The Bridge At Andau Part 11

"Those poor, poor souls," the Hungarian said. "How could they have done it?" He pondered this question for a moment, then reflected, "Probably because their parents never taught them Petofi's great poem to his baby son."

"What was it?" a stranger asked.

"Vera," Mr. Hadjok said, "you recite it."

In the once more noisy restaurant Vera Hadjok, more beautiful than a dance of childhood, rose, held her hands to her side and said softly at first, then in almost terrifying tones, the words Petofi had once written as he looked down upon his baby son. The translator kept pace with her in whispers, and again the restaurant grew silent. This time the poem was not a battle cry, no call to fury against the enemy. It was the poem of a man longing for a new Hungary, a man trying to look into the future of a nation he deeply loved. "He pleads with his son to be a good man," the translator whispered. "He wants him to be a good man all his life. He says this boy will be a better man than Petofi has been. He will know a better Hungary than Petofi has known."

When Vera finished no one in the restaurant could look at another. There was only the ache of exile, and the silence. Then, in the agonizing pause Vera volunteered an astonis.h.i.+ng bit of information. "We had to leave Hungary, you know. We wanted to leave, but after what Johan did, we had to leave."

"What did he do?" a stranger asked.

In some embarra.s.sment Mr. Hadjok explained, "At school a big Russian boy-he was the son of an official-insulted Hungary and Johan tried to cut off his ear."

Again there was nothing to say, but after a while an interrogator asked Vera, "How did Petofi die?"

"There are two theories," she said in precise Hungarian. "n.o.body really knows, but when the Russians invaded Hungary to crush our revolution of 1848, it is thought that Petofi died resisting some Russian lancers. They ran him through the heart. But others claim that the Russians wounded him and then, because he insulted them without stopping, they buried him alive. In either case, he died at the age of twenty-six."

It is obvious that the elder Hadjoks were determined that their children should not grow up to be communists, and although they acted both in secrecy and in isolation from their neighbors, we can judge from what the interpreter said of his own experiences that many other Hungarian families were similarly determined. These facts, if taken alone, would justify the Soviets in claiming that the major thesis of this chapter is false.

I have contended that communism failed to win the young people of Hungary in spite of unprecedented pressures brought to bear on youth. I have claimed that Stalin's boast that he could accomplish anything with the pliable minds of children was proved false.

But communism could counterclaim, with some justification, I fear, that Hungary proved nothing of the sort. It merely proved, communists could claim, that reactionary, capitalist, priest-ridden, fascist parents were determined to keep their children's minds enslaved and that against such fiends honest communism had little chance. For by communist definition, Janos Hadjok and his wife were fiends.

Taking only the evidence I have given in this report, it would be obvious to a communist that the Hadjoks were reactionaries (they taught their children history); they were capitalists (they had once owned a small enterprise of their own); they were priest-ridden (they believed in G.o.d); and they were murderous fascists (didn't their son try to cut off the ear of a decent communist?).

However, the most d.a.m.ning part of the story of Hungary's youth is still to come. The Hadjok children were counter-indoctrinated, that is certain, so it is not surprising that they fought communism. But the number of children whose parents were less brave than the Hadjoks, and whose families did not re-educate them at night, was far greater. These children also fought communism.

There were hundreds of thousands of children whose parents were either dedicated communists or at least on the surface subservient to the Soviets, yet these children also fought the evil system. There were some well-established cases in which the children of AVO men turned their backs on communism and fought with the independence fighters. And there were even some sons of highly placed officials, like young Imre Horvath, who took arms against their fathers' government.

These facts seem to prove one thing: In all of Hungary there were only a few young people-some of the students at the Marx-Lenin Inst.i.tute-who remained faithful to the system into which they had been lured and imprisoned; all the rest, regardless of their parents' opinion, rejected communism in its moment of crisis.

*A Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe, Volume 2. Copyright, 1939, by Carlton J. H. Hayes. New York: The Macmillan Company. Used by permission of the publishers.

9.

The Bridge at Andau

There was a bridge at Andau, and if a Hungarian could reach that bridge, he was nearly free.

