A Strong and Mighty Wind! Book Four:! The Fire! !
! !
Douglass Graem
A STRONG AND MIGHTY WIND
BOOK FOUR THE FIRE
and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. I Kings 19: 12 ]
CHAPTER NINETEEN THE ROCKS ARE BROKEN
[ Each of us is responsible for everything to everyone else. Dostoyevski It does not mean, and it can never mean, that we are to stain our victorious arms by inhumanity or by mere lust or vengeance. Churchill, 1943 At last we are eye to eye with death. We must renounce all hope of freaks of fortune. Sacrifice to the last drop of blood is demanded of us. Surrender would paralyze and sap our race for generations. Broadcast to German troops in the Battle for Magyarland, October 1944 ]
109.
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1944, BUDAPEST. Ian read with disbelief the placard near the tram station. [ATTENTION! ATTENTION! We urgently need unlimited number of informers and denouncers. CONDITIONS of employment: total lack of scruples, fluency in lying. Preference will be given to double-crossers and flatterers. COMPENSATION: high pay, universal contempt, secure position as long as I am around. Special schooling
for the gifted candidates in subversion, under my leadership. REPORT: any day to me personally or to any informer. Brother! Report immediately, otherwise we will fail! Time is short. COURAGE! ] The torn, peeling placard was signed by the under-secretary of interior sponsored by the Gestapo. Time was short, prospects desperate for the puppet regime, thought Ian.
It couldn't last much longer anyway.
Budapest was
like a criminal being led to the gallows, who straightens his tie and looks around him, he must die.
although he is aware that in a few moments
The capital city routinely carried out its daily
life although aware that the hour of annihilation was at hand. The prices clearly indicated that the rocks of Budapest city were about to be broken.
Gold coins,
food,
liquor rose steadily
in price while the value of paper currency, luxury goods, antiques kept declining.
These were but forerunners of the cataclysm, the
fire about to torch the queen city of the river Danube. Two world powers were clashing in a mighty combat in the valley of the Danube: the ascendant.
the Germans in eclipse and the Russians in
Neither bothered to ask for the approval of the
inhabitants of the valley in the blood-soaked fire-torched crossroads of Europe. Magyarland, willy-nilly, became a key battlefield.
Geograph-
ically it was closest to Germany of the many pieces of real estate into which the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had been subdivided after the First World War a quarter century earlier.
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Hitler personally
ordered:
it must be defended unconditionally.
Surrender to him
was unthinkable. But the unthinkable was happening. were powerless to alter events.
The Skorzeny commandos
Only a few months earlier Hitler
had had one million men under arms in the Danube Valley, but the loss of Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Greece had reduced his proud armies to mere skeletons.
The Nazi leader's illusions were
rarely more powerful than in these climactic months of the hard winter of 1944-1945.
Instead of consolidating his power behind
the protective shield of the Carpathian Rockies, he chose to defend his far-flung real estate bit by bit.
In the process his
armies were destroyed piece-meal, division by division.
When it
came to defend what he considered to be his inner fortress-Germany, Austria and Magyarland--he had not enough mustard left to fight the legions of the east swarming up the Danube Valley into the heart of Europe. As early as October 12, the Magyar chief-of-staff warned the commander of the German forces in the Danube Valley that most of Magyarland,
including Budapest,
would be exposed to the deadly
thrust of Marshals Malinovski and Tolbukhin,
who were storming
westward with their Second Ukranian and Third Russian armies. The
stakes were enormous:
the very survival of the Nazi
Empire on the one hand and the establishment of Moscow's power in Central Europe on the other.
The Russians had schemed for a cen-
tury to establish their supremacy over the Danube Valley.
That
enormous prize with nearly one hundred million inhabitants and
-3-
endowed with some of the richest and most fertile lands of Europe was about to fall into the grasp of Stalin who was however, interested in such attractive percentages, only in undisputed power. Hitler's last line of defense after the loss of the Carpathian Rockies, was the River Danube and the hills surrounding the western side of the Magyar capital known as Buda, along the banks of the Danube.
The battle between the two powers would wage over this
bastion. Ian was only dimly aware of what was about to happen when he looked at that poster in Buda on his way to a Christmas Day party in the northwestern outskirts of Budapest.
He observed with dis-
may the entrenchment of Nazi troops in the hills around him and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.
He hid beyond the
pale of reality in a world where love was a romantic passion for Maria. He was looking forward to the party held at a large suburban home of Aunt Ildiko, his father's cousin. twins were expected there.
His mother and the
He hadn't seen them for months.
There
was much to talk about. The tram took him with surprising speed to the outlying part of the city.
From the tram stop he had about a kilometer to walk
to the house. A real feast awaited the Chabaffy clan.
Aunt Ildiko felt it
was desirable to live merrily for the day on the provisions she had saved up for months.
Wasn't it better if the delicacies were
enjoyed by her family rather than by rapacious foreign soldiers?
A few hours later Ian, well fed and slightly intoxicated from the champagne, stepped out onto the terrace.
The sun was about to
dip below the outline of the northwestern foothills of Buda, which stretched out in front of him like a Turner landscape.
The rays
of the sun created beautiful gradations of color amid the rolling lands and quiet forests. The air was still.
Not another person was visible.
In the forest clearing, directly in front of Ian, less than a kilometer away, a form appeared. him.
The toy tank emitted a tongue
It looked like a toy tank to 0
f fl arne.
within seconds the wing of the house where the dining room was sustained a terrific impact.
Ian heard the splinter of glass
and the fall of masonry--the dining table was covered by an avalanche of brick and timber. "Praise God this didn't happen a few hours ago while we were all in this very room!" was Ian's first thought. the house.
He rushed into
Everyone had been helping in the kitchen to clean up
after the Christmas meal when the T-34 tank opened its salvo.
The
household staff was in the countryside for security reasons. Fearlessly, Aunt Ildiko and her sister Princess Chabaffy came out with Ian to watch the maneuvers of the tank.
At that moment the
little engine of destruction wheeled sideways and disappeared in the forest. "We are surrounded!" Aunt Ildiko announced briskly. "What do you mean?" Ian asked bewildered.
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"A Russian tank on the west side of the Danube means we are totally surrounded."
She wheeled around and stepped into the
kitchen. "The Russians can be here within the hour," she said matterof-factly.
"We have to hide everything, the silver, the barrel of
lard, the jewelry, everything!" carpet of the pantry.
She opened a trap door under the
Everybody pitched in to hide the valuables.
Ian surrendered the gold wristwatch he had just received from his mother as a Christmas gift.
Ellen and Elma were busy stripping
off their own jewelry. After a hasty consultation, their mother and Aunt Ildiko decided that everyone should disperse before nightfall.
Ian felt
sorry he didn't have much time to talk to his mother and sisters about their weeks and months of hide-and-seek with the Gestapo. Princess Chabaffy looked thinner and drawn after her adventures, but the glitter of her eyes was undiminished.
The twins
kept laughing and with Ian they looked forward to tomorrow as a lark which grownups were going to play.
110.
As a new year's resolution Ellen, a Red Cross volunteer nurse in the citadel's underground hospital, kept a diary during the seige of Budapest.
In the ferocious arena of war, destruction,
desperation involving upwards of one million combatants, she was a microcosm of peace and survival. -6-
January Ist--Fine, not quite clear, not cold. ln the morning, on the couch.
Dawn awakening with Russians firing
continuously with bombs, mortars, guns. hit.
Say my prayers
Our house gets a direct
Part of the third floor and much of attic destroyed.
ing up debris.
We have neither electricity nor water.
servlce is poor.
mushrooms, vegetable soup.
Dinner:
How is Andy?
potatoes with
Pray in the afternoon up ln
Russian fighter planes strafe streets.
Walking around becomes dangerous.
At noon have lunch at Maltese
mlSS10n with Liza, Margit, Orsi and Lotti: vanian cabbage, apricot jam.
lentil soup, Transyl-
Lotti reads letter from Aunt Julia
about the arrest of Tonus and Uncle Egon.
Ian's dog Bobsy gets a
Refugees coming from German Hill, west of Citadel.
Didn't wash hair today, vasari.
Lunch:
pork with vegetables.
January 2--Beautiful sunny day.
big bone.
Telephone
Can't get in touch with Ian who has been gone
now for nearly two days, visiting friends.
my room.
Clean-
Dinner:
Read about Donatello in
goose liver with hashbrown potatoes.
attack Eagle Hill.] on German Hill.
feel unclean.
south of the citadel.
Russians
[See two houses afire
During evening constitutional watch Eagle Hill
bombarded by mortar fire. January 3--Wednesday: in hospital.
Pray in the afternoon in my room.
by artillery fire. with bacon.
beautiful sunny day.
Liza works a.m. Wake at 5:20 a.m.
P.m. read and play patience.
Lunch:
beans
Evening play bridge at Maltese mission; win thirty-
nlne and one-half potatoes.
Dinner:
chicken soup, freshly baked
bread by Juliska with goose liver; strawberry jam.
Constitutional
amid mortar fire.
Mami every day in underground hospital where
Buda's civil defense headquarters are
she is commander of civil
defense. [ January 4--Beautiful lovely day, sunny. ing in my room.
Pray ln the morn-
Ian gets back, brings thirty-nine eggs,
lard,
flour, poppy-seed and a goose traded for a bottle of French brandy. Bobsy steals some goose-liver. Lunch: Dinner:
A lull in gunfire and bombing.
lentil soup, followed by bridge with Mami, Ellen and Hennie. mushrooms with potatoes.
Get sleepy early.
Read Vasari and the poet Babits.
Cold dark constitutional.
The moonlight is
over. January 5--Friday.
Misty but sunny.
machine gun fire but no planes.
Pray in pantry.
Ian leaves wearing steel helmet.
Reading about Boticcelli's Venus reminds me of Tonus. for her and Imre.
Elma cries as still no news.
troys remainder of third floor. debris at rear gate.
Extra prayer
Another hit des-
Help Vince artistically arrange
Mami and Juliska baking in cellar.
line from 7 to 11 a.m., then for water to well in hospital. kohlrabi with sausage.
Read Bible.
goose liver, canned pears. January 6--Saturday. have water!
Newspaper.
Play patience.
by rocket fire.
Snowing, clear.
boiled potatoes with
Pray in my room.
We
chicken paprikash.
At five:
potatoes with green pepper and tomato
Read Vasari.
Hospital.
Lunch:
Maltese palace hit by incendiary bombs.
Dinner:
sauce and red wine.
Dinner:
In food
Hospital.
Lunch at 3:30 p.m.:
communal prayers.
Sub-
Short constitutional cut short
To sleep at midnight.
-8-
First week of January: little water.
Dreamt about Andy:
were all alone. knight.
no gas, electricity, telephone, very was in a nightclub with him; we
He touched me tenderly; looked as handsome as a
It's so good to love him, even if it's only in my dreams!
In the hospital our finest surgeons forced to become butchers. January 7--Sunday. l.n my room a.m.
Foggy, wet much snow but melting.
Constant gunfire in Pest.
Breakfast:
liverwurst, a little bread.
3:30 p.m.:
chicken paprikash.
Vasari's Great Artists of the Renaissance. History of European Literature. fried potatoes, canned fruit. January 8- -Monday.
It's quiet here.
Clean house a.m.
Ian back.
Dinner:
Pray
Lunch
p.m., finish reading start reading Babits's goose liver with home
Loud speakers exhorting last stand.
Foggy, snowy.
Elma:
like this and I'll end up in the 100ney-bin. 1I Vince got call-up papers this a.m.
II
Seven days more
Ian goes foraging.
Promptly shot off his right
index finger with Imre' s revolver to avoid military service. Vince:
"I'd rather lose a finger than my life.
a nine-fingered man very well. II and sling for her husband.
at the Maltese. Hospital.
Dinner:
pal.n.
Lunch:
mushroom
5 p.m.: communal prayer meeting
mushrooms with rice, boiled potatoes.
To bed at 6 a.m.
January 9--Tuesday. Maltese.
Juliska fixes impressive bandage
Ian back with rice.
soup, scrambled eggs with beans.
My family can use
Heavy snowfall.
Bible meeting at the
Busy keeping stove stoked to keep house warm.
Vince in
Read literary history, then off to hospital to nurse.
and Liza return exhausted late at night.
-9-
Mami
Midnight dinner of rl.ce
and pickles with glass of wine.
Listen to Bartok folk music.
Hospital. January 10--Wednesday.
Heavy snow.
Elma plays piano while I
read Bible.
Snow clearing.
poppy seed.
Drop poppyseed onto the floor, have to grind more.
Ian back with onions. and Elma.
Room cleaning.
noodles with
Prayer meeting, then to hospital with Mami
Gunfire from the east,
Feel tired.
Lunch:
loudspeakers from the west.
Heavy gunfire at night.
but remains unexploded.
A bomb falls into courtyard
Vince better.
Dinner:
boiled potatoes
with goose-fat, pickles, wine. January Il--Thursday.
Melting snow, heavy rain.
and before going to sleep. but doesn't show up.
Wait for Uncle ] Congressman [ Zoltan
Heavy aerial activity.
with potatoes fried with onions. prayer meeting.
Subject:
Pray a.m.
Lunch:
green beans
Elma plays on piano.
miracles.
Communal
To hospital with Liza, more
and more wounded, fewer and fewer medicines.
Dinner:
carrots.
Heavy gunfire.
Make will in favor
of Andy.
Why isn't he sending a note by carrier pigeon?
Read until midnight.
January 12--Friday. hospital in my room.
Mild.
Pray in the morning and after
Heavy gunfire.
potato croquettes with tomato sauce, Li ttle
food.
Tired.
baked bread, wine.
Dinner:
Vince up.
January 13--Saturday. a. m.
Hellish orchestra:
planes.
rice with
Darning pajamas. cake.
Too many wounded.
potatoes with sausage, Read Shakespeare.
Prayers 9
heavy mortar barrage,
Breakfast: goose liver sandwich, jam.
-10-
Juliska
To bed at eleven.
Beautiful clear sunshine. gunfire,
Lunch:
many
Cleaning up debris.
Vince,
Elma and Liza help.
fire.
For the hungry tea:
then hospital.
Lunch:
lentil dish.
goose-fat sandwich.
Exhausted.
Heavy mortar Prayer meeting,
At home wash sore feet.
Today for the
first time, Citadel hit by heavy artillery. Second week of January. tricity.
All week without water, gas, elec-
Ian brings bartered goods.
Jakab brings ten kilos of
flour he bought for two hundred pengoes. kilo sugar and ersatz coffee. for bridge.
Hetta brings one-quarter
Stays for three nights.
No time
Hospital degenerates to chaos.
January 14--Sunday. up at 8:30. comes back,
Sunny,
clear,
mild.
wish I could wash my hair. wearing steel helmet,
increase in civilian casualties.
Pray in my room.
After a.m. foraging lam
says he was twice fired on;
Hospital full.
Wounded Austrian
soldier begs me to hide him in townhouse as fears Russians won't spare him.
Heavy aerial activity.
Vince brings miracle-parcel of
food (flour, sugar) sent by Aunt Mitzi via parcel post.
(How did
that get through?) January lS--Monday. up at 9:30. potatoes.
Cool,
overcast.
Stomach still upset.
Bridge with Liza, Jakab, Hetta.
a.m.; Liza and self on night shift. dinner:
potato
friend's house.
soup;
the afternoon. Lunch:
carrots with boiled Mami, Elma at hospital
Jakab plays the guitar during
noodles with poppy seed.
Ian sleeps at
Feel dizzy.
January 16--Tuesday.
sling.
Lunch:
Pray in my room a.m.
Sunny, clear, mild.
Pray in my room in
Vince returns to postal work but keeps wearing potato soup, noodles with poppy seed.
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Constant
air-raids.
Read a history of English literature.
toes, goose.
Dinner:
pota-
Hospital.
January
17--Wednesday.
Cloudy,
cool.
Pray after lunch.
Liza slightly injured by flying mortar fragment.
Jakab says:
III'm so hungry,1I to baker but he says robbers took all his flour during the night.
Ian back.
street collapses. drawn.
Lunch:
with beans.
continued bombing, buzzing.
beans.
Hospital.
Prayer meeting.
Mami looks pale,
Dinner at seven:
veal
Elma collapses from exhaustion.
January IS--Thursday. 7:30 a.m.
Wing of Eszterhazy palace across
Clear, cold.
Mami goes for water at
Soldiers attempt to enter, Vince watches behind barri-
caded door.
We don't answer.
Soldiers leave.
All p.m. Vince and
Jakab block entire front entrance with bricks, debris and wooden beams,
rear with sandbags and bricks,
cealed entrance. floor.
Lunch:
leaving only narrow con-
Cut fire wood from beams of collapsed upper potato paprikash.
I an gets gasol ine .
I an has
gunshot wound in upper left arm; his finger also gets infected. Dinner:
veal paprikash with noodles.
January 19--Friday.
Clear,
Hospital.
cold.
Mami brings twenty-five liters of water. beans.
Bridge with Mami,
mushrooms.
Hennie.
~n
room.
Lunch:
meatloaf with
Dinner:
noodles with
With Ian to hospital; doctor insists on sling.
January 20--Saturday. evening in my room. larder.
Elma,
Pray at noon
Clear,
moonshine, mild.
Pray
Inspect with Mami, Elma, Juliska underground
Thanks to Aunt Mitzi,
Late breakfast:
snow,
Ian,
sausage sandwich.
-12-
Jakab have enough to eat. Take sausage for Austrian in
hospi tal. killed.
Elma cooks.
Vince's
friend,
Ian brings horse meat.
it's now recognized.
Lunch:
On the second level of misery:
gulyas soup with horse meat.
stitutional with Liza and Jakab. dinner:
the Eszterhazy butler
goose with potatoes.
Con-
Prayer meeting at five.
Hospital.
Searchlights
Cook
in the
night. Third week of January. civil marriage feeling. throat:
On the fourteenth dreamt about a
ceremony with Andy.
It's such an overwhelming
Andy puts his arms around me. not fear but pride in Andy.
Had a tight feeling in my
Mami was there, too.
so young and can look forward to a long life together.
We are Nursing
pushes us to limit of exhaustion. January 21--Sunday. good bargain. munion.
II
Variable, mild.
with Ian to hospital.
flour with surgeon.
Mami,
(healing very slowly),
potatoes, strawberry jam. January 22--Monday.
jam, cheese.
lentil
Hetta.
soup.
Dinner:
Bridge:
cold boiled
Hospital. Cold but mild.
Lunch:
air raids, mortar-fire.
Pray in morning,
Dinner:
Breakfast:
Ian's arm still in a sling.
my
pork sausage,
Record player goes on
soup, noodles with cocoa powder, poppyseed cake.
Bridge with Mami, Elma, Margit. son.
Lunch:
A mortar bomb lands in front of window of Vince's apartment.
Heavy gunfire,
blink.
Rear gate further barricaded.
Barter one-half liter apricot brandy for
six kilos
room.
"I struck a
At 9: 30 divine service at Maltese with Holy Com-
Jakab helps clean up debris.
Ian
Ian proud:
Ian foraging.
Jakab brings veni-
soup, venison with potatoes, malakov torte.
plays the guitar.
Vince fixes toilet. -13-
Sleep in fur coat.
Jakab
January 23--Tuesday.
Sunny,
cold.
Ian goes for further
treatment but doctor has no antibiotics.
Pray early a.m.
Jakab one-half liter brandy for his venison. seed cake.
Play records.
Dinner:
much blood, groans, amputations. January 24--Wednesday. Extravaganza:
orange juice,
pickles,
cold rice.
Hospital.
Heavy snow, severe frost.
paper napkins.
Jakab brings a trunkful of provisions.
Pray before
Through the smoldering Ian has been conSee gliders.
Elma throws up.
Bobsy has
Liza barters a bottle of whiskey for five kilos of
Lunch:
at five.
Too
potatoes, honey, bacon, brandy, candlelight,
scripted with a horse-carriage, moved across to Pest.
many bones.
Have to
To bed very late.
ruins of the citadel visit Hennie and family.
beans.
peas, poppy-
Our civil defense lantern no longer works.
use candles.
dinner.
Lunch:
Give
bean soup, potatoes and noodles.
Bridge with Mami, Jakab, Liza.
potatoes, pickled cucumbers, red wine.
Prayer meeting
Dinner: goose-liver,
Loudspeakers on the way to
the hospital. January 25--Thursday. after dinner.
Mild,
snow in the afternoon.
Pray
wait in line for ground corn for forty-five minutes.
House receives another direct hit.
Jakab, Vince strengthen barri-
cades, wall up windows on ground floor, between wrought irons and non-existent window panes.
Vince gets two loads of water.
fixes civil defense lantern. sauce, Dinner:
Lunch:
sausage with potato paprikash. gulyas soup, orange juice, jams.
-14-
Vince
green beans with tomato 4: 15, prayer meeting. Bathing!
January 26--Friday. four a.m.
Mild,
followed by heavy snow.
Wake at
Jakab goes on hunting trip to German troops with bottle
of brandy; brings back five kilos of flour in the evening! fixes record player. Lunch:
Ian gets back.
Have bad fallon stairs.
potatoes with sausage and boiled eggs.
riding!
Prayer meeting at six.
Vince
Ian's miracle:
At 5:15, sleigh bullet enters
through window as he leans forward to pray, get only hair singed in back!
Dinner:
cold boiled potatoes.
January 27--Saturday.
stormy, cloudy.
ing before lunch in my room. water.
Jakab gets garlic.
hospital, then to Maltese.
Lunch:
Dinner:
Get strafed by fighter plane on way Ian gets fresh bandage, ditto
Cloudy, cold.
Pray and read Bible after
Breakfast with Lotti at Maltese.
dred twenty-five cigarettes. green beans. 6 p.m.,
Lunch:
Heavy aerial bombardment.
prayer meeting.
with potatoes.
Early to
meatloaf, coleslaw.
January 28--Sunday. lunch.
Mami for
gulyas soup with horse meat.
Music on record player.
but I was not the target.
Vince.
Pray and Bible read-
Ian leaves for horse meat.
Liza brings a bag of flour.
back,
Hospital chaos.
Subject:
Feel stuffed.
Ian procures eight hun-
soup,
horse-meat burger,
Juliska bakes bread.
tongues.
Bobsy fine.
At
Elma fries onions with Mami and Liza to
hospital. January 29--Monday. read Bible after dinner.
Clear, very cold; moonlight. Margit brings bones for Bobsy.
beans, meat (horse) paprikash.
Pray and Lunch:
Ersatz coffee at Maltese at 3:30.
Ian goes out for water (worked his way through barricade near
-15-
well) back late with story of decapitated soldier. cription of truncated body. Mami cooks dinner: play chess.
See this all the time in hospital.
gulyas soup with horse meat.
Ian and Jakab
Hospital.
January 30--Tuesday. bombs hit house.
Very cold,
clear.
Two more mortar
Ian gets big load of meat, carved out of dead
horse near ministry of defense. Lunch:
Graphic des-
noodles with poppyseed.
Bobsy happy.
Heavy air-raids.
Ian out, barters one-half liter
of rum for three kilos of lentil and two kilos of rice. Elma, Ian, Margit. Read Schiller.
Dinner:
horse meat paprikash, strawberry jam.
Night shift at hospital.
failed early this a.m.
Bridge:
Underground ventilation
Stench almost unbearable.
Many dead or
dying. January 31--Wednesday. Maltese:
horse meat pate.
