Page 11 - Microsoft Word - 01_A MÁSIK OLDAL English.doc

The Russians soon spotted pits like
this and simply blasted the containing
house. I gained some first-hand
experience of this later in 1956. When
I was 12, I witnessed Russian tanks
devastating Budapest. If they heard a
gunshot from somewhere, they shot
back with a tank. As for the
machinegun nest, my two elder
forefathers surprised and arrested the
2 three German soldiers with a pistol,
then led them to Emma utca/Street
nearby, into a house to where the local Russian commander set
up his headquarters. Since my grandfather was an MP, he had
the right to own a pistol. Sure, we could say that getting hold of
a pistol in war is not something that requires great skills or
dexterity. However, the fact that he arrested those three German
soldiers just like that is something worth mentioning.
Later in school we all were taught, learnt of “how the
heroic Russian soldiers defeated the despicable and fighting-till-
the-end German soldiers.” We all know now of Budapest that
the Germans sacrificed it and fought fiercely unlike in Vienna,
in Prague, etc. The soldiers most likely did their jobs. Not these
three though. They were relieved that they were captured
without a scratch, since they would not have survived until
nightfall. What happened to them, did they survive captivity – I
was thinking this all the time when the two heads of the family
spoke of this incident in front of the women of the family,
maybe surrounded by acquaintances, who listened to this great,
manly imperturbability with awe.
Life slowly returned to town after the war, but a new
kind of fear showed up: the horror of eviction. The family went
to bed with the discomfort of not knowing whether they would
get up from the same beds in the morning. Families were

2 Picture: Dr. Lajos Pál Biró and his wife.

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