The Spoon: The Story of Two Families' Survival of the Hungarian Revolution by Lisa Voelker

Author:Lisa Voelker
Format: epub

25

THE AFTERMATH

25 October 1956

That morning, many of the residents of Buda had watched the fusillade from their hillside homes and apartments, listening to the barrage of machine-gun fire and explosions. Billowing clouds of dense smoke rose from behind the Parliament Building. Anxious for news, the people of Budapest turned to their radios.

The Bójtós apartment on Dohány Street was vacant, as was every apartment in the building. The building’s occupants had fled to the bomb shelter in the basement where Lászlo had found them. Lászlo carried the unconscious and bloodied body of his son, Barnát, laying him on the floor in front of Klára. Barnát would in time recover from the concussion he had suffered from a primary blast but would remain deaf in his left ear and forever bear the scars of multiple lacerations. Lászlo stepped away then crouched to the floor embracing Izsák, who buried his face in his father’s coat, while Klára, Ilona, and her mother, Erzsébet, inspected and bandaged Barnát’s wounds. Ilona’s father sat nearby consoling his grandchildren, Tomi and Petra; their generation had never known war or its terrors.

Following the massacre, ten thousand angry and armed people, led by Tamás, Márton, András, and Márkó, returned to the headquarters of the Budapest Police, demanding weapons and the release of prisoners. Sándor Kopácsi had received orders to meet with the revolutionaries and negotiate a surrender. Instead, Kopácsi considered the probable outcomes, including the certain lynching of the police if violence broke out, as he certainly expected it would. In an amazing act of courage, Kopácsi, with two policemen, walked out into the square unarmed. Facing the crowd, Kopácsi offered to have a delegation of five people inspect conditions within the building and choose from among the prisoners all who qualified as ‘Freedom Fighters.’ The delegation, including Márton and András, willingly complied. After inspecting the jail, they chose fifty prisoners before leaving the building and the square encouraged, excited, and triumphant.

Across the city, another group intent on avenging the massacre at Parliament stormed the ÁVO police headquarters. Overwhelming the guards, the Freedom Fighters searched the building. The already angry mob turned violent when they found mutilated bodies of students in the basement. The Freedom Fighters threw the ÁVO guards, along with their secret files of Budapest citizens, out into the angry, mob-filled streets. The files were burned. The guards were given no quarter. Throughout Budapest, the ÁVO were beaten to death. Some were burned.

Although Nagy’s government was legally in place, subversive Soviet influence was a powerful force that had yet to yield and still wielded power in the governance of Budapest. As a result of Sándor Kopácsi’s negotiation with the revolutionaries, all telephone lines to Police Headquarters, including the “red phone,” were disconnected. Sándor Kopácsi was declared an outlaw, an enemy of the state.

On Castle Hill, Alexandra and Charles had led Péter and Jani to a back bedroom where they had barricaded themselves. The events of the morning had taken everyone by surprise and now, how quickly every trouble and trial seemed to have escalated.

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