It wasn't much, as bridges go: not wide enough for a car nor st.u.r.dy enough to bear a motorcycle. It was a footbridge made of rickety boards with a handrailing which little children could not quite reach.

It wasn't actually in Andau, nor even near it, yet it was known throughout Hungary as "the bridge of Andau," and many thousands of refugees, coming from all parts of Hungary, headed for it. Fleeing the Russians, with only a paper bag, or with nothing, they headed for this insignificant bridge and for freedom.

Andau, of course, is not in Hungary. It is a village in Austria, but since it was the nearest settlement to the bridge, the name was shared, and the tiny village, which showed surprising capacity for accepting refugees, gained fame from a bridge which in no way belonged to it.

Nor did the bridge cross a river of importance. It did not even cross a rivulet, nor a sizable gully. It merely crossed the muddy Einser (First) Ca.n.a.l, which had been dug generations ago to drain the nearby swamps. Now it formed part of the boundary between Austria and Hungary.

No roads led up to the bridge, no railroad. It had been erected years ago as a convenience for local hay farmers who reaped the rich gra.s.ses that luxuriated on the swamplands around the ca.n.a.l and who, for most of their history, had never bothered much about the separation of Austria and Hungary. Actually, since the bridge was entirely inside Hungary, when a man did cross it, he still had a few hundred yards to go before he reached Austria.

You can see that this bridge at Andau was about the most inconsequential bridge in Europe, and if it had been left to its placid farmers and their hay fields it might have lasted for several more generations, until its timbers finally rotted and fell into the ca.n.a.l. It would have vanished unremembered.

But by an accident of history it became, for a few flaming weeks, one of the most important bridges in the world, for across its unsteady planks fled the soul of a nation. Across the bridge at Andau fled more than twenty thousand people who had known communism and who had rejected it. They had seen this new way of life at close hand, and they had learned in sorrow that it was merely ancient terrorism in horrible new dress, for it not only robbed and cheated a man of the material things to which he was ent.i.tled; it deprived his mind of every challenge, every breath of new life and all hope. It was at Andau that the refugees from Russian terror finally told their story. It was here that the world learned, in unmistakable accents and dreadful clarity, how bankrupt communism had become as a system of government.

The far-off men who had originally built the little wooden bridge at Andau could not possibly have foreseen what a story was ultimately to be carried across their structure. Nor could they have foretold that across their bridge would flee the flower of Hungarian manhood, abandoning the homeland for which they and their fathers had continuously fought. With great reluctance and with grief the brave people of Hungary finally decided that they must abandon their wild and lovely country and go into exile.

To understand the drama of Andau, it is necessary to visualize the border area, for it is unique. This corner of Austria resembles a low-lying football field, in the middle of which an Austrian guard stood with me one night and said, "To the south is Hungary, but over there to the east is Hungary, too. We're a tiny corner of freedom, with Hungary all around us."

To the south, along the long side of the football field, ran a high ca.n.a.l bank, entirely in Hungary. South of that the bank dropped sharply into the sluggish Einser Ca.n.a.l, too wide to jump, in most places too deep to wade. Still farther south lay the Hungarian swamps, completely covered with reeds and rushes and cattails. It took determination to escape through this border of Hungary.

Along the shorter side of the Austrian football field, the eastern, things were different. Here Austria ended in a drainage ditch which could be waded if a refugee was willing to wade up to his armpits in the deepest spots, or only up to his knees if he was lucky. But in order to get to this ditch the refugee had to penetrate a formidable Hungarian swamp choked with reeds head high.

At the point where the ditch to the east emptied into the ca.n.a.l to the south-the corner of the Austrian field-stood two Hungarian border guards, and about half a mile beyond them rose a tall, gloomy machine-gun tower manned by AVO men. A few hundred yards beyond the foot of this tower stood the Andau bridge.

One other factor made escape into Austria difficult, for when a refugee finally had pulled his feet clear of the Hungarian swamps, he found upon arrival in Austria that it was swampland, too. He had to struggle through an additional mile of marsh until he reached a road. Here Swiss and German Red Cross trucks waited at a rescue hut to carry women and children to safety, but men had to walk a final five miles into the village of Andau, where at last they were free.