Very cold; snow; foggy.
Breakfast at
Hennie tells first Russian story heard
from diplomat; he was stopped by Russian patrol trying to cross Danube River by boat, to visit Foreign Office.
He keeps Russians
busy so two girls can escape in light boat.
Russian shouts:
"There is no Magyar Foreign Office! are in a new world now!" got away.
There is no Magyarland!
After their harangue he realizes girls
Diplomat gave them wrong directions;
could escape. loaf,
cookies.
goose
fat,
This sounds ominous. Dinner:
dill pickles.
We
felt lucky he
Home for lunch:
boiled potatoes,
beans, meat-
slice of bread with
Hospi tal ventilation fixed but more
wounded than ever.
-16-
February I--Thursday. Bible before dinner. hausted,
Very cold;
Ian says,
Jakab moody,
Breakfast:
learns from Juliska how to make them.
gets direct hit again.
me:
"stop!
Dinner:
Foggy, cold.
Uncle Zoltan shows up with
Ian gets dough, firewood,
Duck behind ruins and escape.
Hospital doctors
Every day fewer nurses, more patients.
February 3--Saturday. find Russian commander.
Foggy,
overcast.
Ian determined to
Take bath in boiler room.
"You don't
feel well?" asks Jakab; he immediately noticed my fever. bacon (rancid but edible) with mustard, jam. Dinner:
horse meat loaf.
February 4--Sunday.
To hospital.
Ian not back.
Vince reports:
liver and potatoes.
Pray for Andy,
Jakab goes out as he heard
there is dead horse near Coronation Church. Lunch:
Lunch:
Juliska bakes cake.
Pray and read Bible.
Imre, Tonus, for Ian (still not back).
water.
See
Ian gets final dressing for
boiled potatoes with mushrooms.
do the impossible.
House
On way to Maltese German patrol shouts at
Who's there?"
Dinner:
Ian
lentil soup, kholrabi, jam.
German corpse at entrance of Maltese. wound.
pancakes.
Terrible mortar barrage all day.
February 2--Friday. Where is Andy?
Marni ex-
Soup, dried apricots, coleslaw for lunch.
Ian and Jakab play chess.
coal.
Pray and read
"Blond is beautiful."
Liza sleepy.
eight hundred cigarettes.
overcast.
Bridge:
Marni follows to get Hennie, Liza, Jakab.
Mami 's body found near well ...
Every time we
think this is the end, things just can't get any worse, then we discover that it is possible for everything to go from bad to worse and from worse to worst. ]
-17-
111.
Wallenberg was exhausted.
For nearly three months now, ever
since the complete Nazi takeover, he had worked relentlessly.
Per
and his other Swedish colleagues repeatedly begged him to go into hiding in their own or the Swiss embassy's well-fortified air raid shelter.
He would have none of it.
Instead, he moved out of his
comfortable residence near the embassy over to the eastern side of town.
He wanted to be near the ghetto and personally oversee its
survival. A week later, on the morning of January thirteenth, Raoul woke up early.
He heard the shuffling of feet and the banging of
boots against the trap door of the cellar where he had been hiding for the last several days. arrived.
They made their way underground as projectiles still
rained on the city. longer.
He knew the Russians had at long last
The siege of Budapest was to last not much
Raoul, almost overwhelmed by the stench of the soldiers,
showed them his diplomatic papers bilingual in Swedish and Russian. With his primitive Russian and universal sign language, he explained he'd like to be led to their commanding officer. Shortly one of the Russians contacted Major Dimitri Demchinkov who, accompanied by his Communist Party political officer, appeared In a few minutes. An hour-long conversation followed, mostly in sign language, punctuated by pidgin Russian and fluent German.
-18-
"What are you doing here?" " I'm doing rescue work here." "What rescue work? city.
Your embassy is on the other side of the
What are you doing here?' "I want to see Marshal Malinovski!" said the Swede. Wallenberg repeated his request several times.
Finally,
Major Demchinkov agreed to take him back to his field headquarters. The next day, the Swede returned to the cellar to pick up his personal belongings. "I have received permission to see Marshal Malinovski,"
he
announced. After saying goodbye to the friends who had helped in his mission, the Swede got into his blue Studebaker and, escorted by two Russian military motorcycles with sidecars, left in an easterly direction. His friends long remembered his last words: "I'm going to Debrecen, the seat of the free government. not certain about one thing:
I'm
whether I shall be a prisoner or a
guest. " Not far outside the capital, the tires of Wallenberg's car were slashed.
He was transferred into a Russian staff car.
was escorted by a new set of soldiers. and English.
He
These spoke good German
All were members of the Russian Security Police.
It was not much later that Raoul faced a colonel. happen in Debrecen because he was not taken there. lowed up inside the deep bowels of Russia.
This didn't
He was swal-
The colonel, with an ironic expression, addressed his prisoner in fluent English: "Ah, yes, Wallenberg.
That capitalist clan is quite well
known to us."
112.
"Ah, Campbell ... and of course Chabaffy, these capitalist families are well known to us. II
This greeting was uttered in
fluent English by a colonel of the MVD, the Ministervo Vnutrennykh Dyel, that is, Ministry for Internal Affairs.
The MVD in the
Soviet hierarchy held roughly the same position as the SS in the Nazi power structure, an elite corps through which the Communist Party schemed to control internal security as well as the Army. Ian, who was completely unaware of this similarity, was feeling a tremendous relief, as he faced the colonel. It had been three days ago, on Saturday, February 3, 1945, that he had decided to do his bit to shorten the agony of the war, the breaking of the rocks of Budapest. way to do this.
He hoped there might be a
Ian methodically prepared himself for this step.
During his bartering sorties he had met many people, including German soldiers.
He found out what units were fighting in the
city and with what equipment and how many men. artillery and signal positions.
He found out their
Ian felt convinced that all the
information might be helpful to the Russian commanders encircling
-20-
the fanatical troops within his beloved city, and could conceivably shorten the siege.
He felt that if the intelligence he
obtained--at no small risk--would shorten the agony by even one hour, it was well worth the effort. To his dismay he found that he had great difficulty finding the right officers to convey his information to.
With every pass-
ing hour, then with each passing day, his intelligence was becoming more and more stale, that is, less and less useful. Ian kept repeating "Marshal Malinovski" to the soldiers he had been able to talk to, but he was immediately searched and put under arrest.
He heard with increasing frequency the words,
"German spy" in his captors' conversations.
Even with his rudi-
mentary Russian, he was soon able to discern these two words.
He
kept replying with the two words "Marshal Malinovski" who, Ian knew, was one of the senior commanders of the Red Army troops surrounding Budapest.
He also knew that the higher level of the
Army command he could get, the more likely would he find someone who would understand what he was trying to do, to help the liberators finish the job of liberation a little faster. He held onto the strong belief despite all signs to the contrary.
From the very first moment he was treated as a prisoner
and as a suspicious character, handled roughly, given almost no food.
A kindly sergeant handed him a bowl of soup and a slice of
bread, and that's all the food he got until he reached the MVD colonel.
-21-
The colonel, a handsome, dark-haired man, smiled.
Encouraged,
Ian explained: "You can easily verify who I am by checking with the nearest British diplomatic mission, and anyway, here are my Swiss papers which the Swiss consulate gave me last year." "This is written in German," replied the colonel looking at the document but no longer smiling. papers."
"All German spies have such
He proceeded to tear it into bits.
"But I am not a spy--I came to give you information about the disposition of German troops in Budapest." "That information is being planted by you," he replied, "because you are a German spy!
Your information is worthless to us!"
Ian began to despair. "Why should I, Ian Campbell, give you false information?" cried.
he
"That would be ridiculous!"
"How do we know you are not a German spy?" "I told you, general," Ian tried to flatter the officer by addressing him as a general.
"You can get in touch with the near-
est British ... " The colonel barked:
"Well, well," then waved at Ian's escort
waiting outside the make-shift headquarters, a half-ruined group of farm buildings, and gave an order to get him out of sight. remaining pretense of politeness disappeared.
All
Ian was escorted in
a staff car to a town east of Budapest and thrown into the police jail.
-22-
The Russians gave Ian plenty of time to think. asking himself [ Why? ]
Ian kept
He couldn't come up with a logical answer.
What surprised Ian most was that not a single Russian officer bothered to ask him what information he in fact possessed.
Merely
that he claimed he had good information was grounds for suspicion. [ Why don't they ask for the information?
They could find out
easily enough whether my information is accurate or not, so why don't they do it?
Here it is the third day, yet nobody has asked
me what the information is.
Nobody has asked for my name, address,
brief background, nothing.
What worries me now is that if someone
finally comes to his senses and does ask for the information, it might prove inaccurate because the Germans frequently change their artillery positions and the location of their field units, like armies tend to do when in combat. formation and find out that it
1S
If they start checking my inno longer accurate, they could
easily come to the conclusion that it was never accurate, and then, I'm in real trouble. ] The next morning Ian was taken, this time in a truck carrying a load of bathtubs,
across a river which he recognized as the
Tisza, on the eastern end of the Lowlands, not far from the foothills of Transylvania.
The same evening he arrived in Debrecen in
eastern Magyarland, one of the three largest cities in the country, and was again escorted to jail. Here he was again given more time to think. [ What have I done wrong?"
-23-
But now, it won't be much longer because the Russians will soon enough find out who I am.
Then it'll be clear to them that
Ian Campbell, a British subject and adopted son of Prince Tibor Chabaffy,
the number one anti-Nazi leader of Magyarland, cannot
possibly be a Nazi spy! Fortunately, when these people find out I'm British,
I'll
immediately be handed over to the nearest British authority and then everything will be fine.
By then all my information will be
absolutely worthless but at least I will have tried. ] Ian was utterly bewildered. di fferent from what he had expected. their way of thinking,
The Russians were completely Their behavior, their speech,
their procedures, even their smell and
their logic was contrary to his experience. What he admired most was their total lack of logistics, the absence of ancillary units. lived off the land. food.
Like an advancing army of ants, they
The troops were given minimum rations of
If Ian did get only some soup and a little bread,
soldiers, he observed, didn't get much either.
the
As far as he could
make out, the Red Armies didn't bring a single truckload of food with them.
The only load the trucks carried--Ian noticed they
were almost exclusively American made--was ammunition and occasionally gasoline for the tanks and the trucks themselves. no offices and files,
There were
only field phones and signal equipment,
blows and swear words. Ian soon began to realize that many of the troops didn't know much more Russian than he did, taking great pains to explain they
-24-
were not Russian but Ukrainian.
"Ukrainians good,"
they kept
telling Ian--"Russians no good." As he moved further east he came across increasing numbers of Asiatic troops who were,
like the Russians and Ukrainians, all
equipped--almost every soldier--with a sub-machine gun which was handled with the fondness a gypsy musician has for his violin and guitar.
These soldiers were poorly dressed, filthy, wild looking
and primitive. sion.
Their massive numbers were beyond Ian's comprehen-
They didn't walk,
barked.
they swarmed.
They didn't speak, they
They didn't appear, they materialized in a cloud of stench
and alcohol.
Ian was amazed that despite strictest orders these
soldiers drank looted perfume like whiskey. amazement,
To his even greater
he saw a couple of soldiers fighting over gasoline,
wi th the victor finally taking a big swig out of the American container. Ian--this was his fourth day in the company of the Red Army-was also getting increasingly hungry.
In four days he had eaten
only two small bowls of soup and two pieces of bread.
His shaving
gear and toilet articles had been confiscated the first day--so Ian also began to feel more and more filthy, resembling his captors with greater fidelity every passing day. As the hours slowly ticked by in his cell, he became more and more mad at himself for the blunder he had committed.
He should
have stayed put in the safety of his cellar in the Buda townhouse, instead of trying to play the hero.
-25-
He should have ...
The might-have-beens and the ifs began to gnaw at him, but he soon realized he was getting nowhere fast. The next day, his fifth in captivity, he was led in front of another MVD officer.
Ian, who by this time had become more familiar
with the insignias of Red Army officers, took him to be a major. The major was aided by a Magyar interpreter. "I f you only tell me the truth, you'll be all right." "I have been telling you the truth." "You are withholding information." "I have nothing to hide." "Tell us what you omitted to tell us. II I'll be glad to explain
1I
"
lIyou are a German spy. II IIThis
lS
absurd!
I'm your ally!
I'm British
"
IITake him back to his cell!" This scene was repeated twice on the fifth day and three times on the sixth.
Ian was given absolutely no food.
On the seventh day, the major tried a different tactic. He received Ian as he sat eating a meal of hot soup, some goulash, half a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. simple fare looked and smelled like a royal feast.
To Ian the The Russian
officer dismissed the guards and the interpreter. IILet's be reasonable," the major said in broken Magyar, all the while smiling.
"Tell me what you have so far omitted to men-
tion, and you can join me in this meal." "Tell me what you want to know.
-26-
I'll be happy to answer
"
"I want to know about your activi ties as a German spy." Ian was on the verge of tears:
"Don't you understand ...
I'm not a German spy." The major let out a holler. room on the double.
The two jailers came into the
The officer barked something in Russian which
Ian didn't understand, but which didn't sound very friendly. This was the last time Ian was interrogated. became a non-person.
After this he
For another twenty-four hours he was ignored
completely. In his cell, Ian was thinking furiously. tion carne to him:
Then the realiza-
his great blunder was in proudly announcing to
the colonel back near Budapest that he was British.
It was that
word 'British' which had triggered the anger of the colonel, which had changed his smile into a snarl. [ Here we are in 1945, and our allies, the Russians, treat me as an enemy.
Worse, they treat me with greater hatred than if I
were a German and a Nazi spy. ]
113.
Ellen and Elma slept together in the tight confines of the concealed underground air defense shelter in the Chabaffy townhouse in the citadel. Is there any closer relationship than that between twins? Elma, the quieter and more introspective of the two, often wondered
about that.
There was, of course, the relationship between parents
and children, but sometimes that generation gap was not easy to bridge.
Elma passionately loved her Papi, but it was a kind of
reverential adoration.
She loved her mother too.
her parents somehow lived in a different world.
But to Elma, Even wonderful
Imre and darling Ian did not share the close relationship she felt towards Ellen.
And there was the beautiful relationship between
Ellen and Andy, but that had started out as a meeting between strangers. The loss of her mother had drawn Elma even closer to Ellen. Home from the exhausting hospital work the twins often talked in whispers late into the night.
Since their mother's make-shift
burial in the courtyard, the whispers tended to be punctuated by long silences.
In those precious sharings they both knew they
were awake and enveloped in each other's presence.
It was good to
be together. That night the work in the hospital had been especially taxing. The supply of antibiotics had been exhausted along with all pain killers.
It was heart-rending even to Elma's ears, which had been
accustomed to hearing moans, to listen to the last desperate intake of breath, to the cries, the death rattles of soldiers shot in the lungs,
to the ghastly cavern-filling bellows of wounded whose
limbs were being sawed off without the slightest whiff of chloroform.
To listen to the doleful dirge of the dying. It was the night when her friend the Austrian soldier died,
and when more wounded were brought in than the entire underground
-28-
hospital could hold even if it were empty.
Yet it was good to be
with Ellen, who worked there just as hard as the best of them. From the soldiers the twins learned that the siege was practically over.
And the Russians were expected to invade the citadel within
the Citadel within the next twenty-four hours. Holding each others hands, the twins finally fell asleep. There was something special in that night's togetherness for Ellen and Elma.
In their dreams they floated together in a sylvan Eden
in which even the bending of a blade of grass and the beating of the wings of a butterfly could be distinctly heard and identified. They went back to the hospital early in the afternoon the next day.
Juliska begged them not to go, but the twins felt the
wounded needed them that day more than ever before. The head surgeon informed them, upon their arrival, that a few thousand German troops out of the many divisions, had surrendered.
Coming up from the square on the north side of the
Citadel, taking the same route that Skorzeny had taken a few months earlier when he had stormed the stronghold to get to the entrance of the underground hospital, the doctor came across an enormous pile in the middle of a square consisting of several hundred dead German soldiers. "The Russians apparently shot them one by one as they emerged from the sewers, with their arms held high," the doctor said with disbelief. Elma didn't have time to even shudder from this gruesome description of slaughter because a soldier cried out next to her,
-29-
his limp arm attached to his body with only a bit of skin. hemorraging and stench nearly overcame Elma.
The
Ellen ran back
towards the surgery to get a doctor. Suddenly, strange and alien shouts were heard.
The first Red
Army troops were arriving on top of the steps leading down to the hospital. "Germanski, nyeto?" Elma heard them asking. pouring in and looked around the human carnage. sub-machine gun fire was deafening. appeared, then another.
More troops came The rattle of the
SUddenly a tongue of flame
within moments, or so it seemed to Elma,
the hospital became an inferno. "Fire!
Fire!" she shouted.
what she was doing,
without paying any attention to
she tried to pull a bed holding three bodies
towards the entrance.
A doctor came flying by, grabbed Elma, and
propelled her up to the street with Ellen following close behind. By then the entire hospital was afire.
The patients not
slaughtered by the Red Army troops were killed by the flames. "Come with me! by sight.
II
shouted the doctor, whom the twins knew only
"I live just around the corner."
Dazed by the fire,
the smoke and the carnage, the twins followed him to a small patrician house and were led down into the cellar.
It was packed with
people huddled together under the colorless covers. Ellen's hair had been singed by the flames and her face was covered with soot and dirt.
She looked like a haggard old woman.
Someone handed a blanket to the twins.
They barely had time to
huddle together when two Red Army soldiers appeared at the entrance of the cellar. -30-
"Germanski, nyet?" around,
When satisfied there were no German soldiers
the soldiers visibly relaxed.
One of them picked up a
baby and with a few soothing words handed the infant back to her mother.
The two left as quickly as they had come.
"AII this talk about shooting and pillaging
1.S
nonsense,
II
Ellen whispered to Elma. "And molesting! relieved.
All Nazi propaganda, II Elma added, greatly
The explosions and intermittent gunfire continued outside.
Ellen was curious to find out what was happening and ducked out for a quick survey. When she came back into the cellar her feelings of relief quickly diminished when she noticed three soldiers lining everyone up.
She tried to run back to the street but a soldier barred her
way. "Davai chasee!" the troika shouted almost in unison. unfastened their watches and handed them over wordlessly.
People Even
those who had hidden their watches brought them out and gave them to the liberators for fear they might be found out in a search and shot for concealment.
The soldiers brandished their sub-machine
guns, but there was no violence.
This second group didn't linger
either and quickly disappeared. Then came the evening and nightfall. together, trying to go to sleep.
Unearthly noise jolted them as
the cellar door was violently kicked open. light penetrated the darkness of the cellar.
-31-
Ellen and Elma huddled
A beam from a pocket-
Elma and Ellen were petrified. "Davai!
Davai!
II
came the shouts.
made themselves understood:
"Come!
Come!"
The soldiers
what they wanted was some light.
A terrified old woman lit up the civil defense lantern which every household was required to have.
The frightened cave dwellers
were confronted by a platoon of "liberators" who had Asiatic features, the gait of cowboys, and the unmistakable signs of intoxication. Two of the dozen or so men who had pocket-lights stepped up to each makeshift bed and mattress, pulled off the covers and shone the lights into terror-stricken faces. Ellen.
Elma nestled up to
The soldiers came closer and closer.
Most of the cave-dwellers, with the exception of the doctor, were old people.
The soldiers made some remark the twins didn't
understand, but they pretty well guessed the meaning of the drunken laughter which followed. Elma turned face down and covered her head with her left arm. One of the soldiers grabbed her arm, gave it a violent tug and turned her over. A face with slit eyes peered at her. Blinded by the beam, Elma looked into the menacing void. Ellen watched wordlessly. "Davai!" It came like the report of a gun. Ellen, petrified, didn't move.
In the micro-second of silence
that ensued she could hear Elma's heartbeat. ,
J
-32-
"Davai l"
came
the
second shout.
Elma still didn't move.
Three or four soldiers bodily lifted her up. Not a single person dared to move. Elma emitted a piercing yell, grabbed hold of the leg of the bed and started to fight her abductors with all her strength. Elma's cry broke terror's hypnotizing paralysis.
Everybody
started to shout, the old men wildly, the old women hysterically. In the general confusion the lantern light went out. held by the iron grip of the intoxicated,
Elma was
but in the darkness
others tried to pry her loose.
Ellen started to pummel the soldier
who held Elma by her left arm.
Another soldier suddenly shot off
a burst of sub-machine gun fire.
But nobody was hurt.
He had
fired into the beamed ceiling of the cellar. A middle-aged woman stepped forward.
A soldier's beam hit
her. "Yal" she said, pointing toward herself, Elma.
She even tried to crack a smile.
and "Nyet" towards
This offer of a sacrifice
didn't impress the soldiers. "Nyet" they shouted back to her.
Ellen lunged forward.
One
of the soldiers neatly hit her in the head with the butt of his gun and another kicked her in the stomach.
She could barely hear
the wail of her twin as she collapsed on the floor. Another pair of soldiers stepped up to Ellen and tied her up tightly with ropes.
Elma was being dragged out by four soldiers.
Ellen could be managed by only two.
-33-
"They are carrying them out to be shot," an old man remarked. A sudden commotion was followed by another burst of submachine gun fire.
This was not directed to the ceiling.
doctor's lifeless body slumped to the floor. Ellen was let go.
She rolled into a corner.
The
In the confusion, The soldiers got
tired of fighting with Elma. "Davai, davai!" two of them shouted and ordered everyone out of the cellar. Where is Papi? the Nazis!
Where is
In America? Ian?
Where is Imre!
A prisoner of
Perhaps a prisoner too!]
Thoughts
flashed through Ellen's mind as she lay helplessly in the darkness of the cellar.
All night long more with her ears than with her
eyes, she witnessed a scene which put murderous rage in her heart.
114.
Vince didn't report to work on Wednesday, nor on Thursday, February the 13th and 14th.
The post office building where he
worked was a shambles anyway.
He claimed his injury was acting up
again and that he had to go back for a check-up.
He had grown a
beard, and although not yet fifty, looked like an old man with his bushy grey beard. Juliska was delighted to have him back and was determined not to let him out of her sight again.
It was bad enough that Their
Excellencies Tibor and Imre were out of the country.
-34-
Even Master
Ian had left more than a week before, when he went in search of the Russian headquarters.
There had been no sign from him ever
since.
Juliska had tried to persuade him to stay put, but to no
avail.
She had heard enough stories about the Russians not to
trust those devils an inch. The house received three more hi ts .
I t was a miracle the
walls of the third floor were still standing. been blown out weeks ago.
All the windows had
There was a gaping hole in the wall of
the library. Vince kept busy reinforcing the barricade at the rear gate. He had been a prisoner-of-war in the first war and had not been released from Siberia until 1921.
Those four years in captivity
had taught him all he wanted to know about the Russians. spoke much about those years, not even to Juliska.
He never
He had married
her seven years ago, soon after his first wife left him a widower. Thanks to the influence of Princess Ilka, he was able to keep his job at the local post office--although several times a transfer to another office east of the Danube had been in the offing.
The
princess was also kind enough to put a free apartment at their disposal in the Buda townhouse.
He couldn't have dreamed of having
a better helpmate than Juliska, who soon presented him with two heal thy sons. Yes, Vince was thinking, her excellency, the Princess, God bless her soul, was a benevolent and fair mistress.
