The Forbidden Sky [antikvár]

Preface tourteen years ago today, on November 4, 1956, Russian tanks rumbled through the streets of Budapest and the Hungarian revolution died in blood. What happened in those v^^eeks in the fall of 1956 is history — and unique: the first and thus far the only armed national uprising against Communist oppression. It cost the lives of at least thirteen thousand Hungarians, and in the aftermath over two hundred thousand Magyars fled their country, more than thirty thousand of them to the United States. The revolt broke out on October 23, 1956. It was not planned, it was a popular rising, and it spread like a forest fire. It was neither organized nor made by an army; and it was not an ideological revolution, because it was fomented by Communists against Communism. The great and noble words, epitaphs in memory of those who died, were spoken long ago. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs said the West's failure to help Hungary constituted "the lost opportunity of our generation," and Dwight D. Eisenhower, then President of the United States, said that Budapest, the Hungarian capital, "is no longer merely the name