In spite of these obstacles, there were occasional days at Andau bridge when escape was like a lovely picnic! Then the AVO guards were, for some unfathomable reason, absent from their towers, the bridge was open, and the marshes were frozen over. Russian snipers were not operating and refugees were free to walk boldly down the broad ca.n.a.l bank. On one such day, for example, thousands of singing people came down that joyous sunny path, and it was here, in the extreme corner of Austria, that I began to have one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

In my day I have observed many emigrations-pathetic Indians struggling out of Pakistan, half-dead Korean women dragging down from communist-held North Korea, and Pacific Island natives fleeing the j.a.panese-but I have never witnessed anything like the Hungarian emigration. First, there was the unprecedented youth of the emigres. In the other evacuations the refugees had been mainly old people. But while I was at Andau, it was the finest young people of the nation who were leaving; their average age was only twenty-three. Second was their spirit. They were not dejected or beaten or maimed or halt. In considerable joy they were turning their backs contemptuously upon the Russians and their communist fraud. Third, they were young people with a purpose. They wanted to tell the world of the betrayal of their nation. Any watcher at the border heard them say a dozen times, "I wish the communists of France and Italy could live under communism ... for just six months." Then somebody would interrupt, "No, let's not wish that on anybody." Fourth, it was difficult to find among these people any reactionaries, any sad, defeated human beings looking toward the past. World communists are trying to convince themselves that only fascists, capitalists, American spies, Catholic priests and reactionaries fled Hungary. I wish they would ask any one of us who greeted these refugees what kind of people fled their evil system. They were the best people in the nation, the most liberal.

But if the people were as I described them, why should we watchers at the border who welcomed them into freedom feel universally a sense of tragedy? I met no westerner who failed to have this sensation of great tragedy in the Greek sense, and I have seen some of the toughest newsmen, refugee teams, disaster officials and photographers in the world stand at this happy border and have tears well into their eyes.

I think they were overcome by the tragedy, not of these refugees, but of Hungary. What terrible fate had befallen a nation when such young people had grown to despise it and had fled? Consider, for example, eleven groups that had left their homeland, and imagine the loss they represented to a nation.

One, at the university in Sop.r.o.n five hundred students, thirty-two professors and their entire families simply gave up all hope of a decent life under communism and came across the border. I am sorry that no American university was able to accept them as a unit; we were all glad when Canada's University of British Columbia did so. What a vital impulse Vancouver is going to get.

Two, the finest ballerina of the Budapest Opera walked out with several of her a.s.sistants.

Three, enough football players fled Hungary to make several teams of world-champion caliber.

Four, the three finest Gypsy orchestras of Hungary came out in a body and have begun to play around the restaurants of Europe.

Five, some of the top mechanics in the factories at Csepel left and were eagerly grabbed up by firms in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.

Six, a staggering number of trained engineers and scientists in almost all phases of industry and research fled, some carrying slide rules and tables applicable to their specialization, others with nothing. I myself have met accidentally at least fifty engineers under the age of thirty. A careful census would probably reveal more than five thousand. Their loss will hurt Hungary dreadfully.

Seven, a majority of both the Budapest symphony orchestras came out and plan to give concerts in the west. Several of the best conductors came with them.

Eight, many of Hungary's best artists crossed the border.

Nine, and many of her notable writers.

Ten, several members of the Hungarian Olympic team decided to stay in Australia, others defected along the way home and still others refused to take the final plunge back into communism. This was a major propaganda defeat.

Eleven, and most impressive of all, were the young couples with babies. No group came across the bridge at Andau without its quota of young married couples. At a point fifteen miles inside Hungary, doctors of amazing courage pa.s.sed among the would-be refugees and gave each mother some sedative pills for her children, so that they would be asleep during the critical attempt to pa.s.s the Soviet guards, lest an unexpected wailing betray the whole convoy. Then, in Austria, other doctors would have to revive the children lest they sleep too long.

For an American to understand what this great exodus meant, this comparison might be meaningful. When the final count is in, it will probably be found that about two per cent of the total population of the nation has fled. If this happened in America, about 3,400,000 would leave the country, or the population of Philadelphia, Boston, Providence and Fort Worth combined. If that happened, it would be obvious that something was wrong with the United States.