It was a
privilege to work for the Chabaffy princes and live under the roof of this most distinguished of families.
-35-
Yes, he'd make certain to do everything in his power to defend their horne.
The rubble which descended from the last three hits
helped to make the back gate virtually impregnable.
Master Ian
also procured a large English flag and he was ready to put it out as soon as the first Russian was visible on Gentlemen's street. The front was all walled up and unless a tank drove through, it was unassailable. Vince had to push some rubble down to street level because during the last few days collapsing walls had raised the level of the rubble nearly high enough that a soldier clambering up on it could have reached the second floor.
But these efforts to secure
the house weren't good enough for Vince.
He paid even more atten-
tion to the rear gate, the only ingress and egress to the house now.
Only a sharp eye could discern a small crack in the pile of
rubble and sandbags protecting the solid oak doors which were no longer visible from the street. Vince was well prepared for the Russian assault. It was not slow in corning. On Wednesday, the thirteenth, an unaccustomed silence set in. Vince could still hear an occasional explosion, and now and then, the crack of small arms fire.
His well-practiced ear told him the
fighting was over. Then an enormous explosion shook the citadel from the direction of the hospital where the young princesses were working. They shouldn't have gone there that morning.
-36-
Juliska had told
them so, but since Her Excellency, the Princess had died, no one could talk much sense with the young princesses either. Vince climbed up to his apartment overlooking the rear gate and saw his first Russians in this war.
He swiftly descended the
stairs and heaved a mighty beam against the rear door barely in time. The first Russians were already in front of the barricade and were shouting for admission. into the cellar.
Ignoring them, Vince disappeared
He opened the trap door, pulling the piece of
carpet concealing it over the opening before pushing the trap door up again. When he emerged the next morning and looked through his makeshift peephole out of his apartment window, he noticed a group of Red Army soldiers ambling away from the barricade in search of easier targets.
silence reigned over Budapest.
When the troops
disappeared in the direction of the royal palace, the street became quite deserted. As Vince was having breakfast with Juliska, he heard his name being shouted from in front of the barricade: "Vince!
Vince!"
Looking through the peephole he exclaimed to his wife: "It's Princess Ellen!
But where is Princess Elma?"
Then he
yelled down to Ellen: "We'll be right outside!" To open the passage was quite an operation.
He not only had
to take out the cross bar from behind the door, but also had to remove several well-placed rocks and bricks. -37-
"Gracious Princess Ellen ... " he stopped midway when he saw the expression on her face and the look in her eyes. "Please come and help me,
II
said Ellen rapidly.
"Help me to
go and get Princess Elma. II "What happened?" asked Vince. II She was raped by some soldiers." II
She belongs in a hospital.
destroyed yesterday.
But the citadel hospital was
Come along!"
"Just let me tell Juliska,lI pleaded Vince. "Of course, but hurry up!
II
A few minutes later the pair clambered over heaps of rubble, northward on Gentlemen Street to the house where Elma was.
Vince
let out a cry when he saw his young mistress' unconscious, bloody form on the floor.
IIWe have to find a stretcher, or make one," he
said, recovering himself.
Two broomsticks and a pair of pillow-
cases were drafted to serve as a make-shift stretcher.
The sad
procession took quite a while to get back to the Chabaffy townhouse.
Juliska, who had been keeping a lookout for them, opened
the door and clapped her hands together: God!"
Vince rushed out to find a doctor.
"Holy Mary, Mother of Elma started to moan.
"Thank God, at least she is alive!" prayed Ellen.
She had
been nestling close to her twin for half an houri her reward had been that moan.
Juliska brought a thimbleful of precious brandy.
Ellen poured it down her sister's throat. Before noon a visitor appeared. "The Russians
"she sobbed,
It was Lotti, half in hysterics.
and threw herself into Ellen's
arms. -38-
Many of the young women in this part of the citadel had to escape the Maltese palace because it was supposed to have diplomatic immunity.
However, the Red Army grapevine had rumored the
presence of many young and beautiful women there. "Last night ... " but Lotti was unable to continue. The same afternoon Lotti and Margit moved to the Chabaffy townhouse, believing in the sanctity of the English flag Vince had put out soon after he had helped to bring Elma back.
But the
safety of the house did not lay in the flag, it rested in Vince's fortifications. In the next few days a half-a-dozen women, great beauties of Magyar society,
found refuge in the Chabaffy home.
Vince could
barely recognize them, their faces covered with charcoal marks, their hair filled with ashes and covered with peasant scarves. They vied with each other as to which one of them would look the oldest and the ugliest. More women came to the Chabaffys on the second and third day of the liberation, because the Red Army troops were becoming less and less choosy about what women they could find.
Ellen was happy
over the new arrivals because to have friends around in these times was a blessing. Elma.
The women took turns keeping vigil over
A more devoted team of nurses than these childhood friends
of the twins would have been hard to find in the entire capital. Each had her own horror story to tell, but Ellen hushed them up, diverting their attention to the tasks at hand. along jewelry boxes and, more importantly, provisions.
-39-
All brought The entire
household was electrified by the guests. hostess, smile.
Juliska enjoyed cooking,
Ellen loved to be a
even Vince allowed himself a
They managed to keep their spirits up even though Elma had
high fever and remained in a state of shock for several days.
The
guests found a doctor, who, entrusted with jewelry, gold coins and a bottle of rum, came back with what everyone thought were unobtainable antibiotics and medications. to get, Vince obtained.
What the doctor was unable
such resourcefulness was vital as the
doctor soon found out that the eighteeen-year-old Elma along with several of the guests had venereal disease of a particularly virulent kind.
As the only virgin in the group, Elma had the hardest
time recovering, but the enthusiasm and devotion of Ellen and all their friends was irresistable. The plight of the women made Vince take to his duties as the guardian of the Chabaffy household with fanatical devotion.
He
swore then that not a single Russian soldier would enter the house alive.
To back up his resolution he had an armory of weapons
including Imre's grandfather's Chinese sword, a souvenir of the Boxer rebellion. On the twentieth of February,
a week after the ceasefire.
Vince ventured out on his first reconnaissance expedition, trying to find out what was going on in the Magyar capital.
without
electricity, radios, newspapers, telephone communications, or mail service, the only way to find the news was to tap into the universal grapevine of Budapest.
-40-
Yet slowly the fire-torched and devastated capital began to stir.
-41-
CHAPTER TWENTY THEY SEEK MY LIFE
[ They seek my life, to take it away. I Kings 15:10 We are bleeding from limb to limb. No wonder! Full half the world is tearing us Asunder. Petrofi, 1849 ]
115.
The shrunken diplomatic world of Budapest buzzed with consternation and excitement.
The representatives of the neutral
countries--that is of Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain and the vatican--were the only diplomats remaining in the Magyar capital, were just finding out what the Red Army had in store for them. The first indications were ominous.
What the diplomats heard
at their first informal gathering after the siege was unprecedented. They met at the apartment of a Spanish diplomat whose home was relatively undamaged.
The Maltese Knights' representative and a
few other friends were also there. II
I hear your building didn't fare well,
to his host.
-42-
II
Mr. Weyermann said
liThe building, what does it matter?" he replied.
"What sad-
dens me is that our attorney was killed by the Russians when he offered resistance ...
But where is your colleague, Mr. Born?"
"He was ordered to leave Budapest immediately. for two days by the Russian Gestapo. stroyed! can do.
I was held
All my documents were de-
Now, I'm allowed to stay on but there is nothing much I I'm afraid that should I venture out again,
arrested again.
I'm quite powerless to help anyone.
I might be
II
Herr Lutz of the Swiss Legation lit a cigarette and threw up his hands with an expressive gesture.
"You have been quite lucky.
The chief of our legation ... II "You mean Mr. Feller?" asked the host. "Yes.
He was arrested by the MVD the third day after the
siege ended along with our chancellor!
Nobody has had any news
from them to this day!" "I hear two of your ladies have disappeared, too," said the Maltese knight. "I'm in a
fortunate position to state," replied the Swiss
diplomat, "that all of our ladies are safe." "That's the first good news we have had today," remarked the host. liDo you know what happened to our Herr Ember? II asked the Swiss diplomat uncharacteristically agitated.
"When the Russians
looted our legation ... and will you believe it, we were looted on four different occasions!
... one party was absolutely determined
-43-
to get hold of our safe. Ember's neck "
The Russians put a rope around Herr
"
this can't be true!" declared Angelo Rotta, the Papal
nuncio. "
in order to force him to surrender the keys of our dip-
lomatic safe!
Even under this threat he refused to do so ... "
"What a hero," remarked the first secretary of the Spanish legation. "The story is not over," continued the man from Berne.
"The
Russians tightened the rope around his neck until he fainted, then they cut off his keys, looted the safe and got away with several millions!" "The same thing happened to our safe," related the Swede of the party.
"Perhaps you know we had quite a big safe.
tried to empty it several times.
The Nazis
The Russians simply removed the
entire contraption! II 1I0utrageous, II someone remarked. IIWe are going to deliver a strong protest in Moscow. " IITalking about safes, II
remarked the Swiss diplomat.
II We
heard that the liberators 'liberated' eighty million at the Credit Bank and one hundred twenty million at the Bank of Commerce, took everything that was in the safety deposit boxes, even what was in the boxes of the American and British subj ects ! II "Have you had any news about Raoul Wallenberg?1I IINot a word from him," replied Lars Berg. formed that Madame Kollontai,
IIBut we were In-
the Russian ambassadress, invited
-44-
Mme. Christian Gunther, the wife of our chief, for tea and told her that Raoul was safe and secure in their hands." "That sounds reassuring," remarked Monsignor Rotta. "I hope so," continued Berg, "yet there is something sinister about the situation.
I have been arrested, too.
along with Raoul of being notorious Nazi spies! falsifying documents for gentiles
I was accused I was accused of
"
"I don't believe this," said the Knight shaking his head. " ... but listen to this," exclaimed Berg.
"I was accused of
doing a poor job protecting Russian interests here! with Raoul of being Gestapo agents!
I was accused
What other explanation did we
have for risking our necks saving Jews?" "This is fantastic!" cried his host. " . .. and I heard," said Weymann,
"that Wilhelm was thrown
into jail, too ... !" "What happened?" asked the monsignor. "He was accused of being the principal agent of the notorious international spy network known as the Red Cross!" " released.
I just heard," added the Turkish minister "that he was It's a typical story of our times.
He saved the life
of his chauffeur during the Nazi terror, and luckily for Wilhelm, he is a member of the Communist Party.
He managed to convince the
Russian Gestapo that Wilhelm was not a spy ... so he was let go." IIWe live in Dante's Inferno," remarked the host. "I don't know what is worse,
the wholesale raping of the
Magyar women or the looting on a grand scale," the Swiss diplomat stated questioningly. -45-
"The Russians are committing a colossal blunder letting the Red Army loose on Magyar women, mark my words," said the Papal delegate.
"In a matter of a few days or at the most, weeks, they
have lost the good will of the entire country for generations. "The
monstrosities
I
heard
about!"
added
Berg.
"Quite
unspeakable!" "Even now," said Wesermann,
"the Russians will keep under
observation houses where women live. night.
The raids take place at
Anyone who dares to interfere gets attacked.
I understand
the women are not killed but kept captive for hours, even days. To add to the m1sery, the women get infected with the most horrible diseases.
We are helpless because we can't provide any anti-
biotics or medicine." "At my place in the citadel," sighed the Maltese Knight, lithe Russians came every night.
My wife,
along with all the female
guests we had, escaped to Prince Chabaffy's place, the only safe place in the district!" "I even heard,
II
said Berg,
"that female members of the Red
Army and police have raped men.
In case of resistance,
the men
are beaten up! " "It's still not safe to walk on the streets," said the host, sipping sherry which had survived the siege and the pillage.
"The
Russians have an unlimited appetite for watches and an insane predeliction to tear up identity cards." liThe people under our protection," remarked the representative of Portugal, who had kept quiet until now, today. " -46-
"are safe as of
"Our papers are not accepted," said the Swiss putting his cigarette out.
"Even some of our own citizens have been relieved
of their passports. " "Have you been in the Inner City since the siege?" asked the host of no one in particular. "It's a disaster area, worse than Coventry," cried the Portuguese.
"My favorite place, the House of Gerbaud, has survived.
The Red Army used the great hall of the confectionary as a stable. But all our best hotels, the Hungaria, the Ritz, the Gellert, the Carlton, the Hunting Horn, are in ruins." " . .. and the main shopping street 1S unrecognizable," continued the Maltese.
"The Houses of Parliament, the head office of
our largest insurance company, many churches are severely damaged ... " "Did you hear the French embassy was razed by the Germans?" asked Berg. "Half of Budapest is gone!" Berg added. "Do you have any water?" asked the host. "Not in Buda.
And there is no gas.
Electricity is provided
only for factories working for the Russians and for Russian office buildings." " ... and for two mOV1e houses playing Russian films exclusively," said Weyermann. "We have no more trams because there is no current. ,,
Some
have just stopped in the middle of an intersection," said Berg. "I have seen tractors remove street-cars as obstructions to traffic!"
-47-
"But the mail service has started up again,
II
remarked the
Papal legatee. "That's true," said the Turk.
"When I want to mail something,
I have it taken to a suburban office, because the central post office building is destroyed.
II
"Has anybody seen any cars?" asked Weyermann. Everybody laughed. "All I have seen," said Berg, "were a few carriages used by some clever capitalists!" "Has anybody seen our Magyar friends?" asked the host. "At least thirty thousand are in a large camp north of here," said Weymann. "
because some idiot Red Army general exaggerated the
number of German prisoners taken and now the whole Russian Army is rounding up people to make up for the 'missing' Germans," said the Turk. "Did you hear about Prince Eszterhazy?" asked Berg. liThe country's wealthiest man!" added the Nunzio. "He was found in a graveyard burying horses!
II
"And what about Count Teleki, a member of the new cabinet? And the mayor?" exclaimed the Portuguese.
"Taken for forced labor
for two days, until a Russian officer could be found who understood them! " "No wonder we have lost track of all our friends!" cried the Spaniard.
"Some escaped before the Russians came,
others were
deported by the Germans, many were killed during the siege and those who were left were abducted by the Russians ... " -48-
"But not the former Nazis,1I said Weyermann furiously. "Are there any around?1I asked Berg. "I know the case of the general manager of the largest precision instrument company, II continued Weyermann. friend of the Nazis and a Jew baiter. of course.
IIHe was a notorious
He was promptly arrested,
After he was put in prison, the union leaders in his
factory visited the Russian authorities and convinced them that he was indispensable for the war effort, so the Russians immediately released him.
He still runs the firm. II
IIGentlemen,1I said the Spaniard, "We could go on all night. But what shall we do about the latest Russian move?" IIWhich is?" asked Berg. "It was declared all foreigners who elect to stay ln Budapest shall be treated as Magyars." "That includes US?II asked the representative of the pope. "It is directed at us," replied the host. liDo we have any choice?" asked Berg. "The Russians simply want to force us to leave. 1I "Why?" exclaimed the Turk. "The Russians don't want any witnesses to the destruction of Magyar independence!" "We are witnesses anew to what the Gestapo did during the Nazi occupation." "The Russians know that perfectly well. " IIAnd now they don't want any witnesses to observe what the MVD is up to during the Russian occupation! II
-49-
"pi ty us!" cried the Maltese Knight, who was a Magyar. "I'll consider myself lucky," remarked Berg, "if I can get back to Sweden alive."
116.
Ian was cold and hungry. days.
He hadn't had any food for several
He had a raging thirst and a constant humming inside his
skull. He remembered the vision he had had when he was seven years old.
He was in church for Sunday service,
up on the U-shaped
balcony where the choir and the organ led the congregation in the singing of hymns.
He lingered on one side of the balcony after
the service and soon found himself alone. Suddenly, still
a bright light filled the church.
small voice:
Ian heard the
"I have you here for a special purpose."
Although this was not uttered in so many words, Ian understood the message perfectly. faded away.
Just as quickly as the vision had appeared, it
But not from Ian's memory.
He felt from that moment that he was a chosen person, someone selected by God for something he didn't know anything about, but which must be wonderful and special.
He kept quiet about this
when he got home to the Chabaffy townhouse and didn't share his secret with anyone at all.
, ,
-50-
On this icy February morning, in 1945, this vision once agaln gave him faith. [ Surely, my divine mlSSlon is still to come. Surely, God wishes to preserve me for that mission. Surely,
I'm not to die now.
I have much to do by divine
commission. ] The door of his cell swung open. out.
Rough voices ordered him
He was led into the back yard of the one story building
which housed the police station. Several other captives were there too.
He was given a shovel.
with grunts and signs, he was ordered to start digging. Two Red Army guards watched the group of eight to ten men, and by constant cussing and exhortation kept the captives busy. Ian was luckier than most because he was wearing a pair of good boots when he was captured:
luckier still because his dras-
tic loss of weight had dropped his trousers over the boots more or less concealing them. overcoat, Daisy who
Luckiest of all, he still had his tweed
lined with mink.
Buttoned up,
the fur did not show.
designed it called it inconspicuously elegant.
blessed her now for providential foresight.
I an
A slight tear in the
arm caused by barbed wire at a barricade gave it just the neces-
•
sary touch of shabbiness.
Yet even though his boots and coat helped to keep Ian warm, it was hard work digging into the frozen dirt. hausted.
His hunger and thirst had increased.
-51-
Soon Ian was ex-
And the guards
kept after him.
One decided to stand in front of him and watch
every turn of his shovel. An
This went on for about an hour.
order came from inside the police station followed by the
owner of the voice.
Ian judged him to be a low level field secu-
rity officer, possibly from the military police or even the MVD. The two guards ordered the captives to stop and line up along the rear wall of the back yard. [ We are being lined up for execution ] Ian realized. I'm not going to die now.
The Lord will preserve me. ]
Peace descended on him.
He no longer felt vulnerable.
longer was hungry and thirsty. and exposed.
[Surely
He no
He no longer was weak, exhausted,
He felt invulnerable.
The two guards stepped up to the prisoners and held their submachine guns
at the
ready.
Some prisoners prayed.
twitched their faces or emitted unintelligible sounds.
Others
One dropped
on his knees and started to wail in a language Ian didn't understand. The guards looked at him with amused contempt. The junior officer who returned to the building after ordering the guards to line the captives up, reappeared aga1n. another order. of guns.
He gave out
The prisoners looked into the snub-nosed barrels
Ian was an instant away from shedding his body.
The sub-altern barked out another order.
The guards raised
their guns higher and fired directly above the prisoners' heads the entire contents of the magazines. died down, both guards began to guffaw.
-52-
When the fearful rattle
"Anybody speak Russian?" the officer asked the condemned men. The guards grinned ominously. Two prisoners stepped forward. "You capitalist SWlne kulaks!
II
the
you bourgeois
officer spoke slowly,
scum ...
you pig
stopping at every epithet,
trying to make sure that every word was translated to the prisoners. "You have been condemned to death by a firing squad!
II
he continued,
savoring every word of the expressive and beautiful Russian language. Then there was a pause. Ian could hear his own heart beat.
with a barely perceptible
inclination of his head, he surreptitiously looked at the man on his right, then on his left.
Both looked at the ground with resig-
nation, almost indifference. Ian looked up and examined the epaulettes of the officer.
He
was a short, stocky man, very young, no more than twenty, had a fair complexion, light-colored eyes, thin lips, clean shaven determined mien and enthusiasm of someone who had exercised command but for a short time.
His overcoat reached nearly to the ground.
It was tightened around his waist with a broad leather belt, with a leather holster, with a revolver butt protruding. leather boots. star,
He wore black
His fur cap was studded with a five-pointed red
decorated with the emblem of the hammer and sickle.
Ian
avoided looking into his eyes not because he was afraid, but because he didn't want to show his determination and resolution.
He
did not want to provoke an instant whim of aggression and annihilation.
Obviously the sub-altern enjoyed the exercise of power
-53-
and the execution of revenge.
He had now yet another role to
play. The officer spread his legs apart, put his hands on his hips and continued in his clear voice, with the precise intonation of a lecturer.
"You have been found guilty of spying!
You were engaged
in treacherous subversive activities against your glorious liberators!
You attempted to stab the armed forces of the Peoples'
Republics of the soviet Union in the back, the spearheads of liberty and freedom for all the peoples of the world!" The way he spoke made it obvious that he believed every word he said.
During the pauses he made to allow for translations, he
looked from one guard to another. he continued:
Then jutting his jaw forward,
liThe glorious Red Armies under the invincible lead-
ership of the father of our homeland and the supreme commander Marshal Stalin, are at the cost of great sacrifices and the copious shedding of blood by our magnificent heroes ... " Here he stopped for a longer pause to allow the translators, who appeared confused by the proliferation of superlative adjectives, to find the right words.
When he realized that his rolling
prose was getting lost in the translation, he repeated the last sentence more slowly, then continued with increasing emphasis: " ... our magnificent heroes are engaged in a fierce struggle against the Fascist aggressors which have invaded our fatherland unprovoked and caused us unlimited suffering ... II The longer the harangue became, the more attentive the prisoners became.
surely this can't be a
-54-
funereal oration.
Ian
wondered if the officer were rehearsing a propaganda lecture for another group. A fellow prisoner muttered in Magyar, "Why doesn't he get it over with, and kill us?"
The officer was so carried away with the
sound of his own words, he didn't hear this comment. [ Surely the Lord does not want me to die now. ] Ian looked at the guards who were no longer amused, but watched the prisoners with grim expressions, keeping an eye on the officer, their submachine
guns at the ready, their fingers on the trigger.
The young officer stopped for a moment, his lines. The
trying to remember
He barked another order to the guards. submachine guns were reloaded with elaborate ceremony
while the captives watched in dull horror.
The cartridge housing
of one of the guns got momentarily jammed, but the guard finally managed to reload his weapon.
In this excruciating pause, the
sub-altern remembered his lines again, and went on: II. .. the Fascist dogs have inflicted innumerable atrocities against the sons and daughters of the revolution.
During their
well-calculated aggressions they have also enslaved other people and carried out their murderous designs on the nations of Europe." IIAnd now our glorious armies under the red banner of the hammer and sickle,1I he continued, "have routed the aggressors and are meting out their well-deserved punishment.
We have liberated
our fatherland and we are going to cleanse Europe from the Fascist scourge.
We will make sure that the forces of treachery and ag-
gression will never have any more strength left to repeat their
-55-
war-like designs against the peace-loving peoples of the Union of soviet Republics
II
The officer paused and, appearing well pleased with his own performance, proceeded: II ... you have decided to aid the aggressors against the forces of Socialism and democracy.
There is no more heinous act than the
act of treachery and subversion. II As if by cue, the guards raised their guns once again. 1I0ur
benevolent father, the glorious leader of our revolution
and the commander of our victorious armies has also taught us to glve you the opportunity to rectify your crimes ... 11 The officer paused.
His face shone like a benevolent father.
liThe commander-in-chief of our army has decided to spare your miserable lives, provided you volunteer to work in the cause of democracy and freedom in the war-torn Union of the Soviet Republics. II Silence greeted this undreamed of pardon. Ii ttle more inducement was required,
sensing that a
the Russian added,
IIYour
rations of food will be promptly restored and you will receive the same care in our fatherland as our Socialist working comrades. II The guards kept fiddling with their triggers. IIAnyone not wishing to volunteer step forward! II the officer shouted.
