The past one hundred years or so, can be quickly summarised for the reader by presenting you with this quick Hungarian history lesson. But at the end of the day, this is the story of exactly why my father decided to take the family and flee to Ohio, hence the narrative explanation of fait accompli.  

  On November 4th, 1956, Soviet forces launched a major attack on the Hungarian People's Republic, aimed at crushing a spontaneous national rebellion, which had been set in motion 12 days prior. Colloquially known as the 'Hungarian Uprising', the internal, countrywide revolution began, denizens calling out the government over their acts of subordination to the Soviet Union.

  The entire situation had been played out on the streets of Budapest, while the West was preoccupied by developments in the Middle East and focused on the emerging crisis in the Suez Canal. The United States were also reluctant to send reinforcements to the democratic rebellion, as neither troops nor nuclear weapons could be deployed to the Russian territories without the possibility of extending the conflict far beyond its original scope.

  The George Washington University houses papers from American intelligence organisations, as part of a series of studies of conditions in Warsaw Pact countries, which provide evidence of the U.S. military’s 'active search' for ways to exploit the vulnerabilities of regimes in Eastern Europe.

  “Hungary is singularly unpromising” as a potential special operations area, or so the author's determined. Geographic obstacles - the country is described as mostly “a flat plain” offering “few evasion possibilities" - and the notably low level of active resistance, compared with other East European countries, were the main reasons given.

  Superpower politics aside, there were clearly very practical considerations preventing an American military or paramilitary operation in Hungary in 1956. Far from contemplating intervention in Hungary during the uprising, Eisenhower worried instead about inflaming the situation, possibly to the point of general war with the Soviet Union.

  The conflict, however, demonstrated an emerging political dissent in the Eastern Bloc. The death of Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, in 1953, had served as a catalyst for bringing divisions within the international communist party to light.  A brief struggle followed, which led to the rise to power in the USSR of Nikita S. Khrushchev. 

  In February, the new leader denounced the policies of his predecessor, calling for the "de-Stalinisation" of Soviet policy. In the wake of this proclamation from Moscow, protests broke out in the Soviet satellite states of Poland and Hungary, both demanding social and economic reforms.

  Dissidence or disaffection with the communist regime, was widespread in Hungary. Hungarian nationalism was anti-Slav, anti-Romanian, anti-Czechoslovakian, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist. It was also Christian, pro-German (as the lesser of two evils) and pro-Western, consisting of a deeply ingrained sense of the historic role of Hungary as a Christian nation and an outpost of Western civilisation and culture.

  Although many fundamental and largely irreconcilable differences remained between Hungarian mentality and German character, the cultural affinity of the two peoples were based on a common Western heritage. Hungarian animosity toward Romania and Czechoslovakia, was an expression of revisionist ambition to regain some of the territories lost to these countries by the World War II settlement.

  In contrast with some of the other satellites, Hungary has no territorial issues to settle with Germany. But Communism was diametrically opposed to every element of Hungarian nationalism. The Sovietisation of Hungarian society and culture, the rejection of Hungarian revisionist ambitions, the disproportionate number of Jews in high official positions, the savage attempts to collectivise the peasants and the persecution of religion, were forceful illustrations that Communism was the very antithesis of Hungarian nationalism. 

  After WWII, Hungarian revisionist ambitions were completely thwarted. If one were to believe the claims of 'émigré organisations' and the reports of the Communist press, there had been a considerable amount of organised, active resistance of the covert variety. However, there was no organised underground movement or activity of the postwar period. What there was had been poorly organised and haphazard.

  So the anti-communist and patriotic uprising started on October 23rd, 1956, in Budapest, with peaceful demonstrations by university students and their sympathisers. Amongst them was my father’s nephew, Mihály Kelemen. His brother, Áron, was doing military service in the Hungarian National Army.

  The students called for political independence, the end of the communist dictatorship and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. They also demanded the removal of Ernő Gerő as leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, to be replaced by former Premier, Imre Nagy.

  Encouraged by the new freedom of debate and criticism - and with the rising tide of unrest and discontent in Hungary - the students appealed to the civil populace to join them at the ‘Hungarian Parliament Building’, to protest against the USSR's geopolitical domination of their country. 