But even this comparison misses the essential truth, for it was not the total population of a city like Boston-the young and the old-that left Hungary. It was mainly the young, often the elite of the nation.

Here is a better a.n.a.logy. Suppose things got so bad in America that the following types of people felt they had to abandon a rotten system: the University of Southern California en ma.s.se, the Notre Dame football team and the Yankees, Benny Goodman's orchestra, the authors of the ten current best sellers, the actors in six Broadway plays, Henry Ford III and Walter Reuther, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, all the recent graduates of the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology, the five hundred top practical mechanics on the General Motors a.s.sembly line, the secretaries of the eighteen toughest unions, and a million young married couples with their children.

Now suppose that the average age of these Americans fleeing their homeland was twenty-three, that they were the kinds of people who might normally be expected to have brilliant futures before them, that there were no aged or sick or mentally defeated among them ... only the best. Would you not say that something terribly wrong had overtaken America if such people rejected it? That's what happened in Hungary.

The drama at Andau never ended. Robert Martin Gray, the hard-working operations officer of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration, guided into camp a nine-year-old boy and his mother. The boy's story was so ridiculous that Gray checked his age several times. The child said, "When we ran out of gasoline we used water in our bombs. They worked just as good because when we threw them into a tank, the Russians would get scared and try to get out and older boys would shoot them."

The child's mother said, "On the first two mornings after he had stayed out all night I gave him spankings. A nine-year-old boy out on the streets all night. He said, 'But Mother, I've been blowing up tanks.' How can you spank a child who has been blowing up tanks?"

Each story was more bizarre than the last. Through the dusk one evening came a tall, very handsome young man who said in perfect English, "See if you can do anything for the men back there. We were fired on. Of a hundred and ten who tried to get through, only twenty-nine made it."

When we asked his name, he said boldly, "I'm Josef Kormany, a citizen of Canada. My home is at 82 Emerald Street in North Hamilton, Ontario." His story was so pathetic, and his manner of telling it so free from bitterness, that we were amazed both that he could have lived through it and that he could have retained such an appealing simplicity.

"I had a good job with General Motors of Canada, and I was a high official in United Auto Workers Local 199 of the CIO. All my life I had been a good union man, and on the side I served as program manager for Hungarian-language programs over Station CKTB.

"Why did I go to Hungary? It was my homeland and I wanted to see what was happening under communism. I found out. The AVO took away my pa.s.sport, told me I was now a citizen not of Canada but of Hungary. So I tried to escape, and they shouted at me, 'Who sent you in to spy, t.i.to or Truman?' I would rather not tell you what they did to me.

"They finished by beating me senseless and sending me to the coal mines as a slave laborer. I had some really awful experiences, but do you know what infuriated me most? I could still strangle that guard....

"This is what that monster did. We weren't slaves; we were worse than slaves down in this awful mine. We worked twelve hours a day, but to make things look good, they paid us a regular wage. Of course they took it all away from us for food and lodging and renting our prison uniforms and paying for the guards. But if we worked long hours overtime we got just enough cash to buy a few cigarettes and some jam. You'd be astonished at how men would cry when they could get one piece of bread with a little jam on it.

"So on the day after we bought our cigarettes and jam, while we were down in the pits where you wouldn't be able to get a free man even to visit, let alone work, this guard, may G.o.d d.a.m.n him perpetually, would go through our prison cells and crumple up our cigarettes and mix them with the jam and then smear it over the dirty floor."

n.o.body said anything, and after a moment Josef Kormany, who wanted me to use his real name, swore, "In Canada there used to be two Hungarian-language newspapers that were communist. I now have only one job in life. I'm going back to Canada and fight those newspapers. I used to think that they told lies. I used to wonder about some of their promises. I don't have to wonder any more.

"From 1951 to 1956 Hungarian communists kept me bottled up in prisons so bad I can't describe them. Why? Because they guessed that I had seen through the lies by which communists govern. I'll tell you one thing, I never forgot, no matter how bad they treated me, that I was a Canadian citizen. I knew I'd get out some day. But G.o.d help the Hungarian I meet in Canada who tries to peddle communism now."