When the translations were finished, he looked at the
motionless prisoners as if he had just handed out a priceless gift.
He abruptly turned around and re-entered the building.
-56-
117.
Aunt Mitzi was ready to greet the Russians at her house. friends,
Her
the village school teacher and his wife, convinced her
otherwise.
The couple was old enough to have lived through the
Communist reign of terror in 1919, and had no illusions about the liberators.
They invited Aunt Mitzi to stay with them.
This proved to be a providential precaution.
The first wave
of Russian troops removed the furniture from the great house by throwing it out through the doors and windows.
When the job was
completed, the Russian commander ordered a flame-thrower to reduce the accumulation of generations to a pile of ashes.
Next,
he
ordered his troops to round up the peasants ln the village square and told them to refurnish the house with straw mattresses. His purpose was to prove that even the wealthiest kulaks and landowners in Magyarland lived in poverty. His second-in-command,
a major,
who was billeted with the
village school teacher, proved to be of a very different nature. He took a proprietary interest in his new home and made sure the waves of marauders and deserters which followed the more disciplined front-line troops caused no damage to the house and his hosts. One of the officer's responsibilities was to supply food for the Red Army troops around the capital.
He had seven GMC trucks,
and an inexhaustible supply of paper currency.
-57-
The peasants soon
found out that the major's cash was next to worthless, but by standards of the day, the officer behaved quite honorably. He also had a keen capitalist nose for profit and built up a flourishing free-lance supply business of his own.
He generously
handed out wads of paper currency for his purchases but accepted nothing less than gold and precious stones for his services. His Magyar hosts turned to an advantage the major's business acumen,
and a deal was struck.
A truckload of provisions and a
few remaining belongings were transported to the Chabaffy townhouse in Budapest in exchange for one of Aunt Mitzi's ornate pocket watches.
This antique gold watch was many times the size of an
ordinary wrist watch.
The Russian officer graded the value of a
watch according to its size and not its quality. he had the best of the bargain.
He was convinced
The school teacher, who could
speak a little Russian, made sure that the watch was not delivered to the major until the cargo had been safely delivered. Aunt Mitzi was allowed a seat between the major and the driver. The teacher was consigned to the back where he sat on a comfortable seat, the carcass of a fat pig.
The cargo of that truck and the
others were covered by a carefully fastened canvas.
It was not
prudent to advertise wealth in these days of extreme scarcity, even under the protection of the Red Army. The trip was an arduous one.
The roads,
abused by war and
the march of foreign armies, were barely passable.
Aunt Mitzi's
bones were well shaken when the convoy neared the Magyar capital late in the afternoon.
-58-
The procession was punctuated by her lamentations: "Look at our beautiful Inner City!
A scene of desolation!"
"Even the church on Calvin Square is in ruins!" "Only a wall standing where my bank was!" "Notice the Coliseum and the concert hall ... I remember ... I took Ian there to listen to Dohnanyi on the piano and to Yehudi Menuhin playing his fiddle ... all, all in ruins!" "
and see the magnificent promenades along the Danube ...
nothing
nothing intact!"
"My God.
All our hotels!
so often and the ... "Yes,
Yes!"
The Ritz where my husband took me
It can I t be true.
Oh, our beautiful Budapest."
agreed the Russian major,
city have suffered more than Stalingrad." moan:
"some parts of your
Aunt Mitzi continued to
"What will become of us! " The convoy was obliged to cross the Danube from west to east
below the capital and had to battle its way through the ruins of Pest.
All the bridges had collapsed into the Danube.
The Russian
sappers had set up a pontoon bridge on top of the ruined Margaret bridge near Margaret island.
That was the convoy's only means of
recrossing the river to Buda. An endless
line
of military transportation and equipment
waited on the Pest end of the make-shift bridge, the only link between Buda and Pest.
It had to carryall the reinforcements
feeding the westward push of the Red armies towards Vienna.
civilians were given the choice of walking across the ice which covered the Danube or staying put until another bridge was built. After a
three-hour wait,
the maj or's caravan was finally
allowed to cross over the unsteady bridge. Budapest was covered by merciful darkness.
The sun was setting. The vacant eyes of the
ruined buildings looked down on deserted streets of the Citadel. Gentleman's
street reverberated to
truck engines.
the unaccustomed sounds
of
Finally Aunt Mitzi's convoy arrived at the rear
gate of the Chabaffy mansion.
The trucks honked in unison, but
the ancestral seat of the Chabaffy clan showed no signs of life. The major threatened to proceed with his trucks unless he was allowed to unload.
Aunt Mitzi had little choice but to agree to
have the precious cargo unloaded on top of the ruins blocking the rear entrance. Aunt Mitzi was left in the middle of the street, in the pitchblack darkness.
street lighting, of course, didn't exist.
Not a
glimmer from behind the proud patrician facades of the Citadel relieved the inky blackness.
Aunt Mitzi wondered what to do next
when Vince cautiously opened the gates of his fortress. "Sorry,
countess," he said to Aunt Mitzi in greeting.
"I
couldn't risk a Russian officer spreading the news that this house is occupied." Aunt Mitzi and her benefactors were greeted with joyous shouts. The house sprung to life like a disturbed ant hill. cargo quickly disappeared inside. its dominion again. -60-
The precious
Then the silent night regained
118.
In the camp of the Red Army the prisoners'
rations were
restored--for a single day. The next afternoon the small building was grated by harsh noises and guttural commands. facing northeast.
The captives were lined up outside,
Two guards escorted the small group.
started early in the afternoon. fortunate.
He had scrounged a
It was bitterly cold.
The walk Ian was
piece of rope which tightened
around his waist and kept much of his body heat trapped inside his coat. He reflected on the sudden reversal of his fortune. The end of one tyranny was but the beginning of another one. What was the end of one holocaust, was but the kindling of another one.
What appeared as a gate to freedom only led to new slavery.
What he fought for--liberation--became,
for all appearances,
im-
prisonment and forced labor. Disillusionment kept haunting him in his cell. what we strived for?
Was this the result of a slaughter which had
now been going on for six years?
Where were the flowery phrases
of compromisers who had masqueraded as statesmen? to all those resounding promises? and allies foes?
[Was this
What happened
Why did my friends become enemies
Did something somewhere go terribly wrong? ]
Ian remembered his vision and felt at peace. at his own lack of hatred.
He was surprised
He tried to see the good in his captors.
-61-
[ Didn't the fledgling sub-altern only do his duty? that Ukrainian sergeant, motivated by love?
Wasn't
who shared a slice of bread with him,
Wasn't his interrogator faithfully carrying
out his instructions in persistence and single mindedness? ] Ian had many questions and was now groping for the solutions. In his bewilderment, he had no vengeance in his heart as he began his march towards Asia.
It started to snow late in the afternoon.
Ian noticed the Russians were cold,
too.
Many of his
fellow
prisoners, who were dressed in walking shoes and without overcoats, were barely able to keep up. He had not been in this part of Eastern Magyarland before. He was dimly aware that he was somewhere north of Debrecen, large city not far from Miskolc. an instant.
a
His thoughts turned to Maria for
Then all his life energies were concentrated on making
the next step and the step after that. The bowls of soup,
the bread he had received in the last
twenty-four hours had barely whetted his appetite.
What he appre-
ciated most that he had been able to trade a couple of cigarettes for a shave.
He felt wonderfully clean and refreshed.
Ian had
also managed to scrounge a tiny old tin mug, which he had secreted \
,
like a treasure in the inside pocket of his overcoat before starting out. As the march wore on his strength ebbed with a rapidity which surprised him.
After three or four hours of walking he felt dizzy,
and in another hour he felt light-headed, almost carefree.
-62-
The group arrived at its destination well after nightfall. Ian couldn't determine the layout of the place.
It appeared to be
a large army depot where units were refitted, re-routed and sent to the front, or returned to Russia.
He saw a field kitchen and a
lot of trucks. The two guards escorted them to a barn, then disappeared. Ian lay down gratefully.
He was able to sleep less than an hour
before he was roused agaln. his head,
Bone tired, he pulled his scarf over
tucked his hair under it and followed a group of non-
Russians to a low building, the homestead of a small farmer. line was long, and moving very slowly.
The
After what he felt to Ian
an interminable wait, the line seemed to speed up a little. Inside the building it was blessedly warm.
Ian could make
out an officer sitting behind a desk, with an interpreter standing next to him.
Each person waiting was dismissed after a curt ques-
tion or two.
Ian sensed this was an opportunity to get out of
this hell.
When his turn came he stepped with a decisive gait and
held himself in a manner which made it obvious that he was a gentleman.
He gave the officer a smile and said quickly, in a thin
voice that reflected tiredness:
"There must have been a mistake,
I shouldn't be here." The officer gave him a penetrating look, then motioned to the interpreter to take him out of the line into the back room. "You are lucky," whispered the interpreter, "the colonel took a liking to you.
He asked me to get you some food."
-63-
A Magyar peasant woman appeared with a wonderfully hot soup, two large slices of bread, thanked her profusely.
a boiled potato and an apple.
Ian
When he finished eating--he tried to eat
carefully, thoroughly chewing every morsel before swallowing it-she came back into the well-heated room to fetch the plate and utensils. "I'm famished,
II
Ian said to her in Magyar.
"Can you possibly
get me something more to eat?" Wordlessly she left and brought back half a loaf of bread, two boiled eggs, butter and bacon.
Before he had a chance to
thank her, she disappeared. Ian quickly sliced the bread, filled his pockets with bread and butter sandwiches, saved one egg and ate the other with the rest of the bread and bacon.
Overcome by the unaccustomed heat,
he rested his head on the table and promptly fell asleep. A finger running up and down his cheek made Ian wake up with a start.
"Tres belle, tu est," he heard someone say in French,
"You are beautiful. II
He opened his eyes.
The colonel sat next to
him. "Tu parle francais?" he asked. "0f course,
II
liDo you speak French?"
replid Ian delightedly, now fully awake.
"Take your scarf off, II said the officer after a pause. "But you are a man! pity! II
II
he exclaimed.
"Quelle dommage!
What a
Ian began to realize why he had been pulled out of the
line. liMon general,
II
he said quickly.
-64-
II I'm a colonel, II the Russian officer interrupted him. liMon colonel, II
continued
explain rapidly who he was.
I an unabashed.
He proceeded to
III'm Ian Campbell and I'm the son of
Tibor Chabaffy. II IITibor Chabaffy, leader of the peasants and the Union Party?1I IIYes, yes!1I The colonel paused: "Of course, we know the name, II he finally said. IIPlease get me out of here.
You must realize a terrible
mistake was made, II Ian said urgently. IIThere was no mistake, II replied the colonel stiffly.
"The
Red Army does not make mistakes. II IIWhy am I
held as a prisoner then?
This is absurd! II Ian
cried, with the food in his belly giving him renewed courage. 1I0ne of our illustrious generals reported a certain figure for prisoners taken at the siege of Budapest," explained the Russian, lI
and now we have to make sure that that figure is absolutely ac-
curate.
You see, the Red Army can't possibly make a mistake. II
"I don't ... " "Tres simple,1I he replied.
"We will send the exact number of
prisoners captured at Budapest back to the USSR, which was reported to Moscow. II
I an understood.
IIBut I'll try and do something for you, II said the colonel, after a long silence.
Ian felt his luck was turning at last.
remembered God's protective mantle.
-65-
He
"You can stay in the kitchen," continued the Russian slowly, still speaking in French.
"Disposition about you will be made
tomorrow. " He nodded to signify the interview was over. "Thousand thanks," said Ian in parting. bed that night.
His overcoat was his
The stove kept the place warm.
He slept until
daybreak. The bitter cold outside froze the vapor of the cooking on the window panes. being made.
Ian woke up to the blessed sounds of breakfast
The peasant woman took the colonel's breakfast to his
room at 7:15. Ian tried to make himself useful around the kitchen. Magyar woman insisted he take a rest.
The
He soon found out why.
The colonel greeted him cordially and inquired about how he slept. "Tres bien, very well," replied Ian. "You know, Monsieur, my powers are very circumscribed," the officer continued.
"At the present state of the war I
cannot
release you." Ian was glad he had ate the bread sparingly last night. "But I can put you with another group of prisoners," announced the colonel.
"You will no longer be a German prisoner.
You'll be
Italian." "Italian?" "We caught quite a few before they could run away," smiled the Russian in French,
to a Scot who was Magyar, but really a
-66-
German turned Italian. them back tions ...
"Our comrades in Italy suggeseted we ship
as a good will gesture ... before the upcoming elecCan you speak any Italian?"
"Just a few words." "You had better keep your mouth shut," suggested the colonel. "That way you won't get into any trouble. in four days.
The Italian POW's leave
Until then, you'll work in the kitchen.
I suggest
you don't join them until just before departure." "Thank you, mon colonel." "I f
anything goes
wrong,
I
have never
seen you,
do you
understand?" "But of course. " "Good luck, monsieur." "Adios!" Ian said happily. "That's Spanish!" replied the colonel severely.
"If that's
your Italian, do shut up!" Four days later the well-fed Ian was one of the last two to squeeze himsel f
onto the freight car.
There was barely enough
room inside to stand up. "You don't look Italian to me," said Ian's neighbor quietly. "Perhaps he is a Russian spy," said someone behind him even less audibly. spione" meant.
Ian understood perfectly well what the words "Russo
119.
"Have you heard the latest?" "Tell me." "A teacher is asking his class:" "'What is Russia to us?'" "'Russia is our brother,' came the reply from the back of the room. " "Wouldn't it be better to say Russia
1S
our great friend?"
suggested the teacher. "No," insisted the little scholar.
"Russia is our brother. "
"Why do you keep calling Russia our brother?" "Because we can pick our friends." Pista and Pal, two engineers from the waterworks, had a good laugh.
"We had better hurry up, or we'll be late for the meeting."
The meeting of the sub-committee of the Budapest City Council met in an emergency session after the liberation of the capital. Although it was precisely ten o'clock, the chairman did not call the meeting to order, because several key members had not yet arrived. Pista greeted a colleague from the Ministry of Transportation, who was attending as an observer. "How are you, Janos?
When did you get back from Debrecen?"
"only last night," replied his friend. "What's going on over there in our capital?" asked Pal, who joined the discussion.
-68-
"We have made a preliminary estimate of what we are left with,
II
replied Janos.
"Truthfully,
there isn't much left.
The
Russians claim the Germans held out so long in Western Magyarland to gain time to strip the country." liThe pot calling the kettle black, eh? II said Pista. "What difference does it make which of our neighbors is bleed1ng us?" asked Janos. "We are bleeding from limb to limb
II
"No wonder, full half the world is tearing us
II
Asunder," quoted Pista.
II
"Who wrote that ... Petofi?" asked Pal. "Yes, my dear friends, Petofi, almost one hundred years ago when the Austrians attacked us from the West and the Russians from the East ... II replied Pista.
"Do you have any figures on our
rolling stock?" "We have,
II
replied Janos, "they are strictly preliminary. "
"Let's have them anyway," said Pal and Pista. liThe Germans took nearly forty percent of our diesel locomotives,
more than sixty percent of our passenger coaches, three
quarters of our freight cars.
II
"Three quarters?" exclaimed Pista. "The preliminary figure is seventy four percent.
II
"What else?" asked Pal. "I f
you think our rail transportation 1S in shambles, and
don't forget what little the Germans left was mostly damaged, let me tell you about our Danube fleet of ships."
-69-
"Our pride," said Pista, "0ne of our big export items. II "1'11 Janos
tell
grimly.
you
about the
involuntary exports,
II
continued
"We had four hundred-eighty-nine units and the
exports amounted to four hundred-eighty-seven units!" "You mean the Germans left us with two ships?" asked Pista incredulously. "
at the bottom of the river," remarked Pal.
"All this does not take into account all that stuff that was loaded onto the freight cars to the breaking point," added Janos. "We were looted with our own freight cars ... " The chairman opened the meeting one half hour late when the engineer from the hospitals finally arrived:
"In order to start
planning an energetic rebuilding program we have corne together to assess the damage caused by the siege of our city.
I call upon
the building department to give the first report." "Gentlemen," he began. though pretty good ones,
"Naturally these are estimates,
I believe.
al-
My figures include not only
the damage caused by the siege but also by the air raids. percent of our buildings were annihilated,
Four
twenty-three percent
were severely damaged and forty-seven percent had some damage." "How much was undamaged?" asked the chairman. "Approximately twenty percent," carne the reply. "Please continue,
II
said the chairman.
"We had 395,320 apartments. totally destroyed,
Of these about five percent were
another six or seven percent are quite unin-
-70-
habitable as only the walls remain, and a further fifteen percent were badly damaged ... II IIWhich left us wi th?1I
asked the chairman,
who was making
notes. II
about seventy percent remaining. II
II So we fared better with our apartments. II "Yes,
sir,
because much of the single family housing was
concentrated in Buda, which suffered much more than Pest.
I have
some estimates on the damage caused in the First District which of course includes the citadel.
Out of our 789 buildings, only four
apartments are undamaged ... not buildings.
Apartments.
Almost
two thirds were severely damaged, twenty percent damaged and over fifteen percent totally destroyed! II IIThere is a job to be done there!
will the gentlemen from
the division of monuments and pUblic buildings speak up, please. We can see with our own eyes the tremendous damage, but I want to have it on record. II IITotallydestroyed,1I started the account. the Danube,
IIEvery bridge over
all the promenades and quays along the river,
the
royal palace, three communication centers in Buda. 1I IIWhat about our own buildings?1I asked the chairman. lIyou are, gested,
of course,
for the record,
direct hits.
familiar with these.
Just as you sug-
city hall received more than one hundred
Our printing plant, the archives and the two-story
annex was destroyed.
In our main building,
three stories col-
lapsed and another annex building was annihilated.
-71-
Practically
all the furnishings,
as you can observe first hand,
were also
destroyed. II Ills that your report?1I II I could go on, Councillor.
I reported the maj or items."
IILet's hear from the department of hospitals. II "Of the forty-five hospital buildings, we had only four remain undamaged, some extent. aged.
five are in ruins,
the rest have been damaged to
Our x-ray and research institutes were heavily dam-
The hospitals in Buda suffered most.
For example,
st.
John's hospital changed hands several times, and much of it is in shambles." "Can you give us bed equivalents, please?" asked the chairman, who kept detailed notes. "I have some estimates on those too," came the reply. started out with 7,652 beds. least 2,200 were destroyed.
"We
According to the latest count, at Add to that the damage caused by the
siege and the fact that practically all our equipment was taken west." "Thank you.
Let's have the public;:: school report."
"Gentlemen.
We started out with two hundred and nine school
buildings.
Total loss:
twenty-seven, severely damaged, twenty-
six, thirty badly damaged and one hundred twenty-six damaged. started out with 2,840 classrooms.
We
When we re-opened the schools,
only 225 classrooms were usable. II "More than ninety percent damaged or destroyed," remarked the chairman.
"The department of social affairs has no representative
-72-
here, but gave me the figures which I will read now, in case you wish to make note of them. 500 remaln.
Of our 3/500 establishments less than
Let I s hear from the prince-primate I s representative."
"The church at Wolf's Run was completely destroyed," came the reply from a priest.
"Heavily damaged were the following:
the
Coronation Church on the Citadel, the Church of the Inner City, the Cathedral and the Church of st. Anne. able councilors.
I could go on, honor-
Our damage has been devastating.
God willing,
the damage will be repaired." "Who wants to start off with the utilities?1I asked the chairman. 111'11 start, gentlemen.
I'm from the waterworks.
On the
Buda side we lost valuable equipment at our three distribution centers.
All suffered severe building damage, as well.
lines are in shambles,
Our pipe-
broken in over nine hundred different
locations." "The hardest hit, perhaps, were the gas works," said the second representative from the utilities department. in northern Buda was completely destroyed.
"The plant
Our own waterworks and
refinery burnt down and two of our gas tank farms were also total losses." After a brief pause, during which he put out his cigarette, he added: IIWe were unable to count the breaks in the gas lines as yet. We know they run into the thousands.
Of course when the bridges
collapsed, the gas pipelines fell into the Danube too."
-73-
The engineer from the department of sewers had a grim report also. "Our sewer lines are almost non-existent in the first and second districts which of course includes the citadel and the area immediately south of it where the fighting was the heaviest.
Over
seventy meters of our major sewer line with five meter wide pipes collapsed in Buda.
On the Pest side the damage was equally severe.
The major pipes broke in three places along the river and further out ln two places.
In one of the outskirts where the sewer lines
have a diameter of two meters a section of no less than one hundred and seventy meters in length was destroyed." The litany went on. "Additionally we have severe damages in many auxiliary sewer lines.
We suffered from bombs and artillery fire too.
Perhaps
the worst damage was caused by the retreating German troops who blocked up the major sewer lines with materials from the ruins. Finally, our principal pumping station had more than thirty direct hits
" "I can't stand this any more," whispered Pista, "I'm leaving." "I '11 join you," said Pal. "You deserve to hear another joke after all this," remarked
Pista, when they got out on the street. "I could use a little humor now," said Pal. "Roosevel t,
Churchill and Stalin have an after-dinner chat
and organize a little contest to see who can tell the biggest lie."
-74-
"'We have a gentleman, '" Roosevelt started out,
'He can do a
three hundred meter long jump. '" "' And we have a gentleman,'
Churchill continued,
'who can
swim across the Channel in twelve minutes. '" "Stalin was the last to speak. "' And we have a gentleman " 'That's enough!
He said:
'"
You are the winner!
liDo you know a place,
II
II
asked Pal,
II
smiling,
"where we could
get some genuine coffee ... none of that ersatz?" "I know of a little cafe, not two blocks from here ...
It's
a new one ... II
120.
After a day long trip, punctuated by frequent fits and stops, Ian's train arrived near the outskirts of Budapest.
He rigorously
observed the colonel's injunction and didn't utter a single word. This behavior further aroused the suspicion of the POW's until Ian hit upon the idea of acting as a mute.
By the time the train
arrived in the vicinity of the Magyar capital, Ian had gotten very hungry, but he didn't dare touch his hidden reserves of food, not wanting to alienate his critics even further. The stench inside the freight car became oppressive. cars were sealed. poses.
The
Only one bucket was provided for sanitary pur-
The prisoners relieved themselves standing up, a practice
-75-
carried on,
judging by the intensity of the odors,
for several
days.
Ian prayed for the moment when the guards would open the
doors.
His wish was soon answered.
The train's escort was running along the tracks and let each group of POW's out, for a few minutes each, carriage by carriage. Soon Ian's was opened and he was able to jump out with the others. The train stopped in open country with a few clusters of trees and a railway siding just beyond the trees. Ian headed for the trees as he wanted to answer nature's call ln private.
He was eating the hard-boiled egg and a bread-and-
butter sandwich when he heard a rustle behind him. around to see two Russian soldiers facing him.
He turned
He calmly continued
to eat. tlGermanski?tI they asked. tlNyet, Italianski, tI replied Ian in pidgin Russian. tlDocumenti. tI "Documenti!" said the second soldier threateningly. "Nyet documenti, tI replied Ian.
tlNo documents.
II
He pointed
towards the train a few hundred yards away. "Davai!
II
the Russians said.
There was no appeal.
Ian was
once again filled with panic. The two soldiers led him away from the train. to turn around to get back to the Italians,
When Ian tried
the soldiers jumped
him and with violent gestures indicated that worse was to follow. Ian's brain was seething with fear.
