Remember Hungary 1956 [antikvár]

foreword The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is still a miracle of the history of modern Europe. A small people of ten million, oppressed, exploited, humiliated by a totalitarian foreign power, the Soviet Union, since the end of the Second World War; a small people of ten million, unprepared, unarmed, tortured and cruelly controlled by a blood-thirsty Communist Secret Police; a small people of ten million, unaided, overlooked and disregarded by the West for ten long years as one of the "satellite" countries, one day stood up, shook off the fetters, hit the totalitarian giant right on his head and sent the Red Army, the Secret Police and the Communist Party henchmen run for their lives. Hungary and Hungarian freedom were reborn after eleven years of oppression In the very heart of Europe by the courage, political wisdom and fearless resolution of the Hungarian people. The world — and the West in it — was sincerely amazed and impressed. They had to be, because Hungarians did not expect the West to liberate them: they liberated themselves. They did not expect the West to pour millions of foreign aid in their pockets: Hungarians seldom received a cent in the poSt-war years, when the unlimited financial generosity of the United States literally engulfed Western Europe in dollars. Hungarians expected only moral support from a liberty-loving U.N. Charter-signing and human rights doctrine-sponsoring Free World in order to avoid repercussions from the Soviet Goliath against the Hungarian David. They did not even get that from an admiring, but shamefully scared West, hopelessly possessed by an unjustified nuclear-scare mania. Hungary and her freedom were crushed by Soviet tanks and 300.000 Siberian troops. The blood of Hungarians reddened the streets of Budapest and of other Hungarian cities. Our youth was slaughtered, many fled to the West, through the Austrian border, while about 40.000 youngsters, college and high school students, skilled workers, and other representatives of an upcoming new Hungarian generation, were dragged to Siberia never to return. Hungary was lost, but the Hungarian bells tolled not only for Hungary but for the Western world as well. Hungary was the last chance for the Free World to start dismantling the impenetrable walls of the Soviet empire, without force and without firing a rifle-shot. The West lost this opportunity and twenty years later It Is not very hard to conclude that it lost much more than that. This volume is a memento to those heroic days when Hungarians, coming from all walks of life, sacrificed themselves for freedom and national independence. They sacrificed themselves for a human life which is worth of living: without violence, fear and oppression. They sacrificed themselves for the very basic principles on which Christian Europe was built during the long centuries and the very same ideas which were so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776. A new Hungary, which in her few days of freedom, opened up the iron gates of political prisons, disbanded the concentration camps, destroyed the hated Secret Police organizations, .reestablished free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and of opinion, made preparations for parliamentary elections with the participation of several political parties, all in the democratic fold; which left, by unanimous decision, the Warsaw Pact Treaty and declared the neutrality of the new Hungary — does not need any extra evidence to prove her ideological relationship, if not identity with the rest of Europe and with the Western World, . , On November 4, 1956, by the cruelty of the East and by the short-sightedness of the West all of these wonderful and dedicated strivings for freedom and independence came to a bloody end for Hungary. Temporarily, at least. Because the blood shed for freedom and human ideas are not shed in vain. The seeds of discord and destruction were sown on the streets of Budapest even for the Soviet Union. And, when one day, Soviet totalitarianism has to face reality and will be found unsatisfactorily light on the scale of history, every one of us will easily realize that the procedure of self-destruction for the Soviet Union began in Budapest. Mills of God are grinding slowly, but surely: we have to have only the patience to wait for justice to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven This book is a humble effort to pay homage to those who gave up their own lives for their fellow Hungarians, and, as a matter of fact, for their fellow-Europeans and fellow-Westerners. May their example give us strength to face the ordeal which Is going to come for all of us, partly, but chiefly because of our failure to understand, appreciate and support those Hungarians who tried to turn back the oncoming horses of the Communist Apocalypse. Let us remember them, the unsung heroes of Hungary in 1956: because "non omnis moriar" South Orange, New Jersey May 6th, 1975 Dr. András Pogány President, World Federation of Hungarian Freedom Fighters