His name was Josef Kormany, of North Hamilton, Ontario, and he was vitally important to me for a special reason. Some time earlier I had heard the athlete narrate his hair-raising story about Major Meat Ball, the s.a.d.i.s.tic woman jailer. I wanted very much to report this story but I held back because I was tormented by a fear that I had been told either a lie or a vast embroidery worked onto a thin fabric of truth. So I had asked dozens of refugees, "You ever hear of Major Meat Ball?" and no one had. So I decided not to use the story. Then along came Josef Kormany.

"Know her? You bet I know her! She worked out of 60 Stalin Street. About thirty-five, pockmarked, thick lips, red hair. Anybody like me who was taken to 60 Stalin Street knew the Meat Ball."

"Would you say that she was a s.a.d.i.s.t?" I asked casually.

"I wouldn't tell even you what she used to do."

So if anyone doubts my reports on Major Meat Ball, he can write to Josef Kormany, North Hamilton, Ontario, and he will find that I have told only a selected part of the horror. Kormany can provide the details.

Through the darkness the refugees came, men who had walked the hundred and ten miles from Budapest, and often they carried with them some single doc.u.ment that would testify to their honorable partic.i.p.ation in the fight for freedom. Under some flickering light they would produce a torn and sweaty piece of paper, which they had carried in a shoe, stating, "Lajos Bartok fought at the Kilian Barracks for three days. The Revolutionary Committee. He has a brother in Los Angeles, 81 Queen Street."

It was in such a wavering light that a rugged workman with gray eyes and brown hair one night drew his family of three sons and a tired wife about him and produced his doc.u.ment: "Letter of Commendation. Csepel, November 3, 1956. The Revolutionary Committee of Csepel has asked Gyorgy Szabo to carry a gun and to ride in a car if necessary while doing his work in defense of the revolution. Ivanitch Istvan, President of the National Committee." There was a stamp on the doc.u.ment, and it is Szabo's story that I have told in my account of the men from Csepel. After his wife had broken down on that last night in Csepel, the family had walked over a hundred miles to freedom, the parents carrying two of the children most of the way in their arms.

Others came out more dramatically. Imre Geiger, the tough kid with the useless rifle and dangling cigarette, walked miraculously straight down the open railway track to Nickelsdorf, the most dangerous single escape route in Hungary, since it was patrolled by Russians. On came the c.o.c.ky young fighter, lugging his rifle right toward an Austrian oupost, which under the rules of war would have had to arrest him, disarm him and send him back to Hungary.

Another refugee already safe inside Austria ran down the railway track to scream at Geiger, "Throw away the gun!"

"Never!" the wiry dead-end kid shouted back.

"They'll send you back to Hungary!"

Young Imre Geiger stopped dead in the middle of the Nickelsdorf tracks. Why he was not shot down I will never know. "They'll send me back?" he shouted, a standing target for the Russians.

"Run, run!" His adviser scrambled back to safety and watched in horror as young Geiger remained outlined against the barren sky, just standing there looking at his rifle. Finally, as if surrendering an arm or a mother, he tossed it aside and continued his stroll down the tracks. No refugee came out of Hungary with greater bravado, and it is perplexing to think that while he came right through the Russians, lugging his rifle, more cautious groups, tracing their way through swamps in secrecy and silence, were being caught.

Each night contained its miracles. For me the most haunting came when Barrett McGurn of the New York Herald Tribune and I stood watch toward four o'clock one morning. There had been crowds of refugees, singing and kissing each other and some even with bottles so they could toast freedom the moment they touched Austrian soil. Never were they alone, for they traveled in groups to sustain their courage on the last long hike through the swamps.

It had been a night of almost unbearable tension, watching these souls from the grave well up out of the dark ca.n.a.l and then burst into song. But toward dawn, when the cold was tearing at your ability to stay by the ca.n.a.l another minute, there loomed out of the darkness a solitary figure whom neither McGurn nor I will ever be able to forget as long as we live.

It was a woman, all alone in the bitter night. She was a tall woman with gray hair and a handsome face. She wore a coat that would have been suitable for an evening at the opera. It had a bit of fur about it but no warmth. Her dress was thin and her scarf was quite inadequate.