-76-
He was frantically trying to
figure a way out.
No solution presented itself.
The Russians
kept nudging him with the butts of their sub-machine guns. After a half hour walk the group reached a familiar sight in the
outskirts of Budapest,
orchards and small plots.
a
small
settlement full of little
Ian was searched.
His two remaining
sandwiches and his little tin mug were confiscated. soldiers stared at his boots.
One of the
Ian began to tremble that he would
be stripped of them and even his overcoat. distracted by a shout from his comrade.
But the soldier was
He had caught sight of
another man who must have been coming out of the starving capital in search of a potato left in the ground and an apple or two.
The
man was grabbed also. The
soldiers marched the pair off towards Budapest.
The
eagerness with which the Russians captured passers-by led Ian to believe there was some sort of a reward offered for each person. On the way three more civilians were kidnapped. The small column reached a Red Army encampment early in the afternoon.
In some ways Ian was relieved that he was no longer
the only prisoner, but he felt guilty at the thought.
He didn't
really wish for anyone to be a captive, but he hoped that being part of a group would offer a measure of security.
He soon dis-
covered what a vain hope that was. The encampment was even bigger than the one commanded by his friend the colonel. under guard.
In one group, hundreds of Magyars were kept
Another much larger group consisted of German POW's
who were constantly abused.
These were the wretched remnants of
-77-
the one million soldiers in Hitler's Danube-Valley armies. were injured and in obvious pain.
Many
No attempt was made to provide
medical care or food for them or decent sanitation.
Many had no
overcoats and only rags to protect their feet. Ian began to feel grateful for his lot. misery he was several notches above them.
On the scale of
At least he had his
health, was well shod and had a warm overcoat. He sidled up to the Russian field kitchen. luck ln the past and would perhaps again today.
They brought him He collected a
few sticks of wood and was rewarded with a bowl of hot soup_ It soon became dark.
With no building to sleep in, Ian fell
asleep using the roots of a big oak near the field kitchen as his pillow. blanket.
He didn't dare to take off his overcoat and use it as a He bundled himself into a ball and snatched a few hours
of sleep, but the bitter cold kept waking him up. At dawn, the encampment came alive.
A few hundred more German
POW's arrived, along with small parties of Magyar civilians. All the prisoners were made to line up for head count. Magyars were anxious to keep their distance from the Germans. guards didn't mind.
The The
Separate groups made counting easier.
The head counting became an elaborate ceremony.
The prisoners
were grouped in lots of twenty, then added up to a company of one hundred, then sub-divided again.
Once in a while a small group
was taken from one lot to another and then the process reversed. Several Red Army officers appeared and the counting started allover again.
The procedure of counting went on,
-78-
column by
column,
group by group.
A few captives were redistributed once
again until, Ian noticed, the Russian officers nodded in agreement. The officers
senior officer--he
appeared senior because the other
treated him with deference--was
Another count started.
still not satisfied.
Ian was amazed at the mind-boggling tenacity
with which the Red Army bureaucracy clung to the ritual of the head count.
Finally the senior officer was satisfied too because
Ian saw the group of officers return towards the small forest where they had come from two hours earlier. Then the head-counters were relieved by a squadron of some sixteen mounted troops.
The Russian cavalry rode ponies rather
than horses, with their feet dangling almost to the ground.
These
troopers looked different from the Red Army soldiers that Ian had seen so far.
They were small, mostly with Asiatic features,
a
tough looking lot, impervious to the cold, and to feelings of any kind. Once again,
the prisoners were lined up, this time five or
six abreast, into one single column with the German POW's up front followed by civilians. could see. away.
The long column stretched as far as Ian
The head of the column was at least two kilometers
Ian estimated there were upwards of five thousand in the
procession,
but he wasn't sure at all.
The troopers moved the
prisoners section by section in an easterly direction. near the end of the column. came to step out. ress was rapid.
Ian was
It was quite a while before his turn
However, once everyone was on the move, prog-
The escort kept up the pressure.
-79-
After a march of not much more than five or six kilometers, the sun went down.
Then the prisoners were herded into a large
farm yard, the headquarters of a large estate. discerned several substantial buildings.
In the dark Ian
He wondered about food.
No meal, not even a bowl of soup, was provided. thought of food, he crawled into a hay barn. roof over his head.
Giving up the
At least it was a
Several hundred other Magyar prisoners joined
him. Ian woke up thirsty, hungry and cold.
He soon found a faucet
near the stable building, but it was frozen.
He went on looking
and caught sight of a well near the main building, surrounded by Russian troopers.
Thirst overcame fear.
He asked by gesture for
permission to draw a bucketful of water from the deep well. soldiers only shook their shoulders, which he took for assent. drank as much water as he could.
The He
The Russians, Ian noticed, had a
cold breakfast of slices of bread and bacon fat, but the soldiers subsisted on very little.
a meagre meal,
The prisoners had to
subsist on nothing at all. The rising sun, barely visible in the mist, didn't relieve the cold.
Ian felt even colder than he had during the night.
began to shiver violently.
The bitter cold heralded snow.
came down soon, thick and fast. allover again.
He It
Incredibly, the head count started
The column needed at least an hour to line up.
Even in the snowstorm the ritual of counting had to go on. It was not until mid-morning that the column of shivering prisoners started to move.
In the heavy snowfall progress was
-80-
slower than it had been the previous day,
and less orderly.
The
Magyars tried to keep closer together trying to protect each other from the severe weather.
As far as the eye could see, the prisoners
progressed like a column of ants.
The troopers kept racing up and
down the line. That morning Ian had heard the first crack of gun shots penetrate the misty freezing air with dull thuds from somewhere at the head of the column. Around midday the sun managed to penetrate the ghostly mist of fog and snow. Only humanity,
The countryside glistened in beautiful whiteness. a few trees here and there interrupted the still-
ness, flatness, and whiteness. alr,
full of ingenuity,
Ian felt as cold as ever.
penetrated the secret recesses of his
overcoat and every pore of his skin.
He kept up a steady march--
that at least kept his feet from freezing. break.
It didn't come.
The icy
He hoped for a mid-day
Once in awhile a trooper would race by on
his pony, brandishing his submachine gun, called by the prisoners the "davai guitar," the "come hither guitar," supreme ruler of the Danube Valley that bitter winter. still the column vended its way steadily over the rolling hillocks and flat stretches between Budapest and Miskolc in the direction of Siberia.
That dreaded word was first used by Ian's
fellow prisoners, who believed the pitiless herding would not stop until the frozen wastelands of Asia.
The prisoners talked about
fathers and uncles, POW's in the first war who had spent many a l
,
year there.
-81-
In the afternoon when the pace of the column slackened, the crack of gunfire became more frequent.
But Ian was so absorbed in
the struggle of merely walking that he did not notice it, let alone understand what it meant. took the German POW's who, barely walk. snow.
The Magyar group gradually over-
in the extremity of privation, could
Many were injured,
and stumbled in the deepening
One fell to the ground and couldn't get up.
stopped to help.
The prisoners
A trooper came to investigate and, without any
hesitation, shot the POW lying in the snow with a single bullet, no small feat with an automatic submachine gun, which had more firepower than accuracy.
with barely a glance at the dead German,
the trooper galloped on to catch up with his comrades. Ian stared for a moment at the motionless form a few meters away lying in the frozen embrace of the glistening snow. with a shock, he understood what the gunfire meant.
-82-
Now,
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE DEATH MARCH
[ with the freedom of desire and with honor, because you are the maker and molder of yourself in whatever shape you prefer. You have the power to generate into the lower form of life which are brutish. You shall have the power, out of your soul's decision, to be reborn into the higher form. pico della Mirandola Everytime we think--this is the end, things just can't get any worse; then we discover that it is possible for everything to go from bad to worse, and from worst to worst. Elma's diary, February 4, 1945 The impression I brought back from the Crimea, and from all my other contacts, is that Marshal Stalin and the Soviet leaders wish to live in honorable friendship and equality with the Western democracies. I also feel their word is their bond. I know of no government which stands to its obligations, even at its own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet government. Churchill in the House of Commons, February 27, 1945 ]
121. The third day of the march was the hardest on Ian, not so much the deepening cold but the hunger. -83-
His inside was twisting
into an agonizing cramp.
The water he had poured down his gullet
had fooled his stomach yesterday;
today it demanded substance.
But no substance was forthcoming. The mounted escort whenever within earshot of the prisoners kept up a running ramble of grunts laced with oaths all along the line.
The object was to keep up the pace of the march regardless
of human cost, and keep their mounts exercised by galloping up and down the column.
That column still seemed infinitely long to Ian,
but the carnage reached frightful dimensions on that third day. The cracks of fire were becoming a continuous accompaniment of the march like some wintry and ghostly fireworks,
each display of
death trying to outdo the previous one. The troopers were, by their own rationale, performing a merciful mission--shortening the agony of the dying. the following day,
German POW's,
On t:hat day and
inadequately clothed and fed,
were falling with increasing frequency.
The stumbling and the
fallen marchers were at the end of bodily endurance.
Anyone fallen
and showing no effort to get up was soon discovered by the mounted "mercy killers" who performed their appointed task with customary efficiency.
It was plain to see that falling to the ground and
failing to get up meant execution.
Ian stumbled twice,. and with a
supreme effort managed to get up both times.
From then on his
eyes were unconsciously fixed on the ground and led his feet to level ground to avoid any further stumbles.
simultaneously Ian
began to notice that his general faculty of observation was waning. He began to pay less and less attention to the countryside, to the
-84-
snow, to his fellow marchers, even to the overpowering cold which began to penetrate his marrow.
His being had only enough power of
concentration left to direct one foot to step in front of the other foot,
and then lead the other foot to make one more step.
This process acquired a mechanical rhythm apart from his consciousness.
Some inner motor directed his steps,
independent of any
feelings left in him. Ian began to think less and less.
On the first and second
day of the walk he had observed the gradations of bad, worse, worst.
That was all.
But these simple gradations in the downward
scale were meaningless now by conventional reckoning.
Ian stepped
down to the "worst," only to realize that there were seemingly infinite gradations leading him further down.
He could see that
he was still high up on the descending staircase and there were innumerable steps further down into the depths. Ian didn't register any alarm as he slid down the scale on the third day of the march. to descend!
There were all those many more steps
His faculties concentrated exclusively on the next
step and the step after that.
His thinking was limited to concep-
tualizing what would happen on the fifth, fifth,
the fifteenth, twenty-
fiftieth step down the staircase of misery beyond the next
rise in the terrain, beyond the gently sloping valley. On the fourth day Ian felt something amounting to elation. His insides were no longer twisted into knots.
The body had no
energy to spare for luxurious hysterics, yet his elation, a kind of light-headedness, was to some degree connected with his steady
-85-
loss of weight. body forward.
Less and less energy was needed to propel his Some particle of his brain was delighted by the
reduced workload.
Dropping down on the floor of a barn on the
fourth night he tightened his overcoat against the frost.
The
front part of his body now had a double layer of protection from the overlapped coat. thank you,
Some other particle in his brain kept saying
thank you for this new blessing.
kept getting these grateful messages.
Ian's consciousness
It seemed perfectly wonder-
ful that all the other impulses registering increasing hunger, thirst,
cold, soreness in the feet,
increasing carnage along the
roadside were mercifully filtered out, only to let these little messages of joy past the gates of awareness. The fifth day the column reached a large encampment near a town which I an thought was Miskolc.
That thought was quickly
displaced by the smell of food being prepared.
Each prisoner was
given an opportunity to
drink clear water,
followed by soup.
Bowls were not provided.
Prisoners had the choice of cupping the
soup in their hands, dipping whatever headgear was available into the soup or scrounging a mess tin from guards or other prisoners, who possessed such a luxury item. Ian dipped his hands in the hot soup but lost much of the contents and warmth in the transfer to his mouth.
Searching for
something better, he found a spoon on a rock near the field kitchen. The soup was soaked up by his insides like water by parched sand. within half an hour of taking nourishment Ian began to feel dizzy and fell to the ground.
He lay there he didn't know how
-86-
long.
It was completely dark when he woke up.
He got up and
noticed that the field kitchen serving the Russian troops was still operating, continuing to brew soup all night long. in search of fire wood.
He went
When he brought it to the sentries, he
was rewarded by additional spoonfuls of soup.
Ian kept close to
the field kitchen, was accepted as a fixture,
and good-naturedly
ordered around. This agreeable state of affairs lasted only another day and night.
On the morning of the seventh day all the prisoners were
driven to a large field for the ceremony of the head count. then did Ian grasp how much smaller his column had become.
Only He had
no idea how the head counting was conducted except to notice that the prisoners were again grouped in units of twenty to twentyfive,
that these units were amalgamated into companies of one
hundred and that the shuffling and reshuffling then went through the customary permutations.
There seemed to be fewer companies,
many fewer companies of one hundred, yet the headcount still took so it appeared to Ian, an inordinate length of time. Ian also noticed that he could see far fewer German uniforms than the first time.
At the beginning of the march the German
POW's had outnumbered the civilian captives. were reversed.
Now the proportions
On the first day he was aware that many of the
German POW's were wounded, inadequately dressed and sick. noticed far fewer disabled ones. arms 1n slings.
Now he
Some of the survivors had their
None of them had head wounds or injuries to legs.
Even with his reduced awareness,
-87-
Ian was able to figure out that
gunshots had already eliminated the seriously wounded, the ill and the marginal. Ian hoped his group was going to get a new set of guards. All it got was a batch of Magyars captured within the last few days, presumably to replace the ones who had perished in the first week of the march. with the new arrivals the head count started allover agaln. The column didn't start to move again in the same easterly, northeasterly direction until the afternoon. Ian looked at the rows of emaciated faces. eyes.
He was filled with dread.
They seemed all
The panic which had seized him
when he was recaptured had subsided, but he was still from time to time swept thoroughly by a ground swell of fear.
Yet just as the
successive waves of fear threatened to overwhelm him, he began to feel his own individual vitality asserting itself in his spirit. As he continued to march a paradoxical sense began to displace the dread:
the journey that appeared endless seemed to be almost
complete, for what is endless is very close. Day and night became a routine.
The day meant a continuous
concentration on putting one foot before the other and repeating the process, allowing variations only for variations in the terrain. The night meant rolling oneself up into the smallest possible dimension, penetrate. sleep:
allowing the cold the minimum amount of surface to One new ritual was added to the process of going
to
caring for feet which became increasingly sore and swollen.
Ian ventilated his feet for as long as he dared and tried to dry
-88-
his stinking socks near a camp fire. Ian began to feel like a veteran. levels,
The descent into the lower
step by inevitable step, continued.
stick out rUbbing against the clothing.
His bones began to
The weight of heavy over-
coat and the boots caused new sorenesses to spread uninvited all over his body.
He no longer understood anything.
aware of what was going on.
He was barely
In a very peculiar way he registered
events without anything much penetrating his consciousness. lost track of time, of the hours and days.
He
The escort seemed to
be able to anticipate to the finest degree when total exhaustion was about to set in.
At that point food and water was provided.
The column started to snake upward into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, then into the mountains themselves. As the cold deepened and the terrain became more tortuous, the cracks of gunshots echoed and re-echoed in the passes of the Carpathian Rockies with increasing frequency.
The virgin snow was
bloodied by the rape of life.
122.
Ellen needed a push to come fully out of the shock she had suffered when she had silently watched her twin being gang-raped. Aunt Mitzi's arrival was just the tonic she craved for. her back into action.
It brought
She was the only person to grasp the sig-
nificance of the truckload of provisions from Butnok.
-89-
The house-
hold greeted it as a bountiful addition to the Chabaffy larder. To Ellen, it was much more:
an opportunity to boost the family
fortunes. The large truckload was a veritable treasure trove: half a dozen pigs,
hams,
sausages,
bacon and lard;
barrels of goose fat and gooseliver, lentils,
apples and much more besides.
rice,
honey,
flour,
nine
sacks of potatoes,
In a metropolis stripped
of the necessities for survival,
it was enough to open a grocery
store.
she was going into barter trading
That gave Ellen an idea:
on a large scale. She started modestly enough, trading flour for window panes for the house.
The success encouraged her.
She needed penicillin
for Elma. She decided to sell the entire hoard for a small fortune in Napoleon gold coins.
with Jakab's help she found a Red Army cap-
tain named Nikolai who willingly loaned a GMC truck in exchange of a dozen watches for a trip to Butnok.
There the peasants, having
been cheated by too many phony Russian bank notes, were happy to barter produce for gold coins. service,
Ellen rapidly developed a shuttle
bringing food stuffs into the capital and taking back
yard-goods, gasoline in barrels, and other merchandise needed in the countryside.
Next, her Russian captain led Ellen to a small
warehouse full of cigarettes, even more desirable currency than gold.
Although a non-smoker, Ellen didn't quite understand the
desperate need for cigarettes, in the game of trading.
she did grasp that it was the ace
Meanwhile Aunt Mitzi took over the running of the household. Ellen sent her on errands which were too dangerous for younger women--across the Danube to city hall for a building permit to rebuild the house, to the hospital to fetch a doctor for Elma, to the great wholesale-market with messages to middlemen with exact want lists.
The rest of the time Aunt Mitzi was at home looking
after Elma, who was making her recovery much faster than expected. In less than a week, she was out of bed and within six weeks, she was pronounced cured. Ellen's real break in her new enterprise came when Vince and Janos,
the chauffer-valet, located a disassembled truck for sale
for a few gold coins. vehicle,
The owner did not dare to reassemble the
fearing it might be immediately confiscated by the occu-
pation troops.
Vince and Janos rebuilt the vehicle in the garage
at Jakab's police station.
Ellen was no longer dependent upon Red
Army transportation. Her profit from the first trip to Butnok under her own power was more than sufficient to buy a second truck.
She urged Janos
to spread the news about a crazy woman willing to pay cash and cigarettes for a truck in running order.
The unemployed mechanics
in Buda went to work and cannibalized the wrecks which were lying allover the city, left behind by the retreating Germans.
Ellen
was able to build up a fleet of trucks of uncertain vintage and absolute reliability. Nikolai continued to be of serVlce, managlng to find anything from tires to gasoline for Ellen's burgeoning transportation empire.
He also found soldiers who were willing to moonlight as armed guards on every trip of her growing fleet of trucks. Because the aftermath of the siege had created a distorted set of values,
lard, ham,
cigarettes and eggs were selling at
astronomic prices in relation to antique furniture, oil paintings, rare books, valuable master prints, Ellen sold high and bought low.
oriental carpets and furs.
She bought huge quanti ties of
priceless antiques in exchange for small quantities of food stuffs. The Chabaffy's rebuilt third floor became a vast storehouse. incredible speed Ellen became a wealthy woman.
with
The profit on
every trip, lasting two days at the most, was comparable to the profit margins of Dutch merchants who ran the Indian spice trade centuries earlier.
A one hundred gold coin investment in cigar-
ettes and food stuffs had yielded a profit of three to four hundred percent in forty-eight hours, the same margin the Dutch traders had banked over a two to three year period. Yet, Ellen was no fly-by-night operation.
She was meticulous
about licenses and personally visited the new economic czar of the capital, whose name translated from Russian meant "iron," to get a license to operate her vehicles.
To her amazement, Commissar Iron
had a beautifully capitalistic flair for free enterprise and an equal contempt for red tape.
within fifteen minutes he issued the
necessary permits, stamped by seals showing the hammer and sickle. Ellen knew these licenses and impressive stamps carried much less weight with the Red Army checkpoints and free-lance marauders than
-92-
her armed guards, but mindful of her name and position, she decided to adhere to the necessary formalities. Ellen was but a single example of the tremendous vi tali ty which became manifest among thousands upon thousands of citizens of the capital.
As soon as the Red Army pillage and rape subsided,
the clearing of the mounds of rubble began in earnest.
No direc-
tives were needed from city hall or any government bureaurocracy to get the hordes of citizens to clear the streets, restore utilities,
and get a start rebuilding and repairing the houses of
Budapest. The most ingenious makeshift arrangements were often invented on the spot.
Everybody had only one aim,
to get the job done.
The central authorities and the Communist economic "geniuses" were still in Russia and Debrecen,
the provisional capital located in
eastern Magyarland and had not had an opportunity to interfere wi th the rebirth of Budapest. Iron,
Their sole representative, Commissar
was acting like a prohibition blockade-runner.
"Anything
goes" seemed to be his guiding principle. In the first weeks of March Ellen could be well-satisfied with her business success.
All her feverish activity helped her
forget Andy, whose absence had become a gaping void in every day of existence,
every night of
brothers only a little less:
loneliness.
She missed her two
Imre, swallowed up, along with Andy,
ln the Gestapo jungle, and Ian, dear imprudent Ian, swallowed up in some slave labor camp or marching column headed for Siberia. And of course her great idol, her father, was still in America.
-93-
Whenever she stopped working, she prayed alot and cried even more.
But she didn't let feelings of regret or sentiments of
revenge
and retribution sap her vi tal energies.
She realized
there was much to be done, and she was ready to do it.
Above all,
she had faith that the men in her life would return safe and sound and that there would be many tomorrows of joy and happiness.
It
would have been comfortable to succumb to despair and discouragement,
but Ellen had no time to spend on such luxurious self-
indulgence.
She wanted to be ready when Andy came and put his
arms around her. Germany.
She wanted to be proud when Imre returned from
She wanted to laugh again when Ian came back from Russia.
She wanted to be worthy when her father returned from America.
123.
Through the spectrum of paln,
through the cry of icy winds
and death sharpening its appetite, through the flakes freezing the eyelashes and the collapse of past and present, what kept moving but ghostly figures under the eclipse of the sun, the moon and the stars. Riders became one with their ponies, bound in hoarfrost, and the marchers
became
one with the
landscape,
a white oneness.
Blood assumed the cold of indifference and fever the fire of icicles. Hands became fisted with frostbite and intestines twisted into fire-hot knots.
There were no Wallenbergs, no Red Cross, no con-
-94-
science-stricken generals to witness, let alone stop the march of death.
The descent of degradation continued.
stool any more.
Ian barely had any
It was so cold that the arc of his piss froze in
the arctic wind which beat against the northern and eastern slopes of the Carpathian Rockies. human waste like raisins.
Prisoners were munching bullet-hard Even the troopers were grinding their
teeth. When the column finally staggered down into the no-man's land between Poland and Russia,
it reached a town whose language Ian
didn't understand. The marchers cut through a large corn field on the outskirts of the town.
Ian blessed it with each step.
Miracle of miracles,
he found an ear of corn on one of the cornstalks, bone dry and frostbitten.
He munched on it for hours and washed it down with
snow melted in his mouth.
It was the richest banquet he had di-
gested in his seventeen and one-half years. The disintegrating column spread out in the yard of an old farmhouse.
The prisoners were allowed to collapse for two days.
It took that long for the local commander to find work for that untapped pool of labor. An enormous shipment of U.S.-made trucks had just arrived on the railroad flat cars.
These had to be unloaded and then the
trucks had to be loaded with crates of ammunition, IIMade in U.S.A. II
all marked
This work would have staggered stevedores fed on
steaks, but the work had to be done.
-95-
Six, seven, eight people were needed to lift the crates of ammunition.
Lifted they were,
first off the rail cars and then
onto the trucks. The food rations were increased to subsistence levels which, in comparison with the non-existent or marginal rations over the trans-Carpathian trek,
were abundant.
