Comrade Stakhanov was a coal miner from Ukraine who "mined coal at a rate no human possibly could. " Stakhanov was held up to workers as an ideal to strive for. The "Stakhanov Movement " forced workers to overproduce beyond capability to follow his example.
Kilian Laktanya was the barracks where Hungarian soldiers first sided with the revolutionaries. Soldiers opened up the barracks to street fighters and provided them with weaponry.
Mikulas is the Hungarian St. Nicholas whose day is celebrated on December 6. Young men are hired to dress as Mikulas and hand out gifts to children.
NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.
New York Folklore Society
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Summer 1998
SUMMER 1998 VOICES MAIN PAGE
Crossing the Border: Stories of the 56ers
Eniko Farkas
In spring of 1997, encouraged by her teacher, historian Carol Kammen, Eniko Farkas began interviewing fellow Hungarian immigrants in the Ithaca area who had escaped Hungary during the Revolution of 1956 [See article on Eniko in the Summer 1998 Newsletter here]. Most of those who escaped faced severe political repression or imprisonment had they stayed. While not a 56er herself, Eniko was trapped in the area of heaviest fighting in Budapest during the Revolution. The revolution was a life-changing experience for her and has remained a subject of fascination throughout her life. Eniko’s account, below, is followed by the stories of four other Hungarians who risked all to cross the western border.
Eniko Farkas, Ithaca, NY
In January of 1956, I was unemployed, too young for factory jobs, and had to look for a solution what to do with myself. One day I wrote a poem about hunger, which I felt was looming on the horizon again. I showed the poem to my aunt who had published some of her own writing. She decided to write a letter to Paula Oravecz, a communist adolescent literature writer and sent my poem to her. God bless her, she felt sorry for me and found me a job where I could work underage. The place was a sheltered sewing workshop for people damaged by the war. My new work mates were elderly Jews who came back from the concentration camps and couldn’t have coped in the faster-paced environment of a real factory. There were also Greek and Macedonian partisans, some partially crippled, and a few Christians with handicaps. We sewed dust rags. The air was full of rag dust; the janitors came with a water pump and pumped moisture into the air from time to time. Comrade Stakhanov found his place in the sheltered workshop too. Our production was noted by name on a blackboard. Finally, I made real money; I was able to buy clothes and was not a burden on my parents. I was hoping that my intellectual creativity was finally dead, and I could live happily ever after as a factory worker.
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Eniko Farkas (top row, left) and her co-workers in front of the dust rag factory, July, 1956. Photograph courtesy of Eniko Farkas
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My life was suddenly turned upside down by the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. My aunt’s apartment was located in the rebel VIIIth district, one block away from the big military barracks named the "Kilian Laktanya." I was home with a cold when we heard that there was a mass demonstration in front of the Hungarian Radio and the Parliament. At night I went towards the area and saw trucks coming with bleeding people hanging to the sides. The revolution began.
The events of the next few days profoundly changed my life and outlook on life. I was excited about being able to see a real historical event; consequently I spent as much time as possible in the streets observing. I carried a camera with me and took pictures which were sold by my aunt to an Austrian news agency. When I heard that Stalin's statue was being taken apart, I went there and acquired a piece of it. Then I went to the Russian bookstore which was being looted and its contents burned in the street. I also stepped on one of the records laying on the street where the crowd was dancing on them. This barbarian behavior can be understood only if one realizes the depth of Hungarian resentment against forced Russianization. I saw the first few Russian soldiers to die in Budapest and later saw the streets covered with corpses. There were no sanitation workers, so at one point the corpses were piled up into pyramids.
I was the food buyer for my family and the go-between for my cousin and his girlfriend. One time on my way, I was caught in a crossfire and was saved by somebody who pulled me up from an open window. At one point the Russian tanks started to fire so ceaselessly at the apartment complex I lived in that we couldn’t go out anymore. Hungry and bored, I started to teach myself embroidery using my dead girl cousin’s embroidery book. Finally the Russians stopped firing, and it looked like we got rid of them. My aunt arranged for me to go back to my parents in Vac on a horse-drawn carriage. The next day was November 4, 1956. The Russian bombers attacked Budapest in the wee hours of the morning. In my home city of Vac, in the middle of the night, we heard the thump of tanks rolling on the road toward Budapest.