She loomed out of the darkness like a demented queen from some Shakespearean play. Why she was alone we never knew. When she saw us she hesitated, and if we had been Russian soldiers, I am sure she would have jumped into the ca.n.a.l and tried to escape, but when she heard us speaking English she came up to us through the icy air and spoke rapidly in French. "I have been walking three days," she said. "Before that the Russians caught some of us and held us in a bunker for forty-eight hours. Some of us were shot. I escaped. How far must I go now?"

"Only one more kilometer to the hut," McGurn lied to encourage her.

"I can make that. If I have survived the last three years, I can survive the last kilometer."

Then she went into the cold mists. Who was she? We never knew. What torments was she feeling? We could only guess. But as she went down the silent ca.n.a.l, a great gaunt figure of triumphant tragedy, fighting against the darkness totally alone, I saw something that haunts me still. She wore high-heeled shoes and had worn them through the long miles, the Russian prison and the swamps.

I missed the most gallant incident at Andau, but Dan Karasik, the red-headed announcer for CBS, not only saw this beau geste but photographed portions of it. On a rainy day, when the swamp to the south had become impa.s.sable, large numbers of Hungarians, including many families, tried to penetrate the marshes to the east, and here, in the tall rushes, they became hopelessly lost. The AVO, discovering this, moved in under Russian direction, and started to pick up the would-be escapees and haul them off to prison camps.

At this point Karasik saw, coming through the head-high rushes to the east, a young Hungarian man of perhaps twenty. He wore no cap, no overcoat. He was a husky chap, and when he reached the shallow drainage ca.n.a.l that separated the eastern rush fields from Austria, he plunged heartily in, splashed his way across and asked one question: "Austria?"

"Yes," Karasik said.

"Good," the young man grunted in German. He then turned, splashed back through the icy water and in about ten minutes led to safety some fifteen Hungarians, blue with cold.

"Austria," the young man said, but before the refugees could thank him, he had disappeared into the rushes, and for a while Karasik heard him thras.h.i.+ng around; then he dramatically appeared with another convoy, muttering only the magic word, "Austria."

He made three more trips, but on his next the lookout in the tower spotted him and by means of signals and gunshots directed a team consisting of two border guards and an AVO man into the very rushes where the young scout had gone for his sixth group. There were shots, a scuffle and then, to the horror of the watching Americans inside Austria, the three patrolmen appeared with the young bareheaded Hungarian as their captive.

They led him down the ca.n.a.l path to the tower, but before they got him there he broke away and dived into the rushes alongside the ca.n.a.l. There was a mad scramble, and after many tense minutes the young guide broke once more through the rushes and splashed to safety. Karasik says, "A cheer went up. You couldn't help it."

But many brave men faced equal perils. What set this particular young man apart was his next action. Says Karasik, "After the guards had gone disconsolately back to their tower the young man sat down, took off his soggy shoes, and disclosed the fact that he had no socks. His feet must have frozen. But from around his neck he took another pair of spare dry shoes and put them on. We thought he intended to use them for the hike to the trucks and some dry clothes.

"Instead he stood on the Austrian side of the ca.n.a.l and listened. Over in the rushes he heard a noise and he started back into Hungary. We pleaded with him not to take such a risk, but he said, 'Ungarn!' (Hungarian!) which meant, 'There are still some Hungarians lost in there.' And while we watched in silent wonder, he made three more trips through the bitter-cold waters of the swamp and brought out all his countrymen."

But if I missed this remarkable performance, I did see one that became a legend along the frontier. When Russians guarded the bridge, and when the thermometer dropped to a paralyzing nine degrees above zero, we prayed that the deep ca.n.a.l which cut off the marshes to the south would freeze, thus providing another escape route. But stubbornly it refused to do so; only a thin film of razor-sharp ice formed on the surface. To this semi-frozen ca.n.a.l came a young married man, his exhausted wife and two children. There was no way for them to cross to safety, and AVO men with dogs could be expected along at any moment.

So this father took off all his clothes, then lifted his little girl in his arms and plunged into the deep ca.n.a.l. Breaking the ice with his chest and one free arm, he waded across, climbed up through the marshy slopes and deposited his child in Austria.