Anything more would have
burst the shrunken stomaches and the shriveled intestines of the prisoners. with increased calories and higher levels of activity Ian's brain cells began to function again.
He was able to perceive that
all the prisoners could be accommodated on one large field for the daily ritual of the head count.
He made an estimate by running
his eyes over the companies of one hundred. count up to ten.
From five thousand,
He was unable to
the shipment of prisoners
had sunk below one thousand. At the end of one work day, all the prlsoners were lined up. The commander of the troopers made a curt speech which was translated into German, Magyar and Rumanian by several interpreters. The gist of the message was that any attempts to escape were futile and would be severely punished.
For every escaped prisoner or for
every prisoner who attempted to escape, an equal number of prisoners would be executed. Ian couldn't make any sense of this exhortation. him appeared impossible.
Quite simply,
Escape to
the idea of escape had
never entered his mind because his mind was so pre-occupied with . survival that there was absolutely no room left for any other
-96-
thought.
The exhortation planted a seed in Ian's mind.
tors would not have occurred.
talked about
escape
His cap-
if escape had never
That was as far as his thought process went in those
blood-chilling days in early April. The ants finally moved the mountains of ammunition and the trainload of trucks.
The prisoners were able to rest, but again
the military bureaucracy caught up with them in forty-eight hours. Someone realized that the emptied freight cars had to roll back east to pick up another shipment of American military aid and that those freight cars might profitably be loaded with the humanity which had unloaded them.
The prisoners were marched to the freight
cars and yet another head count was performed.
Then the prisoners
were marched back to the farm, awaiting clearance from some higher authority to ship them further east. Ian looked skeletal, but felt alive and happy to think that at least the march was over.
That old feeling that this was grand
adventure began to come back to him.
Surviving the trek over the
mountains gave him confidence he could survive anything his captors were able to dish out. tional kind of logic.
That was, of course, a totally irra-
Hovering on the brink of extinction as Ian
was, logic could make no claims. Ian again thcught of escape, but dismissed it as out of the question.
Should he even attempt an escape,
prisoners would be shot.
one of his fellow
He could not knowingly be the cause of
another human being's death, however cheap human life seemed to be now.
-97-
Once he emptied his mind of the idea of escape, occupied primarily with survival again.
Ian became
Where was he going to get
the necessary calories which were absolutely essential for his survival?
He was unable to form too many cohesive patterns of
thought except one, that if he were to continue to get as little food as he had received in captivity so far, his body just couldn't last much longer. few months?
For three or maybe four weeks?
For perhaps a
He didn't know and didn't want to know.
What he did
see with absolute clarity was that there was a definite limit to his physical endurance. He arrived at that conclusion without passion, despair.
sorrow,
or
It was one of those things which was as irrefutable as
the behavior of the guards, the coldness of the winter, the height of the Carpathians and the sub-machine gun's power to kill. Somehow he had to get nearer the source of supply.
On the
second or third day of loading and unloading on the way back to the farm which served as the POW camp, Ian deviated slightly from the path beaten by the others and veered closer to the kitchen. The kitchen was housed in one of the small farm buildings. It had been a tool shed or outhouse in peace times, building with windows on three sides,
a one story
and a small opening on the
fourth. Ian's boldness was rewarded with an amazing sight.
One of
the small windows was slightly raised to let a bit of the heat of cooking out.
On the window sill he saw a chunk of butter.
really butter?
Was anyone looking?
-98-
Was it
What would be the punishment
awaiting him for stealing that piece of butter? part of the prisoners' daily ration?
Was that butter
Was he justified in appor-
tioning food to himself that didn't belong to him?
All these
thoughts flashed through his mind in a matter of seconds. He swiftly glanced around and didn't see anybody close to him, nor anyone watching him.
Ian dashed up to the window sill,
snatched the chunk of butter, and jammed it into the outside pocket of his overcoat. For the rest of that day he wondered when the sky was going to fallon him.
The sky didn't fall.
For the first time since
his capture, Ian had done something risky.
And he had gotten away
with it.
124.
That one day of not marching and working had produced curious sensations in
I~n.
He discovered that even that short relaxation had pointed up all his infirmities.
The slight injury on his arm caused during
the siege by a flying fragment of a mine projectile had been almost healed when he first went to the Russians. healing. it,
It had now stopped
In the last few days a darkening ring had appeared around
accompanied by painful itching.
The boots, once taken off,
were hard to put back oni the swelling of his feet would not sub-
-99-
side.
The butter he had mixed in his soup only made him hungrier.
Swellings and itches stood out allover him. Despite these privations Ian was happy.
It was a day spirit
whispered lessons to him through an inner communications system which became unblocked by the purifying fire he was going through. He felt the touch of Heaven, though he soon had to return to the paths of suffering and learning.
That still small voice told him
that wisdom and understanding were beginning to filter into his soul.
Ian at first resisted these intonations but the still small
VOlce had a familiar ring--it brought back echoes of that communlcation he had heard on a Sunday morning in church on the citadel long ago. Do not hate, the voice whispered. Ian was aware that hate had never touched him during the march.
Others often gave vent to the hate swelling inside them
and directed it against the captors as the source of all the miseries of the camps, the march,
and the weather.
But Ian was
immunized against hate, the desire to get revenge would sap his strength, destroy his inner stability. [ Love your enemies, ] Ian remembered this command from the sermon of the Mount.
It was the hardest to accept.
Ian didn't
feel hate, nor the need for revenge, but to cross the bridge of peace from those negative emotions was not quite possible yet. But he no longer participate in outbursts of hate and revenge were thick around him. them.
Neither could he be completely unaffected by
If the one day of rest revealed Ian's infirmities, it devas-
tated many who had been sUbsisting on the borderline of survival. The prisoners spent the next morning digging a large shallow grave in the rock-like earth.
More than one hundred, mostly Wehrmacht
soldiers, were put to rest. to pray.
Ian didn't have time to reflect, only
The mass funeral was a simple Lord's Prayer, each sec-
tion of it imparting new meaning in the desolation. several
times:
evil
"
bread
"
deliver us from evil ...
and "give us our daily bread "
Ian repeated
deliver us from
give us our daily
The silent circle around the communal grave was more
solemn than a cathedral organ and more moving than massed choirs. The wind was the organ and the choir. Ian felt guilty for not feeling any anguish over his fellow marchers,
laid out in their shallow grave, but they were better
off without tortured frames, aching bones and starving flesh. physical degradation ground him down to polished indifference?
Had He
didn't think so, but thought itself was an exertion far beyond his finite energy. His life force dictated absolute and unconditional economy. No room for pity and self-pity.
No space for hate and revenge.
No room for escape schemes, for resistance.
Room for prayer, for
the minimum necessary exertion for survival, for hunger in all its persistent forms.
And room for a dream about Maria.
Perhaps it
was not a dream. Ian curled himself into a bundle in what was once a hayloft that night after the day of doing nothing much except drinking the soup with all the butter melted in it.
-101-
He was once again very
cold, yet one step above the lowest step, a single gradation over the deepest depth he had plumbed so far. A violent convulsion seized him, brought on by the certainty that Maria was close by, calling him.
His life force told him to
calm himself, because convulsions cause unnecessary expenditure of precious energy. Something inside him stronger than himself listened.
It was
strong as the panic which seized him when he had been recaptured. It was an irresistible tugging.
It enveloped his whole being.
Emotion, absent in waking since his captivity, had returned to his being.
He tried to recall her beloved face.
The light of her
loving eyes. That was as far as his dream would let him visualize her. She receded into an insubstantial form. clearly visible.
She was there but not
That tantalizing nearness yet remoteness pulled
him towards her.
[Where was she? ] he wondered.
doing right now?
Was she in danger?
Was she ... dying? He knew!
She was calling him!
Maria needed him, right then,
She wanted him to be with her.
receded.
Ian began falling into a void.
became more and more remote. asking for him.
Did someone threaten her?
Was she ... ? ]
that very moment. The pull
[What was she
Maria
Then she came back, calling him,
Then she faded behind the veil again,
like a
shadow. A third time,
she returned, cry1ng out for him, wordlessly.
This time the call was the strongest.
-102-
Ian flew toward her, effortlessly, marvelling at a magnificent sensation of soaring without wings, like a rocket.
One more
instant and he'd be with her ... with a sudden start Ian woke up.
He noticed the white snow
reflected on the rough beam above him. was.
He knew exactly where he
He wished to go back to the other world where he was flying
to rescue his beloved.
There was no going back to that weight-
lessness, that world of dreams. This dream jolted Ian out of his single-minded obsession with personal survival. prisoners.
Up to then he had barely noticed his fellow
He knew about them, he recognized their existence, yet
he could not establish any relationships. see with true vision.
What he could do was to
That vision, unperceived by his physical
eyes, told him that Maria was alive, that he was alive, that they would both survive this experience. ent plane by the vision.
He felt lifted onto a differ-
But his innocence was gone.
Before the
dream he had not fully appreciated the seriousness of his circumstances nor of life itself.
Despite the constant brush with ex-
tinction, despite the ever-present hunger, the cliff-hanger closeness of danger and annihilation, he lived the march as the adventure of a boy in his physical prime, endurance as an experience.
as a test of his physical
During the panic of his recapture he
began to view his situation more seriously,
but even when his
spirit reasserted itself within him, he still felt as if he were on some high adventure.
As he had marched along, he had imagined
-103-
that a curtain would go up any minute,
and that applause would
bring him back from the insanity of the march. Now Ian realized, however, that what he had once viewed as substantial,
stable
reality was an illusion,
within an illusion, gone forever.
Before the dream, Ian had been
immune to what was going on around him. horror,
the holocaust,
around him.
even an illusion
A blessed veil hid the
Now the veil was blown away
and he had to face the face of a trooper who was yelling at the top of his vOlce. Another speech about the futility of escape.
Another ritual
of the dawn head count. The departure was delayed by Ian knew not what. prisoners had died and were buried immediately. followed by a march to the railway line. did get on the train.
Several more
The burial was
This time the prisoners
It consisted of flat cars.
Most of the
troopers stationed themselves in the box car in the rear to be able to shoot any prisoner jumping off the train.
The ponies were
tethered in the center of the train watched over by the remaining sentries. At the last moment the commander of the troop showed up, pranced on his pony up and down the train. ordered another head count.
Ian wondered if he had
He stayed behind when the train started
to move, slowly, in an easterly direction.
The slow pace was not
surprising as the railway tracks along with much of the countryside had been blown up by the retreating Germans and had not been com-
pletely rebuilt.
The train moved through desolation.
The snow,
blanketing much of the destruction, could not hide the burned down villages,
the
scarred forests,
the emptiness all around.
The
train gathered speed as it continued its journey towards Asia. Ian sensed that the further east the train carried him, the lesser his chances of survival, the harder the journey back to freedom.
The survival instinct became very loud inside him.
For
the first time he began to think seriously about escaping. On the second day the locomotive broke down.
Some eight
hundred prisoners decamped in the middle of nowhere In a frozen plain, blasted by winds as cold as the fingers of ice.
125.
Liza gave a birthday party for the Pisces twins, Independence Day,
March the fifteenth.
born on
This celebration was an
indication of the extent to which ravaged Budapest had risen from the ashes.
A tremendous vitality had survived the disaster and
was evident in the Magyar capital in the Spring of 1945.
without
a government, with its churches and hospitals and schools in ruins, the houses and apartments stripped not only of their wealth, but their basic necessities and occupied by a ferocious horde of commissars and free-lance looters, Budapest remained Budapest as it had been in spirit before Christmas.
-105-
Nearly everything that could
be physically shattered in the Magyar capital had been shattered, except some mysterious life force which remained indomitable. This resurrection was the more miraculous because merely the stripes of the occupying forces had been changed, the methodical and efficient Germans were exchanged for the random and ruthless Russians. no peers.
In insane, wholesale pillage and rape, the Russians had The
liberators became oppressors and oppressors by
definition throw spanners in the works. Even that didn't keep Budapest down.
At least not in 1945.
Atilla and Veronka came up from the country estate for the twins' birthday party. ter,
Jakab was dashing as ever, Aunt Mitzi all aflut-
Christina hanging onto Bela back from captivity, Lotti and
Margit flirtatious,
Hansie smiling,
and Vince and Juliska over-
joyed to see the homestead full of life once again.
The Chabaffy
set was determined to look forward and not dwell on the past. The twins had matured a decade in the three months since the start of the siege.
If Elma was sadder and more subdued, she had
gained in compassion and sweetness.
Many a woman had become em-
bittered and emotionally crippled by having been raped and humiliated in unmentionable degrees, but not Elma.
A close observer may
have noticed a melancholy in her beautiful eyes, screened by her natural vivacity and ever-present concern for others.
Her friends
and family were struck by her continued sweet innocence. Ellen matured along different paths.
She realized that with
her father and brothers absent it was up to her to be the standard bearer of the Chabaffy clan.
She had to become the behind-the-
-106-
would give up any hour.
Worse still, Ian began to lose his memory.
He had been trudging all day when the terrible realization came to him, that every time he stopped he left something behind. morning he forgot his gloves. needed those gloves.
In the
At night it was still cold and he
He had put them down somewhere and he had
forgotten to pick them up.
Then it was his cap, and next it was
the knife the Poles had given him, and then his scarf.
Each time
it was something important for his own survival. It was an awful thought:
Ian was becoming his own worst
enemy. For two days he walked, close to unconcsiousness. rain became hilly and at times heavily wooded. edge of a forest,
barely masticate.
She ran to
Ian was so weak he could
She returned from a second trip to her home
with a jug of milk. up to thank her.
One evening at the
a peasant woman asked him to stop.
her farmhouse and brought him some food.
The ter-
He broke into tears when he was unable to get
She invited him to stay.
Ian refused to stay at
her house, but crept into the barn where he slept for more than twenty-four hours. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon when Ian set out again. He found out from the farmers that he was close to the Bavarian border.
He was warned to be careful because the area was full of
Red Army troops.
He estimated it would take him only a few days
to reach Bavaria. He walked to the nearby forest and rested until sunset.
Then
he walked steadily for four nights and slept during the days.
-150-
Several times he heard the guttural voices of the Red Army soldiers and saw campfires and long lines of army trucks, artillery trains, and squadrons of T-34 type tanks.
He hid in the bushes and moved
stalthily and quietly like a cat in the dark. On his sixth day after leaving the barn, late at night, close to daybreak, he realized he had left his overcoat in the forest where he had slept and rested the previous day.
It was unbeliev-
able that he could have abandoned his most precious possession. [ I suicide.
really must be going out of my mind.
It's a form of
I'm killing myself by stripping myself of everything,
even the coat off my back. ] He greedily drank from a puddle and continued to stumble forward. [ What if I eastward!
lose my sense of direction and start walking
Oh, God, give me just one more day.
Please let me walk
just beyond the next hill. ] All of Ian's reserves were used up. downhill with exhilarating speed.
He felt himself
That was pure illusion.
collapsed unconscious for the last time.
go~ng
Ian
A signal detachment of
an U.S. Army unit found him a few hours later. From then on,
everything moved with clock-like
prec~s~on.
The sergeant called field headquarters and an ambulance arrived within the hour.
At the medical center Ian was diagnosed to be so
critical that a helicopter was called in.
Within three hours, Ian
was carried on a stretcher through the emergency entrance of the U.S. Army hospital in Munich, the capital of Bavaria.
-151-
The doctors and nurses were accustomed to the sight of bodies like Ian's.
They had done heroic deeds to save the inmates of the
nearby Dachau concentration camp a few months earlier when it had been liberated by the
u.s.
Army.
In those days and weeks, they had learned that only drastic, intensive, and immediate medical attention of the highest order could possibly save a person in Ian's condition.
In Dachau, hun-
dreds of inmates had died after the liberation because disease, starvation and privation had already reached such an advanced state of destruction, that the effects proved quite irreversible. The marvellous team spent five hours trying to save Ian. with infinite care his tattered clothing, and his filthy bandages were peeled off.
Glucose and blood plasma were pumped into him,
along with massive doses of vitamins. Ian was immersed in a warm bath. and deloused.
His hair was cropped short,
His innumerable scabs and sores were swabbed.
feet were gently massaged.
His
His wounds were attended to with the
most loving and professional care. Ian was unconcious throughout these administrations. doctors and nurses looked worried.
But the
His fever was mounting to one
hundred and two, one hundred and four, up gradually and relentlessly, to the burning point. "It is what I suspected all along," said one doctor. "It's a clear case," replied another. "Gastric typhoid,
II
pronounced the chief surgeon.
"Poor bastard," remarked a nurse.
-152-
"We must keep trying.
II
lilt's pretty hopeless. II "What are the odds, one out of two thousand?"
-153-
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE DELIVERANCE
Deliver us from evil. The Lord's Prayer 'That's a fine death!' said Napoleon, looking down. Tolstoi, War and Peace ]
133.
Tonus' condition worsened after Imre left the Dachau concentration camp with the special prisoners. staff dropped sharply. iorated.
Morale among the German
Conditions in the hospital steadily deter-
The dispensary began to run out of its meagre stocks at
the beginning of April.
Fuel was low, nurses and doctors were
leaving. Federico came every day, but Tonus didn't notice him.
She
was asleep most of the time. The advance guards of the u.S. Army liberated the camp on April 29th.
Special medical units began the herculean task of
saving the lies of thousands of inmates who were at the brink of death.
-154-
Their first job was to take over the management of the hospital and begin the inventory of skeletal humans,
many of whom were
barely able to move.
Tonus was one of the first attended to.
That saved her life.
The Americans got the heating system cranked
up again, which meant that one of the most important therapies was available to save the young Magyar woman--immersion in hot baths. When Uncle Egon came out from Munich a week later, Tonus was off the critical
list,
which was
running into the thousands.
Uncle Egon wanted to get his niece out of the camp, but the U.s. Army doctors advised that she not be moved for at least another week.
During his first visit, he told her that Imre was heading
towards Naples, where he last saw him, before returning to Budapest. He could give her no address or any other information. Early in June Tonus was back in Munich under the care of the nuns attached to the archbishopric.
She was grateful for life.
She was still numbed by the experience, but mostly by Imre's absence. She needed him.
Her uncle and the nuns were wonderful, but Tonus,
crushed and then resurrected, cried out for a different kind of tenderness. At the end of a month she was transferred to the summer camp of the Catholic seminary, which had escaped the worst ravages of the war.
She wanted to forget.
Uncle Egon asked her to talk, but
she refused. "Please don't ask me ever again about anything concerning Dachau.
The sooner I forget, the better."
"I understand."
-155-
"I'd like to go back to Budapest, to be with Imre," she said quietly. "You know, my dear," replied Uncle Egon politely, out of the question.
The Russians are there.
to get even as close as the border.
"that is
You won't be able
Personal safety is non-
existent." "Can I at least go back to Graz?" "Please understand, Tonus, my dear."
Uncle Egon adopted the
tone of a person talking to an unreasonable child. are in Vienna and allover eastern Austria. expose yourself to such danger.
"The Russians
It would be folly to
If you feel well enough to travel,
perhaps you'd feel like doing something useful," her uncle suggested, adroitly changing the subject. "Of course.
What do you have in mind, Uncle Egon?" she asked
with resignation in her voice. to be with Imre.
She loved her uncle, but she wanted
She was tired of seeing priests and nuns.
"I could have you enrolled as a student nurse." Anything to get away from there.
That is how it came about
that in July Tonus found herself in a makeshift hospital in Munich used by the U. S. Army. She did regain her lost weight, but often she would still walk like a somnambulant.
Spells of dizziness frequently forced
her to sit down and take a rest.
The matron was briefed on her
condition and gently guided the young countess through the first steps in her new profession.
-156-
The patients loved her slow movements, soft eyes, quiet manners and reassuring smile.
As she spoke better English than most
of the nurses, she spent much of her time talking to wounded GIs. Gradually, the sharp pain of separation receded. She finally received a letter from her mother in Graz. [ My dear Tonus! of Salzburg.
I'm sending this letter via the archbishop
We are all well.
For a while we were really con-
cerned that the Russians would get here, but fortunately they stopped only a short distance from here. tion of the Americans and the British.
We are under the protecFood is still scarce.
were told your health has greatly improved. from you soon.
We
Please let us hear
Lotti and Christine send greetings and best wishes.
with fondest greetings from your Mami. ] Tonus welcomed the letter, but she was really hoping to hear from Imre.
The days, weeks, more than a month had passed without
a single word from him.
Communications in the chaos following the
cessation of hostilities were almost non-existent.
This her im-
patient heart could not quite fathom. Didn't he love her any longer? tell her?
Where was he?
Was he ill and nobody would
Still in Italy?
Back in Budapest?
These and thousands of other questions tormented her mind. these questions became less insistent.
Slowly
Imre was still often on
her mind, but the memory of his presence became more blurred as she progressed with her training in the hospital. She got another letter from her mother, with news about Lotti's engagement to Prince Ludovico Borghina-Lepanto,
-157-
a banker from
Milan in his early forties,
and of the expected arrival of Bela,
Atilla's brother, who had returned from the Russian front with a bad leg wound, still anxious to marry Christine. This news would have made Tonus happy under normal circumstances,
but her circumstances were anything but normal.
doubts assailed her about Imre.
New
She thought everybody was pairing
off, only she was left alone with her hospital work and her wounded GIs. In desperation, she asked the senior medical officer she knew to forward a letter to Imre.
He promised he would sent it through
the military post office channels
to the American mission in
Magyarland. That night she sat down to write the first letter to her beloved. "Darling!
II
she wrote in English,
then continued in German,
which was easier for her now, than Magyar: [ It has been sixty-six days since you left. grasp the idea of your being away.
I can barely
I'm writing these few lines to
let you know how said I am that you are gone. Here I am left alone.
I only wish I had had enough strength
to leave the camp with you
together.
When I was told for the
first time that you had left,
I tried to get out of bed and run
after you! I wonder how you feel ... my poor Imre, better health.
I'm very concerned about you.
promise me to think about yourself, too!
-158-
I hope you are in Please,
please,
I'm full of longing to have some news from you, even a scrap of information would make me so happy. It is late at night.
I'll continue with this tomorrow. ]
Tonus was overcome with emotions and started to cry. barely able to finish the last sentence. sat down to write again.
She was
The following night, she
It was more difficult than she had imagined
it would be. [ Best beloved Imre! ] she continued. the sixty-seventh day without you.
[Today, it has been
Whenever I hear the telephone
ring, I think it is you calling and then I remember that you are so far away. together!
My only consolation is that each day brings us closer
I trust you had a safe journey through Italy.
I hope
it was not too trying and that you had a good rest somewhere. Here it is overcast, all is gray, but it is quiet warm now. (1 would much prefer that it were cold, and you near me!) I wish I had someone to talk to.
I can declare now quite
openly that life has no meaning to me without you. feel the same way.
I hope you
I could cry all day, I miss you so much, ] and
here Tonus wrote in English: [ ... can't help it darling, I love you so much. ] Reverting to German, she continued: [ My life goes on.
I work as a volunteer nurse in a u.S.
Army hospital here in Munich.
Uncle Egon is getting ready to go
to Graz, travelling the round-about way to avoid the Russians. had two letters from Mami. also.
I
Lotti is getting married and Christine
The days are going by slowly with terrible sadness. ]
-159-
For a long time, Tonus stared in front of her.