Clara Teremy, Rochester NY
Clara Teremy left Hungary with her husband and four children. They lived in a small village in the northeastern corner of the country.
CT: We were not able to make a decent living for ourselves and our four children. Besides we lived in fear all the time. In the village there were only a few people who represented the old regime. Because my husband had been a head notary public he was a red flag in the authorities’ eyes. Whenever the communists picked up people, not because they did something wrong but because they wanted to scare a certain class, my husband was a target. We lived in constant terror and slept in the attic of the barn many a time because we never knew when the authorities needed a body so they could say they captured a "reactionary."
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Clara and Gyula Teremy and their four children, summer, 1957. Photograph courtesy of the Teremy family.
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We had no opportunity to find a guide. We dragged our feet until it was too late to start toward the border. We didn’t have enough money, it was mid-winter, and we were worried about risking the four children’s lives. After we left it would become common knowledge. We would lose our apartment, and the children would be kicked out of school. We kept waiting for the West to interfere. The crackdown started on people who were involved in the Revolution in January. Actually it didn’t matter whether they were involved with it or not; unwanted people were targeted. We felt that the situation was hopeless, and we had to go, but we didn't know how. We were clueless.
My husband couldn’t get a job where we lived because of his class origin, so he worked in Debrecen. He came home on the weekend, and on the train he met a young soldier who was from the Yugoslavian border area. The soldier said that his village is located in a good place, not on the border, but there is no other village in between either. The border patrol doesn’t raid this area because it is too far from the border. My husband, who was very sharp, questioned the soldier about his family and where they lived. The soldier complied, and my husband noted everything.
So we made the decision to leave. But my husband had to go back to Debrecen. One son was in high school in Kisvarda, two others were steel manufacturing trade students in Vac. It was difficult even to gather the family.
At night my two sons climbed over the big stone wall surrounding their school. They tried to buy a ticket at the train station to Debrecen, but they didn’t have enough money. This was the start of heavenly miracles, because the ticket seller gave them the tickets without money and told them to pay in two weeks when they were coming back. Have you ever heard such a thing that somebody is given a ticket without paying for it? Finally they arrived in Debrecen, and we started out toward Szeged (in southern Hungary) on the train. There was no help we hoped to get there from anybody.
We arrived in Szeged—that was another miracle because everybody was asked to show their official identification except us, and there were the six of us. There was a big raid every evening in Szeged. The evening came, and we were cold. We couldn’t take it any more. We went to a hotel to get a room. The clerk looked at us and said, "You want to cross the border." "No, we don’t." "It is written all over you. What are you doing wandering with four school-age kids in the middle of winter? I don’t care if you want to go across the border, but every midnight the secret police (avo) come to round up people." We rented two rooms. I fell on my knees and prayed to God in front of my bed that we could cross the border in some miraculous way. We woke up at midnight to hard knocks on the door. It was the dreaded avo. We were told that we would not be taken in to the collecting station, we could stay the night, but had to be on the train because they will watch the hotel.
The morning came. Gyula, my husband, who was good at seizing opportunities, went out to the hallway and asked a man at random. He said, "Sir, I want to cross the border, I have four kids, would you please tell me which direction I should go." The man told him to come into his room and gave him advice. "Your biggest problem is going to be to cross the Tisza River Bridge because it is closely guarded. If you cross the bridge you will be O.K. because the lands are not that closely guarded." So we started to cross the Tisza Bridge. There were secret police all over. My husband said, "Let’s cross the bridge, not too close, but not too far from each other, whistling, looking carefree." With God’s help, nobody asked us for our papers. I couldn’t believe it. I kept looking back, and when the sixth member of the family crossed the bridge I felt like kissing the ground.
It was midday; the bells were ringing when we arrived into that quiet village. All the dogs ran out and jumped on us. We wanted our entrance to be kept secret, but every villager came out—they all knew what we wanted. We found the house [of the family of the soldier Gyula had met on the train]. God bless them they greeted us with such love. True, my husband told a story portraying his relationship with the soldier son a lot closer than it actually was. He said their son was sending his greetings, etc. The family was eating their Sunday lunch, and we sat down to the round masonry hearth. I will never forget its warmth. We were offered food—good chicken soup, and we dried our wet shoes around the hearth.
