From hungary-report-owner Mon Oct 23 08:22:15 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id IAA27742; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 08:22:15 -0700 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id IAA27716; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 08:21:42 -0700 Received: from bruner@isys.hu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-report@hungary.yak.net (27714) Received: from kingzog.isys.hu (KingZog.iSYS.hu [194.24.160.4]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id IAA27689 for ; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 08:20:59 -0700 Received: from [194.24.161.10] (bruner.dial.isys.hu [194.24.161.10]) by kingzog.isys.hu (8.7.Beta.11/8.7.Beta.11) with SMTP id QAA09207 for ; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 16:20:13 +0100 (MET) X-Sender: bruner@mail.isys.hu (Unverified) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 16:16:21 +0100 To: hungary-report@hungary.yak.net From: bruner@isys.hu (Rick Bruner) Subject: Hungary Report 1.24/a (SPECIAL) Sender: owner-hungary-report@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: hungary-report@hungary.yak.net ======================== The Hungary Report Direct from Budapest, every week Also available on the World Wide Web (http://www.isys.hu/hrep/) No. 1.24/a (SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT FEATURE) October 23, 1995 ======================== SPONSORED BY: iSYS Kft., providing full Internet solutions for companies and individuals in Hungary. For further information, send e-mail to , view our World Wide Web home page (http://www.isys.hu) or call (+36-1) 266-6090. Greetings Dear Readers, In light of the fact that we sent out the latest issue of the Hungary Report only last Thursday, we will not publish a full edition this week, but only next Monday, October 30. Below, however, please find an essay specially relevant to today's public holiday, the 39th anniversary of the 1956 Uprising. We hope you find it thought-provoking. -- Rick ============= FEATURE ESSAY Brown Shoes and the Dymystification of 1956 By Laszlo Petrovics-Onfer Copyright (c) 1995 Most recountings of October 1956 are still anecdotal, derived from what people saw or experienced. These recountings are very real to them, and most tend to view it as the "real thing" -- the actuality of what happened. But this does not make for historical fact, only as a grain of sand is an actuality in the desert, and historians must take into account the mutiplicity of communal experience. My professor at Eotvos Lorand, weeping, recounted her experieces of living on the Boulevard and when the first shootings occured into the demonstrators in front of Parliament heard, and still hears, the sirens of ambulances screaming all day and well into the night. She turned to me. "You lived on Damjanics Street. You had luck. It was far from the fighting." Early mythologizing of the Revolution began with people like Mitchner whose "Bridge at Andau" actually states that the very first shot fired by the AVO from the rooftops hit, of all things, "a baby in his mother's arms." Good for Mitchner, and the school of usery, but poor for history, for Hungary. The poor book, the first rush to print in the West and first massive media exposure of the Revolution, is such a quickie that no editing was undertaken in the first editions. It is riddled with misspelling and poor grammar on every page as any High School essay. It can hardly be considered "historically accurate." But one can consider it as hurtful, even debauching, as it befouls the sanctity of that Autumn when, eyes wide open, beheld the purest of truth and also peered closely at a purity of hate. What will echo down from those few days -- to us, to our children, to another time? Damjanics Street lay next to the Gorky Row, lined with young chestnuts whose lower branches were almost within reach -- almost. It is true, I did not hear sirens. And it is true, my parents wanted me to stay indoors. But I snuck out. And this is what I saw. By Gorky Row students with the tri-colored armbands rushing and shouting about a traitor. The "secret policeman," or so presumed, was hung by his legs over a small fire. The loud plaid trousers that covered his frame only partially, was singed, but recognizable at once -- the used pair of trousers recieved in a care package from relatives in the States weeks earlier, '50s wild-plaid, belonged to Gyula Bacsi, the father of a neighbor, Pisti, a friend in third grade, two ahead of me. I had played soccer with him, wrestled in the playground out back and he had taught me chess, the Queen's gambit and Cicylian defense. As I stood amid dark wood then, in the cold October -- my fellow countrymen howling, as when storm-swept wind rakes Buda's hills -- I do not recall crying at the time, unlike my Professor from Eotvos. So blest even now, as many Hungarians, by healing tears. I stood transfixed and numb from trauma. Gyula was a plumber, no member of the Party and a true patriot, this much I knew. A white light overcame my child's consciousness. I saw his charred skull, face half eaten by flame. I looked into the heart of darkness, a blackness now consuming all light, the heart of Hatered. I heard the cry, "Barna cipo," rotten brown-shoed, the color of the shoes of the sercet service officers. It was only years later, in psychoanalysis, that I reconstructed that the man had been lynched for wearing his only pair of shoes -- a deadly color at the time. So, as a young '56er, were you to