The commanding memory of the '56, barely alive homeland - written by Dr. Lajos Békefy.

I was an eight-year-old boy then. But those days were burned into my soul in such a way that I may even carry my memories with me as an earthly traveler, the lessons of '56, which multiply year by year, to the gates of heaven. The term "Landing country" is used by Imre Csanádi in Temple and strong castle . I took it from his great memorial poem, where he wrote the following about Hungarian Calvinism, which preserved the country:

"..appreciate your stay in it, Hungarians,/a country was lurking here, when there was no country".

As a depressing and slate-gray memory of such a latent country, God lived and enlivened me with an unyielding desire for freedom in Győr, which I watched with the widening eyes of a child and a sharpened soul. Today, after 67 years, I still feel and see that a miracle happened for a few days, like the birth of a child born in blood, when a historical miracle happened at the same time and everywhere, from Hegyeshalom to Záhony: the homeland again and finally became more than the empty country.

The excitement, joy, and willingness to act of the heightened desire for freedom gave birth to us as a nation that wants to unite. Was it an illusion or a miracle? It was certainly the great and beautiful agony of the birth of freedom. Although the fetus lived only a few days, it lived. And although grim, fearful years with the smell of death from retribution came, then history-falsifying decades, when we sang about freedom with the words of Kálmán Csiha only a little and with fear, but the memories lifted those days higher and higher. Above, higher and higher, the slate-grey, country-crippling horizon.

GRAY IN ALL SIZES AND VARIATIONS

The live camera of my child's heart replays the film archived in me every year. Győr, October 23-early November 1956, then October 1989, the blessing of the head trees of plots 308-309, November 4, Hősök tere, where, standing on the podium next to Bishop Loránt Hegedűs, I read my freedom prayer.

I remember now. In very deep silence, as Sándor Márai told the world with the Christmas angel in his poem: "A people cried out. Then there was silence" (Angel from Heaven). Between two silences, I now think of the song of freedom, the revolutionary days that made the country a homeland. Carrying in my soul the words of the Ten Commandments of the revolution, matured not only for private use. The shaping of which is still completed in me...

 But then everything started under the slate gray sky.

Gray sky, gray, wet asphalt, gray prison clothes on those leaving Győr prison. Grey, tired faces, the workers of the Wagon Factory. We lived as a country of faces and souls grayed by oppression and lies. Among gray, tired, speechless souls. Under the slate-gray sky of Győr, from the intoxicating excitement of the strange national conquest, a gray imprint in my memory is the toppling of the Stalin statue, next to the Baross bridge. And the Soviet tank that got stuck at the entrance to Sarkantyú köz under Káptalan hill. The tank commander, with whom my father spoke in Serbian, informed us: we are here in a branch of the Suez Canal.

Then in the damp, chillingly quiet morning, when Soviet armored formations are marching westward in front of the also gray painted building of the town hall. After November 4, with the force that pushed the homeland back into a country. But from the freedom intoxication of the past few days, even fear could not drive away the feeling, memory and consciousness of the strange national conquest. When under the slate-gray sky, a single colorful souvenir rose up, a red-white-green national flag with holes stripped of the Rákosi coat of arms. As an indication of what happened, there are red spots of spilled blood. And the alarmed waving of the white flag signaling surrender: a white flag asking for mercy from a retaliating foreign power, assuming peaceful treatment in international conventions, humane negotiation skills of the victors. And just as the Hungarian negotiating delegation unsuspectingly walks into the fatal trap under the supposed protection of the flag.

The honest revolutionary military commander Pál Maléter and his entourage made their way to the victorious Soviet general. To negotiate - but about what? About the surrender? About saving the revolution and the homeland, which was considered lost by then? There was no mercy for him or anyone else. As he was executed, so were many. I'm not writing now about the nationwide purge, the impromptu courts, bringing death with accelerated trials in the name of people's power, instilling fear, retaliation, and silence into the souls.

FLASHING COLORS OF FREEDOM

I still remember these bursts of color today. About the longing for freedom that lives on in the hearts of the country over several decades of grayness. As Márai wrote with hope at the end of his dramatic poem: "Angel, take the news from the sky,/There will always be new life from blood". And because God gave it in such a way that the child's eyes that once saw revolutionary days later became God-seeing eyes forever, inevitably noticed and shaped into words and messages:

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17).

That's why I embraced every moment of desire for freedom, from the pulpit and in the reality of life, even when the GDR people were crowding in Csillebérc and elsewhere hoping for freedom. And at the end of many generations of thirst for Hungarian freedom, until the system-changing days and days of 1989, when home and country, nation and people embraced again in our minds, souls and reality. Definitively. Inevitably. Irreversible. That's when I started writing my imperative lines. Not just for myself.

A LIVING, COMMANDING MEMORY OF THE REVOLUTION

Previously, I described my service among the GDR refugees in my journalism in Hungarian and German with this title: You can't forget those 14 days. If this is true, how much more true and personal, Hungarian-horizon and lifelong: those 12 days not only cannot, but must never be forgotten. When Márai's words became undoubtedly true from a distance of 67 years: There will always be new life from blood. I can still hear and feel the call of freedom, which has been the testament of '56 throughout my life. I confess the striking truth of the great Swiss theologian: our 1956 was "God's revolution against all kinds of ungodliness and human injustice." Therefore, I consider it my generational duty to summarize the commandments of 1956, not just for private use.

  1. Don't hurt Hungarians! Not by order of authority, not with weapons, not with words, not with injustices. Let's engrave the lines of Miklós Zrínyi's history of Hungarianness and patriotism proven by centuries of experience into our souls and pass them on to our descendants as a binding lesson.
  2. Home is always more than country! The homeland supports patriots, the country supports interest groups. The homeland forms a community of fate, a bond, the country a community of interests that can be given up. The homeland is invincible, even if the country is invaded by foreigners or its freedom is temporarily destroyed. Home is always free in our hearts, and sooner or later it brings external freedom as well.
  3. Homeland and freedom are both our intellectual and spiritual goods and at the same time a community force that creates material civilization. There can be Arads, Recks, and Gulags, but the spiritual creative power cannot be handcuffed, suffocated in prison, or destroyed. It emerges with greater force the more it is suppressed. Freedom can blossom even under boots and tracks. It is better to make peace with him, to reconcile, because whoever wants peace should prepare for peace!
  4. No one will win freedom for us, preserve it, shape it into a public good. This is our job and our duty. We learned that we have never received anything as a gift from anyone in our history. We paid for it with blood, imprisonment, prison, intimidation, loss of loved ones, permanent discrimination, mutilation of the country. We protect, preserve and develop. We should not be the ones who make it an ideological, partisan prisoner, because then we are going against its essence, and this will never lead to good.
  5. If the forces of bad luck lead you to leave the country, never blame your country for that! Let it be and remain in you, wherever you live in the world, that "home comes first" (Kölcsey). Don't curse, don't be the one to shame him.
  6. No one from among our own people should defile the country! Let's not insult or destroy the respect and love of the country in others. You can't be a victim of partial interests, because then we will become negligent at home, "...Whose life is more expensive than the honor of the country" (Petőfi)
  7. That's why "Stay loyal to your country, O Hungarian"! (Red sable)
  8. By this time next year, by the grace of God, I hope to increase the anniversary rings of freedom, the commanding memory of '56 with another... God help me!

Featured image: SKI/Ma7.sk