The family set out again to cross the border and got lost. They eventually met a 50-year-old woman who led them to the canal that marked the border and told them to run across. They were not sure whether or not they had crossed the border because the canal was covered with snow and had several branches.
I said, "Why don’t we make noise trying to attract the attention of the Yugoslav border patrol." My wishes were answered when we saw two soldiers emerge from the fog. We greeted them with joy, but when they got closer to us they talked to us in Hungarian in a very mean way. They were the Hungarian border patrol. We were totally confused and half-frozen. We didn’t realize that they had come into Yugoslavia to capture us. The patrol lined us up, hands over heads, three step distance between every person.
Everything was white like milk, the air, the earth. Suddenly we see a soldier coming in a large fur coat with two dogs. He said "stoj." This was in Russian. I thought, this is the end if the Russians are here too. The Hungarian border patrol threw away their weapons. My husband grasped the situation and ran up to the new soldier. Gyula asked, "Are you Yugoslavian?" "Da," answered the soldier. Suddenly I thought my husband went insane because he started to beat up the Hungarian border patrol. Gyula said, "You wanted to kill my children!" The patrolmen said that they wanted a week of extra vacation because that was their reward if they captured refugees. So they came after us to Yugoslavia to capture us. I ran up to the Yugoslavian soldier and hugged him. The soldier couldn'’t deal with all this and fired shots into the air to get help. The others came, and the Hungarian border patrol became prisoners. Gyula taunted them. Suddenly they became very meek.
The next day they trucked us to a refugee camp. The resident refugees were watching our arrival from the second floor of the school where we were to be housed. When we went into the building the young man who was the room head told me, "My soul, you have to clean yourself!" He was really ashamed later. So this is the miraculous story of our escape.
Elmer Medgyaszay, Ithaca, NY
Elmer Medgyaszay left Hungary in November of 1956, after the Hungarian Revolution failed.
EF:You were very close to the border with Austria, right?
EM: Right. Yes, I lived in a border town named Sopron.
EF: Why did you leave Hungary?
EM: Well, basically they already started arresting students who were involved with the revolution, so basically we had to go.
EF: Were you involved a little bit with the revolution?
EM: Yes, but we were not fighting, meaning when people were standing in line for food, anticipating food shortages, we made sure that everybody stayed in line to keep the order. And we watched factories and made sure no machinery got destroyed. Overall, we were engaged in keeping the social order.
EF: What did the West mean to you, and how did you learn about it?
EM: Through books than we had read. Cowboy books, which we read against the regime’s wishes. And anything you could get your hands on.
We read and acquired blacklisted books several ways. We used to trade Zane Grey books on the street. We actually made money on it. I would be dressed up as Mikulas and would be hired to give gifts to little kids. Sometimes I would be paid in contraband books for that. My uncle was a school principal, and he was ordered to clean the library from certain books. School libraries were ordered to remove certain books from the school libraries. He didn’t throw out or burn books; instead he hid them in his attic. The attic had a little window, just large enough to give enough light for me to read. I would go up to the attic and read there. There were not too many blacklisted books available in the cities; there were no places to hide them. The books were there, but you have to know how to get to them. In the little villages more books survived because the village intellectuals hid them in the attic. One time my mother managed to give me a Bible bound in leather for Christmas.
Everyday at four o’clock, we went to the pastry shop. We didn’t discuss it in advance. We raced who can eat the most kremes (Napoleons). Whoever ate the least paid. The day we left [Hungary] we met there and talked about leaving. The four of us, Alex, Jo, James, and me. We had a large circle of friends and several groups within it. The pastry shop owner heard that we were going to leave. We ate more than usual that day, and we had a very big bill. He said "Isten aldjon" (Don’t worry about the bill).
We were eating grapes when we crossed the border and never worried about getting shot. We were 18 years old, not scared of anything. We were too young to be scared. I had a friend who knew that part of the region around the city. We crossed without any problem.