  The peaceful protest turned into a full-fledged revolution, largely as a result of the ill-considered response of the Hungarian authorities, ordering their internal security forces (and Soviet troops stationed in Hungary) to use firepower against the crowds.

  Although the movement demanding change began with urban intellectuals, it soon spread across the country to capture the support of workers and peasants. In some towns outside of Budapest, unarmed demonstrators were also met by fusillades, with scores of dead. 

  The crowd in Budapest's Stalin Square had swelled to around 100,000. Thousands of overalled demonstrators converged on the 26 foot high statue of Stalin , shouting and yelling out that it was a symbol of tyranny. Efforts to pull down the monument with cables failed, but the huge red star that decorated the roof of a trade union building, just opposite, was successfully knocked down. 

  Panicking that the protests were spiralling out of control, Gerő, ordered troops to quell the demonstrations. Hungarian soldiers initially resisted cracking down on their fellow citizens, but as the surprise rebellion became more violent, Hungarian police opened fire.

  The days events reached their climax, following a surprise broadcast from Gerő, citing reports out of Hungary concerning the loosening of ties with the Soviet Union as “lies and rumours”. At this the crowd forced its way towards the State radio building, and the police began to use teargas. All radio and telephone communications between Budapest and the west were cut off.

  The following day, Gerő requested Soviet assistance and Russian troops arrived early on October 24th. Protests continued, despite the arrival of USSR forces, with the loss of more lives and significant injuries.

  On October 26th, in the hope of ending the spread of the violence, the Central Committee of the Communist Party called for the formation of a new coalition government, headed by the reform communist, Nagy. Rebels had won the first phase of the revolution and Gerő was removed from power altogether. 

  Nagy began the task of liberalising government rule in the country, agreeing to establish a multiparty system. On October 30th, he declared Hungarian neutrality, announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and appealed to the United Nations for support. He further called for free elections, greater independence from Soviet control and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

  The following day, responding to news of a Hungarian multi-party system, the Soviet Party’s Presidium, led by Khrushchev, decided to intervene and crush the revolution once and for all, ordering the invasion of by now peaceful Hungary, by fresh Soviet forces. Nagy was accused of inciting a counterrevolution and on the night of November 3rd, approximately 60,000 Soviet troops and 2,000 tanks, entered Hungary and surrounded the capital.

  The Soviet attack under the code name “whirlwind” commenced on November 4th, the directive  firmly to crush the resistance in Budapest. Vicious street fighting broke out. At 5:20am, Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35-second broadcast, declaring; “Our troops are fighting. The Government is in place.” 

  Within hours, however, Nagy had sought asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest.

  At 8am, Soviet troops moved against Budapest with great force and crushed the remainder of the rebellion in the capital city. The Soviet High Command in Hungary ordered Nagy’s Government to surrender by noon, or Budapest would be bombed. Soviet armoured forces then went into action. 

  Just after 1pm Moscow radio announced; “The Hungarian counter-revolution has been crushed.”

  Over the next few days, 2,500 Partisan Hungarians were killed by Red Army troops (fifty percent of them under thirty) with close to 20,000 wounded. 669 Soviet Army soldiers also lost their lives (1,500 wounded). Hundreds of thousands more fled to the West, seeking political asylum.

  Once the old order was restored, the repressions started. The courts handed down 22,000 prison sentences of various lengths and around 300 ‘leaders’ were arrested then executed for  their participation in the revolution. 

  On November 22nd, Nagy’s replacement, János Kádár, was flown secretly from Moscow to the city of Szolnok, 60 miles southeast of the capital and prepared to take power with Moscow’s backing. Soviet authorities apprehended Nagy. He was executed two years later.

  The return of the pre-1956 totalitarian system of communist dictatorship, with renewed Soviet colonialism and repression, forced 200,000 Hungarians to escape from Hungary during the rest of November and December (while the borders had not yet been secured by the reconstituted border police). Some escaped to Yugoslavia, but most to Austria.

  Responsibility for solving the huge refugee problem that developed in Austria, fell on the shoulders of the Western democracies, including the United States. Even though the Cold War policy was predicated on the rollback of communism, the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution caught the US off-guard. Short of starting a major war with the Soviet Union, it became evident that the liberation policy was a failure. 

