who had been on the border for hours, handed her on to an Austrian student, who carried her to safety. "I can't take any more," McGurn said, and he trailed off through the mists, through the frozen marshes of Austria.

It was at this time that I met a brave and daring photographer whose pictures helped tell the story of Hungary's ma.s.s flight to freedom. He would go anywhere, and for the next several nights we patrolled the border together, bringing in hundreds of Hungarians.* Sometimes we went well into Hungary, occasionally up to the bridge and always with an ear c.o.c.ked for that sweetest of night sounds, the soft, tentative calls of men and women seeking freedom.

One very cold night we were on the watch when toward dawn we heard curious sounds coming from the temporary bridge. We crept up as close as we dared and saw a revolting sight. The communist guards, well liquored up, were chopping down the bridge and burning it to keep their feet warm. Then, as we crouched there observing them, we witnessed a tragedy that neither of us will ever forget.

A band of some thirty refugees, led by a man in a fur cap, appeared mysteriously out of the Hungarian swamps and walked directly toward the drunken guards. These unlucky people had no way of knowing that the bridge was no longer a route to freedom, and we were powerless to stop them. Quickly the guards grabbed their rifles and dogs, and the last refugees to reach the bridge at Andau were rounded up and carted off to prison. They had walked no one knew how far and had come to within fifty feet of freedom. Heartsick, the photographer and I crept back with the sound of communist axes in our ears, and by the time we reached the corner of Austria the bridge at Andau had forever vanished.

But there was to be one final miracle. Long after the bridge had burned and when AVO policemen and Russians with trained dogs patrolled the routes, a night came when freezing rains had made the swamps totally impa.s.sable and even the teams of Austrian students gave up hope. But a beautiful young English newspaperwoman, Sh.e.l.ley Rohde of the Daily Express, went out for one last midnight look.

She walked along the dike, past the rush fields and the swamps and into Hungary to where the bridge of freedom had once stood. It was a cold, quiet night, broken only by the chatter of a machine gun somewhere back in the swamps or lighted for a moment by star sh.e.l.ls of flaming phosphorus which the Russians used for trapping escapees unexpectedly. Miss Rohde had taken a few mental notes describing this desolate land of swamps and had started back toward Andau when she heard off in the distance the crying of a baby.

She was alone, but the crying was so insistent that she went, at rather great peril to herself, in pursuit of the wailing night sounds. By great good luck the baby's mother could not silence it, and before long Miss Rohde came upon a group of twenty-two starving, water-soaked, freezing refugees. They had tried to penetrate the Hungarian swamps without a guide, and when this Englishwoman found them, they had been wallowing for two days in a great circle. They had been in Austria once, but had not known it, and were now heading directly back into a Russian encampment.

They were in such condition that they no longer cared whether the baby betrayed them or not. They only wanted to escape the swamp. Whether escape led to freedom in Austria or to prison in Hungary they did not care, for they had spent two days floundering in mud up to their waists and some of them had begun to freeze to death. It was then that the baby had begun its final, before-death wailing, and it was then that an English newspaperwoman decided to take one last look.

The nearly two hundred thousand refugees who reached Austria-it is significant that less than five hundred fled to communist Yugoslavia, which also borders on Hungary-arrived in three clearly defined waves. My experience at Andau, as I have indicated, was almost exclusively with the middle wave-mostly young people, carrying nothing, but containing a surprisingly high percentage of engineers and well-trained technicians. They were, as I have said, the elite of the nation and of the revolution. Already their loss is being felt in the Hungarian economy, and as the years pa.s.s, the loss in leadership which they might have exercised will also be detectable. This second group was as fine a body of people as I have ever seen.

The first wave, which I did not see, had a much different construction. A Hungarian sociologist, who left Budapest after the fall of Csepel and later returned surrept.i.tiously, defined this small but very lively first group as follows: "There were a good many prost.i.tutes, who throughout the world seem to have a fine sense of when to move where. The rest of us were fooled by the days of peace, but not these girls. They saw a chance to get out of a doomed city, and they left. Then there were the young adventurers, boys and girls of unstable homes who had always heard of the bright lands to the west. They left us like children in a fairy story going off in search of adventure. Finally, in those first days, there were many cowards who could not face up to the requirements of a free Hungary. Few of us who stayed in Budapest to fight the returning Russians felt any sense of loss at all when those first people left us. But we did feel resentment, and we continue to feel it. It was Hungary's misfortune that her first representatives abroad were such people. I think the countries which took in these particular Hungarian refugees are going to have a lot of trouble with them, and I feel sorry that they accepted such amba.s.sadors. The good name of all of us will suffer."

Fortunately, the first wave was not large and its members will probably do less harm than Hungarian patriots fear. I came into no direct contact with this group, but I did often hear bitter complaints against them. Said one later refugee with a good battle record, "What can you say for a man who fled Hungary before the Russians returned? One word. Coward." In having my written words checked and corrected by Hungarian experts, I encountered the depth of feeling these first refugees had aroused. I had described a young man who left Budapest at the height of the temporary victory, and one critic said, "Please, sir, change this. No decent Hungarian left when we had a chance to win." I checked my notes and insisted, "It says so right here. I remember what he said." My critic studied for a moment and drew a line through the pa.s.sage. "If he behaved in that way, it's better we don't even mention him."