She wanted to
write more but she didn't quite know how to put her feelings down on paper. [ I trust this letter will reach you in good health. much long to get a letter from you.
I so
When are you going to write
to me? with all my love, always yours, Tonus. ]
134.
Imre and Atilla had a magnificent early summer day to fly to Magyarland, taking a route similar to the one Andy had taken last year, across the Adriatic Sea and the mountain-vastness of Yugoslavia to reach the plains of Transdanubia. The difficulties in getting clearance for their flight gave them a foretaste of what was to come.
The energetic intervention
of a no-nonsense American general finally brought Russian clearance for landing near Budapest.
The plane carried vitally needed medi-
cation and medical equipment.
The Russians were in no mood to let
the Americans shine in the light of generosity and caused endless, frustrating delays.
The real reason for the stone-walling was the
Kremlin's security organization was not anxious to see Imre back in a position of power and influence. Atilla to return.
Nor were they eager for
His father's rule as premier was already being
rewritten as fascist and feudal.
-160-
Flying low once they crossed the river Drava into Magyar airspace, the cousins could see the scars of war still gaping below.
But on many fields and farms the peasants were busy spring
sowing.
The real shock greeted them when the plane neared the
devastation of Budapest.
From a long distance, the ruins of the
citadel and the proud and beautiful bridges lying on the bottom of the Danube River were starkly visible.
Before the two young Magyars
had a chance to take a closer look, the plane banked steeply and in a few minutes landed on the makeshift runway of the Budaors air field. News of their arrival spread instantly through the capital. Next day, Ellen was hostess to a reception for Imre held in the Chabaffy townhouse in Buda.
Atilla had taken off earlier to his
country home, where Veronka was awaiting his return. After riding up the Citadel where every house wore the deep scars of the siege, and seeing debris around the doorways of his home,
Imre was relieved and happily surprised that much of the
inside was habitable and in reasonably good shape. Ellen and Vince, along with many of their fellow citizens of Budapest, had done miracles of restoration.
When the reign of
pillage and rape had subsided, the capital had thrown itself with a will to the tremendous task of rebuilding.
Everyone wanted to
forget the past and worked wonders to eliminate any visible signs of the war.
Ellen related how she had gotten a building permit,
and reduced the height of the town house by one floor, destroyed largely during the siege, put a new roof on and managed to barter
-161-
some of the precious stocks of her larder for scarce window panes. At first Vince had been slow to remove the debris as roaming Russian bands still kidnapped people at random off the streets weeks even after the five-day free-for-all allowed by the liberators had expired.
Inside the house was shipshape, however.
gest changes Imre found were invisible.
These were the changes in
the minds and hearts of the people and in himself. at the news Ellen and Vince told him. cure.
But the big-
He didn't weep
Elma had just completed her
He noticed a subtle change in her eyes, but the gentility,
the beauteous sweetness remained in her face.
To Imre what was a
revelation was that there was no hatred in her heart. readiness to forgive.
There was a
But most of the Red Army troops which stormed
Budapest had been moved on to conquer Vienna and then speedily withdrawn into the vast caverns of interior Russia.
Consequently,
daily contact with the rapists and robbers was no longer much of a problem.
The rapacious front line troops were replaced by a new
set of conquerors who were instruments of a longer term plan, not yet completely formulated, war-weary populace.
or at least not yet visible to the
At least the initial stages of that longer
term policy were founded on wisdom and understanding--give the Magyars free reign to rebuild their shattered country. While Imre was noticing the changes in those around him, Ellen was noticing the changes in him. first glimpse of him:
She was shattered by the
the shrunken frame, the hollow cheeks, the
strands of grey hair had not disappeared in the balm of Capri.
He
had aged a decade in the half year in the concentration camps.
-162-
But his sense of humor was preserved and his spirituality and love of God had deepened.
She also noticed his determination never to
let this happen again.
Imre would share with her the outlines if
not the details of his rescue of Tonus in Dachau.
Ellen was not
hesitant to describe the siege, Mami's death, the fire that had burned the underground hospital. of their sister's rape.
She only glossed over the details
Sensing the void in Imre's life created
by the absence of Tonus and Ian, Ellen planned to fill this with political activity.
Instinctively, her adoration of her brother
guided her to the one real cure for his sorrows:
focus on the
welfare of the Union Party. The day after his return, she invited all the surviving leaders of the Union to a gathering in the large livingroom of the Chabaffy townhouse.
All eyes concentrated on Imre.
At once he felt that
he had assumed his rightful position in the country. instant favorite. him.
He became an
The politicians flocked around him and courted
To the older parliamentarians, he was the son of his father.
To the women his distinguished looks and suffering at Dachau invested him with a halo of romance.
All considered him a young man
who was destined to live up to their great expectations. Father Bela, the provisional leader of the party, opened the formal part of the gathering. "We greet you,
distinguished son of our leader and senlor
statesman," he said slowly, spreading his arms as if to give benediction, his tall figure unbowed by his own adversities under the Nazi occupation.
"To the millions of peasants you are an authentic
-163-
hero and worthy heir to the Chabaffys, the unrivaled champion of their cause and the cause of Magyar freedom."
He paused for a
moment, looked at his audience, put his large hands together in front of the cross hanging from his neck and continued: "In Debrecen, we have seen that the Allied Control Commission, represented by the spokesman of the Communist Party, had certain considerations expressed about your father which are not applicable to you.
We invite you to address your admirers and devoted
followers." "My friends," said Imre simply.
"My remarks will be brief.
To begin with, I wish to set the record straight about my captivity by the Fascist oppressors.
As you can see," he continued,
pointing toward himself in a deprecating manner, "I have lost not only much weight, but also experienced severe strains on my nervous system." Imre pronounced the last dozen words or so haltingly and with subdued emphasis.
He knew that wi thin twenty-four hours these
words would be in a report on the desk of the secretary of the Communist Party, as a result of a well-placed spy. "And my capacity to function as your leader is undecided at this point." Loud murmurs of protest greeted this announcement.
The as-
sembled guests were not about to be deprived of their hero for the forthcoming big election battle and chose to consider his remarks merely as becoming modesty in an environment infected with cynicism and the naked display of force.
-164-
Congressman Zol tan shouted:
"To victory with Imre Chabaffy!
The gathering echoed as with one voice: hero, Imre Chabaffy!" for several minutes.
\I
"To victory with our
The display of vociferous support continued Father Istvan raised his hands to still the
outpouring of affection. With his remarks Imre set in motion rumors that his health and, yes, even his mental capacity had been broken by the tortures of the Gestapo and at Dachau. In the next tumultuous hour,
Imre was unanimously elected
Leader of the Union Party and supreme commander of the political campaign for the forthcoming national elections slated to take plae in the fall. Imre had underestimated the depth of the feeling the Union Party stalwarts had developed towards him generated by the Communist's blunt personal attacks against his father. another reason for their support. hero.
But there was
Magyarland was starved for a
It was the dawn of a new age.
Prince Tibor had fought hard
for land reform and now, under the leadership of his son, this long-cherished dream was becoming a reality. Euphoria reigned over the meeting.
Magyarland, they believed,
was re-entering an age of social justice, agricultural prosperity and freedom for economic and cultural development.
The Russian
soldiers were beasts, but such were the fortunes of war.
Now that
peace reigned, magnanimity and reasonableness would be the guiding principles of the great Allied powers.
-165-
The guests thronged around Imre and were glad to touch his sleeve, shake his hand, look into his eyes and hear his voice. A new confidence surged inside Imre.
When he remained alone
after all the guests had left with Father Istvan, he thanked him for his support. Their secret plan seemed to be working out.
Imre was pre-
sented as a mentally and emotionally crippled leader.
Only as
such would the new Russian masters accept a Chabaffy as the leader of the Union Party.
Both noted with satisfaction in the next few
days that the comments of the Russians were subdued.
The organ of
the Magyar Communist Party went further and welcomed Imre as a new leader of the Union Party, their most feared rival for power and popularity.
135.
Tonus continued to feel abandoned and lonely, but her first letter to Imre gave her a sense of relief she had never remembered feelig before. later.
Nevertheless,
she was frantic again a
few days
She penned another letter.
[ My most loved, much beloved Imre! ] she wrote. want to spoil you with letters.
[ I do not
I can't act any other way.
have to write to you again to let you know how much I love you. pray you feel the same way about me! again.
-166-
I I
I can hardly wait to see you
We had a beautiful sunny day here, but even the warmest sunshine cannot dispel my anxiety about how I am going to survive our separation.
I wish we were married already.
The only person I can talk to is a nurse here in the hospital. Her name is Mona.
She keeps telling me:
don't be sad; be happy
that you have someone who loves you so much, who risked his life to save yours; don't dwell constantly on your apartness. Last night I heard a Magyar program on the radio. was gypsy music.
Much of it
I listened to the tunes to which we danced to-
gether.
My darling, I felt so lonely, so terribly lonely without
you.
tried to visualize your sweet face and then I felt so
I
close to you no matter how far away you may be.
My only one, I
love you so very much! Sometimes terrible waves of jealousy overwhelm me. such an attractive man and now such a hero.
You are
All those beautiful
Italian and Magyar women must be flocking around you. Earlier this week I went on an excursion to the Tegern Lake with Mona and another nurse.
It was lovely out in the countryside
away from the ruins, but it was really no joy for me without you. We saw a silly movie.
It didn't help me to get you out of my
mind. I pray you have not developed any doubts about us. certain of my love.
Please be
I enclose a snapshot taken by Mona--I hope
that will help you not to forget me completely. Please write very soon.
You have no idea what joy it would
be to get a letter from you.
-167-
I love you and I am with you, Tonus. P.S.
My best wishes to your Mami, the twins and all your
family. ] Almost a month went by, and she still had no news.
In Munich
the rubble was being cleared away and some repair and rebuilding had started.
The work in the hospital went on.
A terrible rest-
lessness took hold of Tonus. Once
again she wrote
a
letter out of the depths of her
loneliness. But this time,
Tonus felt no relief at all.
She gave the
letter to the American major in the army medical corps and wondered if she would ever get a response.
She felt utterly drained.
She needed replenishment and none was forthcoming. Her only joy came in the return of summer. blessed warmth for war-ravaged Munich. peared on the streets, Life
returned amid the
houses.
It provided a
More and more people ap-
shops began to open for business again. skeletal buildings
and the burned-out
The trees and bushes in the parks were conspiring to help
Bavarians forget the bombs and the artillery shells which had so recently rained on their capital. Tonus didn't realize that in that beautiful summer the Iron curtain began to descend on Europe and was to split the ancient continent right in the middle.
Communication between the two
halves would become almost non-existent.
All would be bent on
survival in the narrow confines of their own existence.
Munich,
Prague, Vienna and Budapest, close to each other geographically,
-168-
would become wide apart in many other ways.
The Russians were
establishing a foothold in the Danube Valley and were not about to release it.
To protect the new conquests, the Red Army were seal-
ing off their western frontiers from the rest of Europe. When June turned into July, Tonus made a resolution to return to Graz.
She wanted to be with her mother and sisters.
Lotti was
getting married at the end of August and she wasn't about to miss the wedding.
Being in Graz also meant that she would be that much
closer to Imre.
But she couldn't leave yet; there was too much
work to do in the hospital.
Tonus worked tirelessly in the American
wing and shuttled back and forth between the critically ill concentration camp inmates and the wounded and sick GIs. In the first week of July Mona went to visit her parents in the country for a family get together to celebrate their twentyfifth wedding anniversary. duty.
Tonus agreed to take on her tour of
She had not completed her first rounds when a call was
received from an American unit near the Czech border asking the Dachau team to get ready.
A dying man had been found accidentally
in a forest clearing. The emergency room was well-prepared when the patient was wheeled in late in the morning.
Late in the afternoon the patient
was taken to the intensive care unit.
Tonus was busy with a GI
whose lung wound was particularly troublesome.
She didn't get to
the intensive care unit until the end of her shfit. Captain smith, the head of the emergency team, was looking down on the new patient as Tonus entered the ward:
-169-
"A fine death it will be for him ... at least in his last hours he'll have the best of care," he whispered to Tonus. She approached the bed more closely and peered at the frail figure in the bed.
"Is it really that bad?" asked Tonus.
"He'll be lucky if he lives through the night," replied the doctor, "but we had to try. tioning.
Just make sure the IV tubes are func-
Check on him every half hour and more often if you can."
Tonus was left alone with the new patient. She had to bend down to get a better view of the intravenous feeding tubes.
She cast a sideways glance at the face,
hidden
under the tubes running out of the nostrils and mouth. Those eyebrows!
The familiar reddish tint,
a
few strands
impudently curving upward. [ It can't be! But I know it's him! She stood up slowly.
] The sobs rose in her throat.
her hand to her mouth to help stifle the sounds.
She put
She peered at
the motionless eyelids. Then she ran out of the ward to glve way to the emotions which were choking her.
-170-
136.
She couldn't go back home that night. After talking to Captain Smith, telling him that the skeletal being was her fiance's brother, Tonus returned to the ward.
She
got herself a comfortable chair close enough to the bed to observe, not close enough to disturb.
Occasionally she glanced in Ian's
direction, moving just her eyes, not wanting to cause the slightest commotion.
Every fifteen minutes or so she checked the patient as
the doctor had asked her to do.
He seemed to be absolutely
motionless. Tonus kept vigil all night.
Mona found her in the chair,
dozing off, when she returned to duty next morning. "What are you doing here?" she asked, alarmed. Tonus woke up with a start and explained in whispers who the patient was.
"I barely recognized him.
What can we do to save
him?" "Pray," replied Mona. The glucose bottles were nearly empty. obvious sign that Ian was still alive. Tonus.
She got up and tossed her head.
That was the only
A silent anger rose in That unaccustomed emotion
silently faded into sorrow, then gratitude, gratitude for having a chance to repay what Imre had done for her, by saving his brother's life. Tonus slept on a cot in the student nurses' changing room and was back at Ian's bedside by noon.
He was still comatose.
-171-
"I talked to Captain Smith, II Mona explaind, IIHe said there is nothing we can do except monitor the IVs."
She didn't mention
that the doctor also had said that he could die at any moment. "He is still alive, II remarked Tonus, with a faint smile. Apart from a few hours snatched for sleeping, Tonus kept a vigil at his bedside for the next three days. On the first day, Tonus bent close to his head, to change the pillow.
She looked at him with disbelief.
Most of his short-
cropped hair had remained on the pillow in a single untidy heap. The doctors explained that loss of his hair was a cornmon aftereffect of typhoid. On the second day Tonus imagined she perceived a slight movement in the bed.
She got up and held Ian's right hand between her
hands in an attitude of prayer.
There was no response.
She set-
tled down to do some lace work she had brought with her to occupy her hands while her eyes constantly roved towards the bed, but found she wasn't able to concentrate at all on the needle.
When
she went to have lunch, she found that her appetite had improved markedly.
She hungrily ate her portion and asked for another
glass of milk. On the third day, Ian lifted his lids with an effort. face was suffused with a beatific smile.
Tonus'
She got up and knelt
down at Ian's bedside. Tonus'
smile filled Ian with a peace and happiness he had
never felt before.
It enveloped his whole being, penetrated him
with bliss.
-172-
"Tonus?" he asked almost inaudibly. She nodded happily, her green eyes flecked with joy. "What day ... ?" "August second." "Buda?" "We are in an American hospital l.n Munich," she said slowly in Magyar. He tried to reach her with his fingers, but didn't have the strength.
His eyelids closed again and he was asleep in an instant.
Tonus couldn't contain her joy.
She went to look for Mona.
She found captain Smith in his tiny office. "Ian woke up!
He recognized me!" she exclaimed even before
she got through the door.
The Dachau team, three doctors and an
assistant rushed to Ian's bed. "We should try and give him some oral nourishment, but I doubt he can hold anything solid," asked the doctor. "Bouillion?" asked the matron. "I'll feed him," said Tonus eagerly. a few minutes.
The team conferred for
One of them declared ita miracle.
Next day Tonus was able to feed him.
The team kept pouring
vitamins, antibiotics and glucose into Ian. The day after that, baldness.
Ian was aware enough to discover his
He fingered his scalp incredulously.
closely.
-173-
Tonus watched him
"The doctors tell me your hair may grow back, at least on the sides.
Darling Ian, you have been very, very ill.
to be alive!"
You are lucky
He barely comprehended what Tonus was saying.
"Eggs ... " he whispered to Tonus, when she asked him what he would like to eat, "... and sardines." "Sardines?" asked Tonus, surprised.
After his dream lunch,
Ian felt a tremendous pain engulfing his intestines. throw up, but couldn't. had gastric typhoid.
He tried to
Captain smith explained to Tonus.
"Ian
His intestines are ... almost destroyed."
"will he be able to eat at all?" asked Tonus, turning pale. "He'll have to be on a liquid diet for awhile," replied the doctor.
"There is an outside chance ... anyway, he has shown such
incredible powers of recuperation. against all odds.
I mean, he did remain alive
It is possible, and I emphasize the word possi-
ble ... that his intestines may regenerate." "But he'll be all right?" she asked, eagerly. "Countess Tonus," said the doctor.
"I better tell you.
He'll be lucky to live another six months." "No more?" "Give or take a month or two.
His relapses may become more
frequent." Tonus believed, this miracle.
then disbelieved.
He wouldn't die on us.
Surely not.
Not after
We won't let it happen.
I
will not let it happen! Ian's consciousness slowly floated back.
Trivial events of
his early childhood visited him with utmost clarity.
He remem-
bered the tunnel he had built as a toddler under a sand castle at omami 's place in southern Magyarland.
He remembered the last
slice of the Dobosh cake on his fourth birthday, the Mickey Mouse in a Walt Disney movie shown at the Schwarz's when he was in kindergarten. At other times he understood a progression of highly involved mathematical formulae at one glance.
He knew all the Psalms of
David by heart and all their correspondences to the New Testament. All this appeared to Ian childishly simple. [ Now let's go to the next solution! ] When he dived into the depths of a vision, he tried to pop out with it, like a diver pops out of the sea after a particularly elegant feat off a cliff, but then he couldn't manage it. the solution with crystalline transparency. "I've got it!"
But, he didn't 'get it'.
He saw
He said to himself,
What came to him effort-
lessly in the vision faded the moment he tried to verbalize it. Ian was once again on that plane where questions became answers and wishes were fulfilled. Strauss' tone poem:
In the background, he heard Richard
Thus spake Zarathrustra.
to the dramatics of a Liszt composition.
He began to ascend
Harps and flutes followed.
Ian was charged by a magnificent crescendo like a series of fireworks, each surpassing the previous one. Then stillness. He tried to hold on, but the more he tried to, the faster the fade out.
Every slight movement,
little finger, was an effort still.
-175-
even lifting the eyelids,
a
Tonus smiled at him. "The Japanese surrendered.
lIBig celebration today!" she announced. The war is over at last!"
She smiled every day, every time he opened his eyes.
Her
appetite had returned, her figure had rounded out, the procelain sheen and rosy tinge had reappeared on her cheeks. purpose in her life now.
She was happy.
There was a
Tonus was to Ian as he
remembered her from the holidays shared in Italy, full of feeling, sweet emotion, unutterable tenderness. Ian's improvement made her feel useful, exuberant.
Forget-
ting his condition one afternoon, she pressed his hand with so much excitement and affection that she made him wince.
Ever re-
sponsive to his needs, her exuberance instantly switched to concern.
She kissed his forehead and hands, barely brushing her lips
along his skin. Under the influence of this outpouring of affection, Ian's face expanded into a
~ide
smile, the first since he had left the
Buda townhouse. "Listen," Tonus said.
"You are getting better all the time.
I'm so happy you are my patient.
Wasn't it a miracle that you
were guided to the hospital where I worked?" She sat down on his bed, facing him. lIyou could have ended up with an old biddy of a nurse in some god-forsaken place ... " She touched his forehead with the tip of her fingers. lINow we'll have ample time to get to know each other better than ever before.
What are you really like, Ian?
the real you." -176-
I want to meet
"Have I changed that much?1I
137.
Tonus kept up the vigil even though it was no longer necessary. She went home every night, but spent most of her waking hours in Ian's ward.
She knew that he loved her company, and so she kept
close to him constantly, even now when he was feeling better. "Are you sleeping? II she whispered, not wanting to disturb him. "No,
I'm not."
He no longer talked J.n whispers, but his
voice was still subdued. "Ian, you must sleep, II she said with feeling. He took hold of her hand.
She couldn't help noticing how
much effort went into that movement--and tried to raise it up to his lips. close.
He didn't manage, so she helped by raising her hand
He kissed her tenderly and fell back exhausted.
"Darling, you must sleep." "The word IIdarling" had slipped out involuntarily and naturally. Frightened and pleased at the same time, trying to suppress the rising feeling.
she flushed inwardly, The more she tried to
forget about him when she didn't see him, the more she realized how large a part of her life he had become in the last few weeks. She had centered her whole life around the vigil she had kept over him.
Finally, she had done something useful--helped to save a
-177-
man's life.
The least she could do was to make his remaining days
happier. Ian didn't say anything to her, but she knew that her attitude, her bearing, her movements and her glances were more revealing than words could have, vibrating a single message--namely that she loved him. Even with the doctor's warning, Tonus was unprepared when, a few days after the armistice, Ian had a relapse. ward as usual in the morning,
She came to his
sat down gently on the edge of his
bed, and touched the tip of his nose--a kind of greeting she had adopted in the last few days, him.
to let him know that she was with
That was really not necessary, because even in his semi-
conscious state he was so attuned to her that he knew when she entered the ward, whether he heard her footsteps or not. Tonus had to repeat the greeting.
Today
He still didn't respond.
She
rose from the bed and ran out on tip-toe to fetch the doctor on duty.
There was not much he could do except to remind her of his
previous warning that relapses were common with patients in Ian's condition. A few long hours later, he opened his eyes.
He didn't say
anything for a while, but finally managed to call for Tonus. imagined that she was telling him:
Ian
"Life without you would be
nothing for me, and to keep this vigil and suffer with you is my greatest joy." And she:
To which he would reply:
"How can you love me too much?"
"I love you too much." And this time he re-
sponded aloud, with as much strength as he could muster.
-178-
When she
came to him, he asked earnestly, "Do you think I am gOJ.ng to live much longer?" "Hush," she said with feeling.
"Please don't talk like that.
I'm convinced you are going to live.
You must.
You have to be-
lieve in that darling, as much as I do!" Again,
that word slipped J.n.
In a Magyar conversation it
would have sounded superficial to use the English word darling, but the way she had said it was completely effortless,
self-
evident, and the most natural and integral part of the sentence. In German she added, IIIch bin fest uberzeugt, II meaning III'm firmly convinced. II
She pressed his hand, then let it go, and sat down.
"So am I, II he said, more to please her than out of conviction.
He fell asleep and couldn't remember at all what happened
the rest of the day, that night and much of the following day. But at sunset, he sensed the light filtering through the ward.
It
was like Viennese music to him, a breath of fresh air. It was so easy to fall in love, for both of them. Tonus felt in her heart of hearts that Ian had not much time left.
Every day was a gift.
Each day was now full of meaning.
For Ian she was everything.
He began to enjoy his condition,
because it brought her radiance to him every morning. months on the march,
in hiding,
and on the trek back were all
worthwhile becaue he had found Tonus. ing the love between them.
Maria had left him, betray-
Was this love a wonderful compensation
for what he had gone through all the past months? cry.