  In the US itself, the uprising was the first such event that was televised in the family living room, from its outbreak to its end. It left a deep impression on the mind of millions of viewers, generating an outpouring of enormous sympathy, which was reflected in the media. 

  Thus, the January 7th, 1957, edition of Time magazine named the “Hungarian Freedom Fighter”, as the ‘man’ of the year.

  The Eisenhower Administration found a quick resolution to the Suez Crisis and beyond leading UN calls to condemn the Soviet actions in both Hungary and Poland (with secret concerns also, regarding the Russian interest in Egypt), did create a special immigration quota, for refugees from the communist crackdown.

  By May 1957, 30,000 of these refugees were allowed to enter and had settled in the United States. Their shared experience of living under communism and participating (or being a witness, to) the thirteen days of the revolution, gave them a collective identity. Their sudden, previously unplanned, departure from the homeland was something my mother often talked about.

  They were different from previous waves of Hungarian influx to the United States. Most of the new breed adjusted to their new life in America, without much difficulty. Some retained a dual identity, others - like my family (father particularly) - lost their ties to the old country and became quickly acculturated to their new beginnings.

  My father and our family…

  As my father used to say though, “being Hungarian can sometimes carry it’s own curse”, or words to that effect. This was also based on his philosophy that during WWII, Hungary had been so emancipated over such a long period of time, by so many dictatorships, that a fervently patriotic population, under less duress, didn’t really know who they were anymore…or where they belonged!

  “Most importantly,” he’d mutter, “they couldn't decide whose side they were on!”

  The Kingdom of Hungary - as established in 1920 - had been a government based on an unstable alliance of nationalist and fiercely anti-communist conservatives and right-wingers. ‘Revisionism’ of the Trianoni békeszerződés (Treaty of Trianon), which had formally ended WWI, was paramount to the new government, under the rule of Regent Miklós Horthy.

  The treaty had regulated the status of the Kingdom of Hungary (owing largely to it’s involvement in initiating a global conflict) and redefined its borders, generally within the ceasefire lines as established in November–December of 1918. This left a new Hungary as a landlocked state, with just 28% of the 325,411 kms2 which had constituted the pre-war Kingdom. 

  The truncated nation had a population of 7.6 million (36% compared to pre-war). 3.3 million Hungarians had now became minorities in foreign countries. The treaty further limited Hungary's army to 35,000 officers and men. The Austro-Hungarian Navy even ceased to exist. In addition, Hungary had to pay war reparations to its neighbours. 

  The treaty conditions were dictated by the Entente Powers (France, UK, USA, Italy) rather than negotiated and the Hungarian’s had no real option but to accept terms. Till this day, the decisions and the consequences of the principally French-led treaty and it’s governance have been the cause of deep resentment in Hungary.

  The Hungarian delegation had signed the treaty under protest and agitation for its revision began almost immediately. On 29th February, 1920, a coalition of right-wing political forces united and returned Hungary to the status of a constitutional Kingdom.

  Miklós Horthy, the last commanding admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was chosen to represent the monarchy, with Sándor Simonyi-Semadam the first Prime Minister of the new regency. 

  It was obvious however, that the WWI Allies would not accept any return of the German Habsburg Monarchy and Horthy’s leadership was never officially recognised, outside of Hungary. 

  From then, until 1944, Hungary was a rightist country, forged out of a counter-revolutionary heritage, with its governments advocating a ‘nationalist Christian’ policy. They enthusiastically eulogised heroism, faith and unity. They despised the French Revolution and they spurned all liberal and socialist ideologies of the 19th century. 

  This new anti-communist, authoritarian government (of hand-picked military officers) saw Hungary as a wall of fortification against bolshevism, socialism, cosmopolitanism and Freemasonry. They perpetrated the rule of a small clique of aristocrats; civil servants, army officers, lionising the head of the state, the counterrevolutionary leader, Admiral Horthy.

  Known as the ‘white terror’, White Guard, counter-revolutionary soldiers used repressive violence when seeking out any opposer’s to the Horthy regime. They imprisoned, tortured and/or executed without trial, many communists, socialists, middle-class Jews, leftist intellectuals or sympathiser’s and any others who threatened the traditional Hungarian political order, that the officers sought to reestablish.