Edgar and his friends walked to Vienna, about 40 minutes away from Sopron. A Catholic organization sponsored their passage to the United States. They lived in Camp Kilmer, in New Jersey, which had been a military base during World War II. Here, they were connected with American sponsors, usually of Hungarian background.
In Camp Kilmer there was what we called the ""slave market." Basically this was a joke. We dressed up, and we went down there where people looked for people to sponsor. Basically that was a kind of a joke that we had a slave market there. We had one necktie among the four of us, and each of us got to wear the necktie a different day. I would wear it one day, and my friend would wear it the next day. So I wore the necktie, and we went down there after breakfast, which was excellent. They treated us very well. My sponsor called me over and asked if I would like to come with them. And I said, "Yes, I’d be more than glad to." He says, "Would you take any sort of a job?" I said, "Yes, any sort of a job I could make a living with, but the only way I will go is if I can take my friends with me." That’s how my friends came with me to Ithaca.
Pigfeet jelly (kocsonya) party at the Farkas home. From left to right, Elmer Medgyaszay, Balint Korik, and Louis Farkas. Photograph by Eniko Farkas.
Balint Korik
Balint Korik left Miskolc, Hungary, on November 4, 1956, with two friends.
BK: There was a last train that was going to Budapest. It was the day after they took over Hungary, the Russians. So we went there, and we stayed at the Keleti train station all night, and the next morning we took a train to the border with Austria, to the last town—I forgot the little town’s name. By that time there were 70 of us. Seventy men and one lady. When we started out, two little kids about 10 to 12 years old said that they were going to take us to the border. They were at the train station. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when we started out through plowed fields toward the Austrian border. By six o’clock it was dark already, and the kids finally said that they were lost. They didn’t know where they were. We didn’t have to, but we gave them money. We gave them some money, and told them to go back.
They told us to look at this light, just a faint light in the distance, and they said, go that way, so we went there. So there was a little settlement there of four, five houses. So we went there and talked to a man. He didn’t want to take us to the border, but he told us which way to go. He said, "See that light?" There was another light beyond that was about five, six kilometers. So we started out toward the light way in the distance. It was a little village. The first house had a light. By that time it was about midnight. So we went in there, and this man was a teacher in the little town, and he told us, "Yes, the border is here." He said, "I will take you there." So he put on a big slab of bacon on the table and bread for 70 people. We gave him all the money and watches we all had. And he took us to the border. He said, "You cross here and keep to your right all the time. If you turn to the left you will end up in Hungary because there is a curve in the border." So that is what we did. About an hour later we came to four or five big haystacks. It was cold and we started to dig holes to get warm, but we heard some voices coming from the haystacks. There were about 20 other people there already. So about morning the Austrian patrol came along and said O.K., just wait there, and they were going to send some trucks after us.
Julie Kovacs, Rochester, NY
Julie Kovacs left Budapest and her home country in January of 1957, with her husband and brother-in-law.
JK: We didn’t get a guide. We guided ourselves. They told us where the border was. My father lived close to the border, so we got a permit, and we went to visit with him. Then we hopped on the train like students and mingled with the students and went to the nearest border town, which was Barcs.
First there were three of us. At the end there were the four of us because an 18-year-old kid, when he heard that we were planning to cross the border, joined us.
We crossed the Drave—that’s the big river which separates Hungary from Yugoslavia. That was the only way—the only border open—not really open, but the only way to cross. There was ice on it still, but it was breaking. We fell into the river, and we almost drowned. Then we all crossed the border, and we were all wet, and then my husband said we had to find a farm no matter which side of the river we were on (we were told that we could end up back in Hungary again because the Drava is very sneaky, very curvy). My husband said it didn’t matter whether Hungarian or Yugoslavian; we had to go because we were going to freeze. We heard a dog bark, so we went in that direction. The first person we heard talking, we couldn’t understand what they were saying, and we knew that we were in the right place.
We were in Yugoslavia for 11 long months. They shifted us from place to place. I ended up going to Canada because none of the Western countries wanted to take me because I was eight months pregnant. We spent 11 years in Canada. Then we came here because it was a better opportunity work-wise for my husband.
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