ask me of the revolution, the last phrase I would use is a "glorious uprising against Communism." And I would be correct -- for me it was my nation reduced once again to animal-like fratricide. But this view is far from history -- far from historical fact. As we are still not suffciently distanced, nor free from the vicissitudes and feelings that color those days. The Revolution was, in fact, the first glorious resistance to Russian tyranny. But there were also criminal elements -- prisoners of crime let loose to gut the Corvin. There was also, especially as the uprising waned, fascist elements. Graffiti on the wall -- "Moshe, you will die before you reach Auschwitz." Whether the Revolution foreshadowed the cataclysmic changes of 1989 is not yet sure. It is a fact, that especially among those who escaped and looked longingly backward toward Transdanubia, across heaving borders and heaving seas, it was "glorious," as much as 1848 was "glorious," and tragic, as any "A People's Tragedy" by Imre Madacs. But history, from the mist of mythology, may draw different conclusions as even today the American Revolution is rewritten. "The American Revolution: How Revolutionary Was It?" asks a recent book from a historian from the Universityof Worchester. We have the right, all of us, to cry for our pain, and also to ask -- '56s: How revolutionary was it? After romanticism and mythology wane, will it be seen as a counter revolution, a patriotic revolt, or a mere skirmish. Will it echo down as the germ, foreshadowing of the changes of 1989. Or will it be seen as a mere slide into the 40 year deep bowl of "gulyas communism." Will the Hungarian history of this century be remembered by 1956, or perhaps by 1944? The sheer weight of numbers bear strong on true history. In 1956 nearly 10,000 Hungarians died at enemy hands, in 1944, 600,000 Hungarians died largely at Hungarian hands. Which will be remembered? In flesh or thought? Especially since even the most professional of historians are human and hunger for "the new slant on history," we simply are left to our mythologizing for now, outside the veins of history, which have yet to be written. But, according to critics in the field of history, definitve texts about the Hungarian Holocaust HAVE already been written. Moment by moment, thematic accounts ranging back to Jewish Emancipation in 1861, and sentences that are jammed with so many facts from Numerus Clausus to Numerus Nullus through 1944, that one sentence may yield many pages of cross references, and pages of related information, quotes from newspapers, Parliamentary Decrees, other texts as well as eye-witness accounts --in 8 point font, no less, the facts behind the facts, that reinforce and sustain a backdrop for the main text. The Politics of Genocide: The Hungarian Holocaust, Columbia University Press, by Randolph Braham, is one such book. It speaks to the world, because it is written in English. And it speaks to Hungary, because it has been translated. I know of no such multiple volume work in English about the Revolution, one that may definitively speak to the world. A group effort, led by the genius of one like Braham, is imperative while those who experienced 1956 in flesh can contribute their recountings. Otherwise, a key to our historical heritage may rest in the hands of Revisionists, a movement that tried to discolor the historical facts of 1944. One feels the craving for the demythologized truth. * * * Laszlo Petrovics-Ofner is a Hungarian-American novelist and psychologist living in Budapest. His first novel, Broken Places (Atlantic Monthly Press), is a collection of oral histories from his family spanning from WWII to 1956. He is currently at work on his second novel dealing with the Americanization of a Hungarian emigre youth. =========== FINAL BLURB The Hungary Report is free to readers. To subscribe, send an email message to the following Internet address: hungary-report-request@hungary.yak.net containing (in the body of the message, not in the headers) the single word subscribe Conversely, to stop receiving Hungary Report, simply send to the same address (in the body of the message) the single word unsubscribe Please note: all mailing lists suffer from frequent "error" addresses. If we have problems with sending to your address more than one week in a row, we may remove you from the list. If you haven't received the report for more than one week, feel free to enquire directly to Rick Bruner <74774.2442@compuserve.com> (but please wait for at least a week, as we're also occassionally late in getting the thing out sometimes :) * * * Back issues of The Hungary Report are available on the World-Wide Web http://www.isys.hu/hrep/ and via FTP ftp.isys.hu/pub/hrep/ * * * The entire contents of The Hungary Report is copyrighted by the authors. Permission is granted for not-for-profit, electronic redistribution and storage of the material. If readers redistribute any part of The Hungary Report by itself, PLEASE RESPECT AUTHORS' BY-LINES and copyright notices. Reprinting and resale of the material is strictly prohibited without explicit prior consent by the authors. Please contact the authors directy by email to enquire about resale rights. * * * For information on becoming a corporate sponsor of The Hungary Report, contact Rick E. Bruner or Steven Carlson. Feedback is welcome. Rick E. Bruner, Creator <74774.2442@compuserve.com> Steven Carlson, Publisher Jennifer Brown, Co-editor Krisztina Fenyo, Co-editor Tibor Vidos, Columnist ================ END TRANSMISSION