  The right wing extremists of both the Hungarian and Romanian forces targeted Jews for retribution and forced 100,000 people to leave the country.

  Over the next twenty years, The Kingdom of Hungary leaned on its relationship with Germany, to overcome some of the grievances of the 'Treaty of Trianon'. In 1938, Hungary openly repudiated the treaty's restrictions on its armed forces. 

  With German help, Hungary extended its territory four times and doubled in size from 1938 to 1941. Parts of southern Slovakia were regained in 1938 (including a short war between the two countries), Carpatho-Ukraine followed in 1939, northern Transylvania in 1940 and parts of Vojvodina in 1941.

  

  Adolf Hitler's assistance did not come without a price. After 1938, the Führer used promises of additional territories, economic pressure and threats of military intervention, to pressure the Hungarians into supporting his policies. These stratagems included those related to Hungarian Jews and local anti-semitism was ripe and encouraged. In Hungary, Jews comprised over 8% of the population and the governing powers imposed an alternative to military service.

  Conscripted by the German-allied Hungarian regime, Labour Battalions sprang up all over Hungary, also including 130,000 men fighting at the Eastern Front in occupied Ukraine, where most died. The commanders of these forced labour camps often treated the Jewish interns with extreme cruelty, abuse, and brutality.

  Men who worked in mine quarries were frequently pushed to their deaths off the man-made cliffs and embankments. The gendarmes and Army personnel involved were mostly members of the anti-Semitic, fascist Arrow Cross Party (Hungary’s equivalent of the German Nazi Party). In fact, by the June elections of 1939, Hungarian public opinion had shifted so far to the right that voters gave the Arrow Cross Party  the second highest number of votes. 

  The percentage of Hungarian Jews in business, finance and the professions, far exceeded the percentage of Jews in the overall population. After the Great Depression struck, anti-semite’s made them scapegoats for Hungary's economic downfall. The global economic crisis of 1929 had put an end to the prosperity which had characterised the national economy since the mid-1920s.

  Despite having been greatly reduced in size following WWI, due to its agricultural efficiency, Hungary still exported more wheat than any other State in Europe. When the depression hit, world wheat prices collapsed and Hungary - who depended on the export of wheat - plunged into a deficit.

 The revival of the economy was due largely to the controls set on inflation and a bilateral trade agreement signed with Germany in 1934. The agreement gave Hungary a secure market for its wheat exports, along with prices, which made selling to Germany more advantageous to Hungary than selling the wheat on the world market.

 

  In September 1940, the Hungarian government allowed German troops to transit the country on their way to Romania and on November 20th, Prime Minister, Count Pál János Ede Teleki de Szék,  signed the Tripartite (or Berlin) Pact, which allied Hungary with Germany, Italy and Japan (Romania and Bulgaria), in a defensive military alliance known as Axis. The move cemented Hungary’s involvement in the Second World War.

  On April 6th, 1941, the Royal Hungarian Army participated in the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia. On June 22nd, they were involved in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. Hungarian units suffered tremendous losses during the German defeat at Stalingrad, on the eastern front, in 1942–1943. 

  After these crippling blows, Hungarian Admiral Miklos Horthy and new Prime Minister, Miklos Kallay, recognised that Germany would likely lose the war. Fearful of the Red Army's occupation of Hungary, the government unsuccessfully sought an armistice with the Allies, which was a betrayal of the Axis powers. 

  On March 12th, 1944, the Nazis launched Operation Margarethe and established the 'Nazi Government of National Unity of Hungary'. German forces began an occupation of Hungary on March 19th. Horthy was confined to a castle and placed under house arrest.

  Kallay was dismissed and the openly Germanophile, General Dome Sztojay was installed. With his fanatically pro-German stance, he committed Hungary to continuing the war effort and cooperated with the Nazi’s in the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Sztójay governed with the aid of a German military governor, Edmund Veesenmayer.

  SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann was chief of the team of ‘deportation experts' and with the co-operation of said Hungarian authorities, police carried out roundups and forced Jews onto deportation trains.

  Urban Jews were enclosed in ghetto’s and compelled to wear a yellow star, robbed of their property, before their own incarceration in the death camps in other Nazi-occupied areas. In less than two months, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz. 550,000 of Hungary’s 800,000 Jews perished during the war.