It was the third wave that brought in the most refugees and the most problems. In considering this particular group it would be well to keep in mind the unofficial estimates of certain Austrian immigration officials. "Counting all refugees, including those who slipped in without registering, we will probably wind up with around two hundred thousand. Of these, the first wave of adventurous young people numbered not more than three thousand, and they quickly found homes abroad. They're gone and forgotten. The second wave of real refugees, like the ones you saw at Andau, totaled about twenty-five thousand. But remember, even of this select group not more than two thousand had played any vital role in the revolution. That leaves around one hundred and seventy thousand who came out in the third wave, and practically none of them ever fired upon a Russian or committed himself in any way during the revolution. You've seen them. They're fine, clean, healthy, middle-cla.s.s people who hated communism and saw a good chance to escape. No doubt many of them had wanted to get out ten years ago. This was their chance."

I imagine that the Austrian's figures were correct: about two hundred thousand refugees ultimately, of whom about one per cent partic.i.p.ated actively in the revolution. This points up the difference between the second wave of refugees like those I had met at Andau and the third. Members of the former were apt to have had some connection with the revolution (although even among this group the percentage of actual fighters could not have been higher than two thousand among twenty-five thousand) and many fled Hungary because to have remained behind would have been to invite execution or deportation to slave labor camps in Russia. Members of the third wave neither partic.i.p.ated in the revolution nor had any reprisals to fear therefrom.

A second difference is more important, even though it grows logically out of the first. True revolutionaries from the second wave who can prove fighting records against the Russians may one day be welcomed back into a free Hungary and might even partic.i.p.ate in the government of the country. But members of the third wave who left primarily because they felt they could better themselves abroad will probably never be welcomed back into their homeland. Moreover, if they persist in returning, they could play no part in any foreseeable future government of Hungary.

It was of these later escapees that Representative Omar Burleson of Texas complained when he said, "America is heaping honors befitting a hero upon Hungarians who are deserting those who are willing to remain behind to carry on their fight for independence from the Soviet Union. We know little or nothing about these people who are being admitted. It would be interesting to know how many of those leaving Hungary were really 'revolutionaries' in the first place."

I do not share Representative Burleson's fears, for although it is true, as I have explained above, that only one percent were fighters in the revolution (two thousand out of about two hundred thousand), nevertheless, many of the remaining ninety-nine per cent were honest seekers after freedom who supported the actual fighters spiritually, and they merit the attention and the sanctuary the world has given them.

However, the friends of Hungary must not underestimate the bitterness felt by those who stayed and fought toward those who fled, particularly against those who scuttled out for personal economic reasons during the third wave. This resentment could be of importance in subsequent political decisions regarding Hungary, and refugees themselves were quick to realize this. Even those unquestioned patriots of the second wave, men who had fought valiantly and who had fled to save their lives, were aware of the dangerous step they had taken. Often they told me, "We left Hungary in its hour of crisis. We will never be welcomed back. Those braver ones who stayed behind will inherit the new Hungary."

Later these refugees tried to rationalize away their first reactions. "Maybe those of us who can prove we fought will be welcomed back," they reasoned. I rather think their first fears were correct. Hungarians who remained in Budapest and who bore the full brunt of Russian fury will be the eventual rulers of their country, and although it is possible that under extenuating circ.u.mstances they might accept partic.i.p.ation from their brothers who fled, for them to accept guidance from the refugees who will sit out the great storms of the future in some haven like France or America is unthinkable.

One refugee with a very good record in the 1956 revolution lamented, "The only way for me to work my way back into Hungarian life is with a sub-machine gun as a volunteer patriot when the next revolution occurs. That's the only way I can establish my credentials. I'll never do it by talking. Especially if I do my talking from safety in France or America."

Americans must understand this, for we are p.r.o.ne to uncover refugees whom we like-especially if they had t.i.tles or ran big businesses-and to a.s.sume that the citizens of other lands are ungrateful if they don't like them too. We set up our self-chosen governments-in-exile, and condemn as radicals those who remain behind and won't accept them. Refugee Hungarians in New York and Chicago, no matter how attractive they may be at c.o.c.ktail parties, are not going to run the new Hungary when it evolves.

We really ought to stop this nonsense. Hungary will not be governed by refugees of our choosing; it will be governed by those hard-headed young men who stayed in the universities and in Csepel and who matured with the events of their own national society. What happened in the case of Ferenc Nagy should be a warning to well-intentioned Americans.

For several years Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian official, has lived in the United States as a kind of unofficial spokesman for his fatherland. He has done a great deal of good in reminding America of Hungarian problems, and has been an able defender of the Hungarian point of view. He became "the Hungarian whom Americans could trust."

When the revolution broke out, Ferenc Nagy was flown posthaste to Vienna, where he started issuing statements and instructions. The reaction from the revolutionary leaders in Budapest was explosive. One message said simply, "If Nagy doesn't get out of Austria within twenty-four hours, we'll shoot him." The Austrian government, which itself had been plagued by several would-be governments-in-exile, many contaminated with former n.a.z.i collaborators, was glad for this excuse to get Ferenc Nagy off its soil, and gave him twenty-four hours to leave. As one Hungarian patriot said, "We weren't mad at Nagy Ferenc. We just didn't want him meddling in our government."