  Besides this single atrocity, the Germans did whatever else took their fancy; suppressing parties and organisations of potential opponents and arresting their leaders. The Hungarian populace was not happy with their nation effectively reduced to a German protectorate, but Berlin threatened to occupy Hungary with Slovak, Croat, and Romanian troops if they did not comply.

  The threat of these ancestral enemies on Hungarian soil was seen as far worse than German control. The Hungarians kept entire divisions on the Romanian border, while the troops of both nations were fighting and dying together in the Russian winter.

  Despite the politico-military efforts, having repelled the Royal Hungarian Army and the armies of the other Axis Powers from the territory of the USSR, the Red Army were en route to the Kingdom of Hungary. The German and Hungarian Nazis were defeated in late 1944 and once in occupation themselves, wreaked havoc.

  In September 1944, Soviet forces crossed the Hungarian border. On 15 October, Horthy announced that Hungary had asked for an armistice with the Soviet Union. The Hungarian army ignored Horthy's orders, fighting desperately to keep the Soviets out. The Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and, by kidnapping his son Miklós Horthy Jr., forced Horthy to abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name the leader of the Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi, as prime minister.

  Hundreds of thousands of civilians were abducted and accused of various political crimes (Nazi affiliation, fighting Soviet forces, spying for the West, involvement in sabotage activities), were convicted and deported to the Soviet Gulag. 

  Others were simply taken off the streets and sent, without trial, to the slave labour camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union. Still others became prisoners of war who - in violation of the Geneva Conventions - were reclassified as “war criminals” and kept for years as forced labourers in the Gulag.

  On 10th February 1947, a Paris peace treaty confirmed the military defeat of Nazi Hungary and stipulated the USSR's right to a military occupation. The brief aim of the Soviet rule was to turn Hungary into a predominantly industrial country, with an emphasis on heavy industry. 

  Huge sums were devoted to the construction of foundries and factories, many of them planned with little regard for Hungary’s real resources and less still for its needs. In fact, the plan was concerned with the needs of the Soviet Union, for which Hungary was to serve as a workshop.

  Hungary’s newly discovered deposits of uranium went straight out of the country. Industrial production rose steeply, but the standard of living did not; the production of consumer goods was throttled and that of agriculture stagnated.

  In June the following year, Mátyás Rákosi (an ardent Stalinist) came to power as the de facto leader, representing the Hungarian Working People’s Party. As the Red Army drove the German Wehrmacht out of Hungary at the end of World War II, Rákosi returned to his home country in early 1945 and became the leader of the re-founded Hungarian Communist Party. 

  The Party suffered a crushing defeat in Hungary's postwar free election, but at Moscow's insistence the Communists received key positions in the government including the Interior Ministry, Rákosi himself became a heavily influential deputy prime minister. 

  From this position the Communists were able to use political intrigue, subterfuge, and conspiracy to destroy their opponents slice by slice (in what Rákosi would later term "salami tactics”). By 1948 they had gained total power over the country and in 1949 Hungary was proclaimed a people's republic with Rákosi as its absolute ruler.

  He and his party remained all-powerful until the death of Stalin in 1953, when a period of fluctuation began. In July 1953 Rákosi was deposed from the Prime Ministership in favour of Imre Nagy—a “Muscovite”, but a Hungarian in his attitudes and not unpopular in the country. 

  Nagy promised a new course; an end to the forced development of heavy industry, more consumer goods, no more forcing of peasants into the collectives, the release of political prisoners and the closing of internment camps. He introduced some of these reforms, but Moscow hesitated to support him. In the spring of 1955, Nagy was dismissed from office and expelled from the party.

  Rákosi was reinstated, and he put the country back on its previous course. He was dismissed again in July 1956, this time from all his offices and in disgrace. The new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had sacrificed him as a gesture to the Yugoslavian leader, Josip Broz Tito, whom Rákosi had offended personally and whom the Soviet leadership wished to placate. 

  The new leader, Ernő Gerő, was almost as detested as his predecessor. He promptly announced that there would be no concessions on matters of principle to Nagy and his group. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred barely three months later, as a result of the abuses of Rákosi's system. His former rival, Imre Nagy, became a dominant figure in the Revolution.