All these
It was a relief.
-179-
He began to
Tonus came to the bed and took his hand. With the release of long-suppressed passion, Ian declared his love to Tonus.
Tonus turned away for a moment.
"Perhaps you won't be able to accept how I feel for you. II "Darling, I love you, too," was all that Tonus could reply. "Can you love a bald man?" asked Ian, his voice full of irrational fears.
The warmth of Tonus' smile reassured him.
she said with a certain ardor.
IIYes, "
"Qh yes."
Mona came into the ward just then and sensed passion 1n the air. "Feeling better?" she asked. "Much better," he answered, grinning. From that day on the improvement in his health was continuous, enough so that two doctors of the Dachau team and a man in civilian clothes Ian hadn't seen before, accompanied by a stenographer, questioned him about his experiences for the better part of three days,
stopping every hour or so to give him a chance to rest.
Tonus hovered around anxiously as she noticed Ian becoming visibly tired answering so many questions.
Hardly any people had ever
managed to survive, let alone escape from the experiences he had gone through.
He was repeatedly told that whatever he could recall
would be considered valuable back at headquarters. were summarized and typed up for his signature.
His statements
He expressed the
hope that he would never have to remember and be questioned about this again.
-180-
While Ian was exercising his memory, he began exercising his body by sitting up in bed or dangling his feet over the edge. kept doing this later when Tonus was away on lunch break. wanted to surprise her by walking on his own feet, unaided.
He He When
he first stood up, just for a moment, he felt terribly weak and dizzy.
He fell back on the bed immediately.
The next day, he was able to stand up for about a minute without falling backwards.
Tonus had resumed her normal duties as
a student nurse, which gave Ian more time to practice. Mona's help.
He enlisted
She stood guard at the entrance of the room to warn
Ian in case Tonus was coming. He improved in other ways,
too.
The constant itch of his
scabs and wounds was gradually subsiding,
little tufts of hair
began to grow above his ears, the bleeding of his gums eased, the pain in his abdomen lessened and the frost in his marrow thawed out.
His fingers were still stiff, he was unable to wiggle his
toes, but he was gaining weight, although he was still under fifty kilos, and he was no longer dizzy when he stood up. Eventually, he started to walk, a few steps, one step at a time. It was August 20th, st. Istvan's day. For the celebration, Mona led Tonus into I an's room.
He walked to meet her.
"Darling!" Tonus cried and flew to him, to hold him, and to support him.
She stayed close to him.
She led Ian back to his bed.
-181-
Both of their faces shone.
It was obvious for all to see that Tonus and Ian were in love.
The doctors didn't object as they considered love the best
possible therapy for the terminal patient. Ian was put on therapy of another kind as well--exercise. First slow walks in the garden, then exercises to improve the use of his arms and legs. Early in September a letter arrived from Ian's father, Brigadier Campbell. [ Dear Ian, I'm so glad you are surviving the war. Washington,
I'm stationed now in
D.C. with the British liaison staff on the Combined
Chiefs of Staff here. is allover.
We also had a tough war and we are glad it
The experiences you reportedly went through sound
unprecedented.
Please keep in touch.
You can always reach us
through the War Office in London, or at the address shown on the letterhead.
May your recovery be speedy.
Faithfully yours, D.F.C. Campbell Brigadier] Ian was strangely affected by this letter. sounded stiff.
He didn't like the way it was signed with his
father's full name and rank. fully yours"? through"! mean?
He thought it
And why the formal closure, "Faith-
And he got angry when he read "you reportedly went
What did the words
"reportedly" and "unprecedented"
Didn't he believe the doctor's report which he apparently
had received a copy of? Suddenly he felt tired and longed to see Tonus, but he didn't get to see her until the next morning.
-182-
He shaved early,
and was unable to go back to sleep.
minutes ticked by all too slowly.
He kept his eyelids shut.
The When
he had his first glimpse of her that day she was passing in front of the large window in the corridor. web out of her hair.
The morning sun spun a golden
He took in the delicacy of her bones, her
Dresden figurine appearance, slim ankles, heart-shaped lips, her pure beauty.
This is the woman I love! thought Ian.
of yesterday was vanishing fast.
The fatigue
He was going to show her the
letter, then decided against it. Something in Ian's eyes made her sit down at the edge of his bed.
She looked straight into his eyes and, as if it were a natural
occurence, lightly kissed him on the lips, holding his chin as Lotti had eons ago.
Lightly again, she ran her hand over the thin
blanket covering his body and adjusted the sheets at the foot of the bed. A wave of strength surged through him, awakening a long dormant desire.
Ian had his first erection in months.
138.
"I have been looking at you for a long time," Tonus said when Ian woke up.
The last two weeks had done wonders for him.
gained nearly five kilos.
He had
He had sprouted two more tufts of hair
over his forehead which looked like a pair of horns.
-183-
Tonus measured
him for clothes and he was given an outfit so he could walk around the hospital.
He started to feel like a real human being again.
"You look quite heal thy to me, II she added with a smile. II
So I am, II he said, after he had watched her intently for
awhile.
He wanted to add IIbecause you love me ll but he didn't.
He
only lowered his eyelids and luxuriated in her presence. Both tried to dam their emotions, measure the inflection of their sentences, watch their choice of words.
The more careful
the lovers attempted to be, the more violent their emotions became. IILotti's wedding is fifteen days from now, II said Tonus, looking at Ian sideways, her hand playing with a small medicine bottle she was holding. II I want to go wi th you. II "Uncle Egon is coming, of course ... he'll be conducting the ceremony." " I'm happy about the journey and your seel.ng your family." lilt's a long trip." IIDon't you wish me to come?" "Darling, how can you talk like that?1I "You sounded hesitant ... II 1I0f course I want you to be with me. " II That 's all I wanted to hear. 1/ "Will you be strong enough?" "Of course ... I' 11 make myself strong enough!" said Ian, sitting up.
"I don't want to stay in this hospital.
-184-
The faster I
can get out of here, the quicker I'll get well ... I feel well already." "You need the permission of the doctors ... of Captain smith "I'll get it." "I only mentioned it, so you become aware of that." "You'll help me?1I "What can I do? II "Just tell Captain smith that I am perfectly well. II "We' 11 give you lost of exercises ... and I'll ask captain Smith what else needs to be done to get you ready for the journey." III already asked him a few questions ... 11 IIWhat did he say?" "He found out already that there is an English Army hospital in Graz ... " "That's marvellous." "He'll give me copies of all your records so the English can refer to them." "No need ... continued:
I'm perfectly well."
Tonus let that go and
"He'll give me a supply of vitamins and antibiotics."
"You think of everything. II He marvelled at her efficiency.
He knew her as an impish
child, as a spoiled chateleine, who was good at arranging flowers; as a demure debutante, as the fragile youngest child of a family where her half-expressed wishes were instantly realized, Ii ttle girl attending a school run by nuns. alot in the last year.
We both have.
turned nineteen. ] -185-
as a
[She had matured
She is as old as I am, just
II
Her angelic radiance had combined with brisk down-to-earthness.
Nothing was too much for her to do for him and for the
other patients.
She, who only a few months ago was nearly mur-
dered in Dachau, was now the most tireless and devoted of nurses. 1/
I'll ask Captain Smith to see you," she said.
Throwing a
kiss towards Ian, she took off on her rounds. Ian was feeling contemplative and lazy. special, luxurious. together.
Today was somewhat
He had enough strength now to pull his thoughts
He was not the analytical sort in the sense of taking
detailed stock and arriving at a list of conclusions.
He depended
more on his intuition and feelings rather than on reasoning and logical deductions. He had one basic emotion he hadn't had before, a feeling of being cast adrift,
cut off,
separated.
He had gone through a
violent upheaval, a total change in which all the parameters of what he had considered normal existence, had changed from beginning to end. The
tremendous
struggle
to
eliminate
tyranny,
slavery,
treachery and the other monsters of his nightmares had ended in resounding defeat.
The monsters had reincarnated in a more terri-
fying shape than before and were unleashing new nightmares in dimensions undreamt by past civilizations.
Victory was turning
into defeat, rejoicing into gloom, hope into despair, expectations into disappointments, promises into compromises, declarations into charters for treachery.
-186-
Ian sawall this with startling clarity, but ultimately he saw more. nunciation.
His vision was not one of hopelessness, fear, and reRather,
it was as if he saw that ultimately there
would be light above all these storm clouds. be
flown through,
For now they had to
and superior navigation was required,
not
naievety, self-deception, wishful thinking, indecision and weakness.
All the experiences he had gone through, the girl he adored,
the miracles manifested through desolation, swamps, endless forests, bogs confirmed his belief in the special destiny God intended for him.
Startling challenges lay ahead.
Rooted in his consciousness
from his Bible reading was the idea that the more gifts God showered on one, the more one's responsibility and the higher one's standards had to be.
But Ian was still not certain.
He sensed he
had been launched on a mission of some kind, but that was all. wondered what his first step should be. shaken, his heritage lost. left to his own devices.
He
His existence had been
He had been too long alone, unaided,
What he needed now was a rock upon which
he could build his future. That rock, Ian believed, was a family.
He wanted desperately
to have a partner, a help mate, an outlet for his unlimited love, a women he could adore, a woman to start a family with, a woman who would bear children, a woman who would seed the future with hope, trust and love.
He needed a woman who could fly with him in
the sunshine, above the storm clouds. [ God brought Tonus into my life, ] Ian thought finally.
-187-
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR FREE ELECTIONS
[ We know stress often forces sudden new solutions, that crisis often alerts us to opportunity; that the creative process requires chaos before form emerges; that individuals are often strengthened by SUffering and conflict. Marilyn Ferguson The Aquarian Conspiracy ]
139.
A week before Lotti's wedding, Uncle Egon invited Ian to join his usual Monday night dinner with Tonus at the palace of the archbishop in Munich.
Ian was feeling much better.
He was able
to eat soup and mashed potatoes, and a chocolate souffle. "We'll be leaving for Graz a little earlier than we planned," Uncle Egon announced to his guests.
"The prince-bishop of Salz-
burg has invited me to stop over for a conference.
Frankly, my
children, I hope to get a see in Austria and I'd like to enlist the bishop's recommendation for a transfer." "Back to Graz?" asked Tonus. "Not likely," he replied cheerfully, say?" he continued,
scratching his head,
-188-
"What was I going to "Oh, yes ... that it
would be convenient for you too, Ian, to have a rest on the way to Graz." The three left Saturday morning and arrived in Salzburg a few hours later.
Travel had much improved since Imre was bussed out
of Dachau. "Have you been here before, children?" asked Egon. "No," replied Tonus and Ian. "You'll be in for a treat.
The war has barely touched this
beautiful city." The party was put up at the hunting lodge of Schloss Klesheim. Ian was tired and immediately went to bed while Uncle Egon and Tonus went into town.
He slept fifteen hours.
Tonus tip-toed into Ian's room, waking him. "Up so early?" he asked, half asleep. "Early?" replied Tonus brightly. Ian opened his eyes fully.
"It
1S
already nine o'clock."
"You look dressed up."
"I've been to seven o'clock mass in town with Uncle Egon," she said brightly.
He won't be back until one at the earliest, as
he was asked to celebrate the high noon mass.
Would you like some
breakfast?" Perhaps a glass of milk."
"I'm not hungry at all. rang the bell but no one came.
Tonus
She went out and came back a few
minutes later with the milk. " I can't find anybody. off.
I forgot!
I'll get you breakfast! " " I'm not hungry, " repeated I an.
-189-
It's the servants' day
"You have to eat something with your vitamins,
II
insisted
Tonus. "Just get me some tea, please.
II
When Tonus came back with the breakfast tray she found Ian asleep again.
When she put the tray down and looked at the bed,
she noticed that he had spilled the milk. that he was not just sleeping.
She cried out, afraid
Her cry awoke Ian.
Tonus ran to his bed and made a fuss adjusting his pillow as if she were embarrassed about crying out. looking at her fixedly.
Then she noticed Ian
She returned his gaze.
came to them both at once:
The realization
they were all alone in the lodge.
A
fury of clumsy unbuttoning, unzipping, and kisses followed. Afterwards, they lay steaming in the sun rays streaming through the lage window.
Through every pore, Tonus exuded a perfume that
intoxicated Ian.
He closed his eyes, took a deep and satisfying
breath.
Tonus held her head in her hand, supported by her elbow
resting on the white linen sheet.
She stared in wonder at Ian,
surprised and overcome by his passion, which had been far more intense than she had expected.
He hadn't tired in her embrace.
He had come alive in the full vigor of health.
Every centimeter
of her body trembled in anticipation of more passion.
She tossed
her head to let her fair hair cover her shoulders--not yet long enough to cover her breasts. Thoughts raced through Ian, emotions.
to accompany the waves of his
He ran his fingers over her hair, which glowed in the
sun, like spun gold.
It looked exactly as it had in the Munich.
-190-
Skin to skin.
He pulled her even closer.
eyes, noses and lips were aligned. year's pain.
He moved down so their
He breathed out much of the
Hazel eyes gazed into green eyes until their vision
shimmered.
140.
"He is a real prince, that Ludovico, but he is far too handsome," remarked Aunt Pauline in a whisper which carried to the far corners of the room.
Beggared by the war, back on Austrian soil,
she still remained the arbiter of taste and the object of awe. Adjusting her wig with her left hand, and putting her lorgnette on the bridge of her nose with her right hand, she spied Ian and went straight to him.
During his march her intended victim had
acquired a sixth sense.
As soon as it sounded the alarm, he ducked
down to the height of Orsi de Tollay, dressed as a flower girl, and
in
a
few
bounds
disappeared behind a
phalanx of local
notabilities. Aunt Pauline's remark referred to Ludovico Borghina-Lepanto, Lotti's fiance.
He was remarkably attractive in a pompous way:
almost two meters tall,
with prematurely gray hair, dark bushy
eyebrows, small hands and feet,
voluptuary eyes, very pale skin.
He was the center of attraction in the ornate reception room of the bishop's palace,
where
the guests were gathering for the
ceremony.
-191-
Ian smiled inwardly, saying to himself:
Lotti always liked
the oily, dark Mediterranean men, but why is he perspiring so profusely and having a tough time controlling his nervousness? He was still dazed from that morning with Tonus.
In Uncle
Egon's company and in Graz, surrounded by her family, she treated him with indulgence, not love, with good humor, not affection, with friendliness, certainly not passion.
Here she was regarded
as Imre's intended, and the tone she adopted was designed to screen any perception of romantic attachment between herself and Ian. Ian was momentarily lost in thought. his daydream:
Aunt Pauline interrupted
"Now, you must tell us about yourself.
One hears
such fantastic stories about you." I an paled.
He got even more nervous than the bridegroom.
[ Can she see something no one else has noticed?
Does she know? ]
His discomfort increased when several pairs of eyes turned towards them. "Well, speak up, young man," she continued even louder, "I want to know all about your winter in Russia! " Just as Ian was beginning to wonder how he would escape Aunt Pauline, their attention was diverted by a cry of joy from across the room as Christina had just caught sight of Bela corning into the room.
She had not heard from him for a month, and had already
given up on his showing up for the wedding.
The guests surrounded
the new arrival: "A terrible journey!" was his first comment. nearly took me back to Russia again, the swines.
-192-
"The Russians It took me a
week to get here from Budapest!" words.
Excited questions greeted these
Christina drew Bela aside to take him to her uncle's study,
next to the reception room where they could talk.
As Bela was
about to enter the study his eyes fell on Tonus: "I brought a letter for you from Imre," he said with a smile. "But I was so fatigued when I arrived that I neglected to bring it with me today.
Forgive me.
Remind me to give it to you tomorrow
at the wedding," and with that Christina pulled him into the study. A tremor shook Tonus when she heard Bela's words. one eye on her while Aunt Pauline questioned him. excuse and was at her side in a moment. was wrong.
Ian kept
He murmured an
He sensed that something
If he had had more experience with women, he would
have known that she wanted to be left alone.
He stepped closer to
her: "What is it?" he asked uncertainty. "I'm fine," she said, with an edge of impatience in her voice, and left the room abruptly. The nuptial mass was held in the Maria Kirche the next day at three o'clock.
The guests arrievd 1n small family groups.
joined Christina, who motioned him to join her, and Bela. her was a friend of hers.
"This is Mausie,"
Ian With
she said introducing
her to Ian. The church was overflowing.
This was the first big wedding
in the provincial capital since the end of the war. talked about little else in recent weeks. church since last Christmas.
The city had
Ian had not been in
His soul was filled with gratitude
-193-
for his deliverance.
He wished Tonus were next to him, but she
came to the wedding with Johnny Eszterhazy and sat down next to her mother in the front row. Throughout the ceremony I an was aware of the scent of incense, of Christina holding hands with Bela, passion oozing out of them, of his own heart beating in a sentimental flush anticipating the exchange of vows, of the soaring organ playing Wagner's wedding march,
of Lotti looking more beautiful than ever before,
and
then--a suden hush. Ian focused on Uncle Egon's voice.
For some reason it had an
edge of impatience. II ... will you take this woman to be your wife?" Silence extended to every corner of the church. IINo,1I The word, uttered in a low voice, reverberated like a cannon-shot in the stillness.
Ian became aware of amazement,
consternation, clutching of hands and hearts. The unimaginable had happened. answer to the crucial question. knowing what to do next. front row,
Ludovico had said IINo" in
People looked at each other, not
An audible groan could be heard from the
directly in front of Ian,
where Aunt Pauline was
enthroned. Uncle Egon had no choice.
He declared the ceremony ended.
An hour later, Tonus was in her room reading Imre's letter which Bela had given her on leaving the church.
-194-
[ Budapest, September 20, 1946 My dearest love! How delighted I was to have your two letters. me always.
You must know my feelings
They are with
for you have remained
unchanged. I'm glad I have the opportunity to send a reply by secure means as the mail is still unreliable. Uncle Egon surely told you, the Americans took us to Italy after the liberation, where we received excellent medical care. Atilla,
several
others
and
myself were
sent to Capri
for
convalescence. Atilla and I were anX10US to return to Magyarland and, thanks to an American plane which brought in emergency medical supplies, we came home, after innumerable delays, in June. My main task has been to join the leadership of the party and prepare us for the Budapest municipal elections next month and for the general elections in November.
Wonders have been accomplished.
Much more needs to be done if we want to produce a respectable showing.
The Communists and their Socialist allies are outspending
us by a wide margin, have the support of the occupying power, and appear to have unlimited funds. We have very little money and only limited transportation facilities.
My trust is in the people's common sense and innate
decency, which will not allow them to fall for the transparent propaganda plays of the left.
I believe the electorate will sup-
port those wo are their true representatives and friends.
-195-
I must give you the sad news that Mami died during the siege. Despite her responsibilities as civil Defense Commander of Buda, the hardest job a non-combatant had to bear amid the chaos and ruin of warfare, she insisted on doing her share in getting water to our home.
That was dangerous, as the streets were under con-
stant aerial and artillery fire.
She was killed--may God rest her
soul in peace. We have lost track of my dear brother, Ian, about whom we have had no news whatsoever since he gave himself over to the Red Army Command, even before the end of the siege. his safe return.
Ellen is well.
We all pray for
She has proved to have an excel-
lent sense for business and has kept us all solvent during these difficul t
months.
Elma has been violated by our liberators.
Praise God, she is in good health now. Only one brief message from Papi since my return home.
It
came through the American mission which is hamstrung by Washington. All we get is token encouragement. We shall never give up our fight for freedom. until the elections are over, I'm immersed in party work. you can well imagine, I have no time left for myself.
As
I'm con-
stantly touring the countryside, making three or four speeches a day.
It is wonderful to get such enthusiastic audiences and such
outpourings of spontaneous support.
We are well-received every-
where in the country and even in Budapest, where we still have to fight an uphill battle.
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May God preserve you in his safe keeping.
When all this is
over, we'll make plans for our future. My love is always yours, now and forever. Your devoted, Imre. ]
Tonus read the letter with increasing agitation.
Here was a
man who loved her, to whom she was engaged, whose first thoughts were to serve his country and his party and whose feelings towards her were unvarying love.
She was sad to get the news about Prin-
cess Ilka's death and was astounded Imre didn't know about Ian's return.
That made her realize how difficult communications had
become between the newly divided Europead continent, even between neighboring countries. It was so much like Imre to devote the greater part of his letter to politics and so little to himself, to themselves. Guilt, it was guilt which began to gnaw at her, guilt about not remaining faithful to him, to the man who had saved her life. She felt she had committed the mortal sin of adultery.
She felt
guilty about not writing to him more often and not letting him know about Ian's return from Russia.
She was not worthy to be the
consort of Imre, that. wonderful man in whom the hope of an entire nation reposed and who didn't seem to care at all for his own well being. Tonus was also tossed on the waves of other emotions and conflicting feelings. [ Why didn't he ask me to join him?
-197-
Is he really the man for me, whose first love is for his country?
Can I be content taking second place in Imre's heart,
second after Magyarland? Why didn't he write, "let's get married as soon as possible?" Why didn't he write the sweet endearments which Ian was so good at? Ian!
Dear Ian!
What would happen to him if I were to tell
him, that it was allover between us? I no longer know what to do. Maria, Mother of Jesus!
I have sinned grievously.
Please
intercede with God on my behalf and obtain absolution for me. what is happening to me.
Oh,
Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus, please help
me! ] Everyone was in too much of an uproar to notice Tonus' agony. Only Christina sensed that something was wrong with her sister, but she was too absorbed in Bela to spend time with her. Of course Ian knew,
too.
sit next to him in church.
He felt hurt that Tonus wouldn't
He had hoped they would exchange vows,
whispered and fevered vows of eternal love, when Lotti and Ludovico were to utter their own marriage vows. feelings too. brother?
Wasn't he a thief,
A robber,
But he had his guil t-
stealing Tonus from his own
taking away what was rightfully Imre's?
murderer of their love?
Hadn't God delivered him from evil?
this the way to repay God for his deliverance?
A Was
He had been given
an opportunity to start anew and make free choices for his future. Now he had spoiled his relations with his brother for good.
-198-
Would
he even be able to look him straight in the eye?
Wasn't he a
good-for-nothing for having feigned that relapse at the lodge at Schloss Klesheim, deliberately spilling that glass of milk which he knew perfectly well would entice Tonus into his bed and into his arms? He felt his newly found energy ebbing away. return his calls all evening.
Tonus would not
The next morning he checked into
the British military hospital with his medical records from the American hospital in Munich. [ When Tonus finds out I'm in the hospital again, she'll come running after me ...
How awful I am!
Just a little while ago I
reproached myself with deceit and here I am planning deceit again. Lord, forgive me. ] These and a thousand other thoughts whirled in his mind, as he waited to be examined.
He was given a few shots, a bottle of
vitamin pills and an encouraging bill of health. "You are doing very weIl," the doctor told him.
"We don't
need to see you again until you run out of those pills."
[Just
now when it suits me to be sick, I am pronounced healthy. ] Tonus didn't call until the next day, to let him know that Lotti and Ludovico had had a private marriage ceremony that morning. "It was simply a matter of nerves.
All is forgiven," she
said. "When can I see you?" he wanted to know. "I have to talk to you," replied Tonus.
She suggested a cafe
not far from the bishop's palace, where the Dadians were staying
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until Uncle Egon's next move in the Roman Catholic hierarchy was determined. Neither Tonus nor Ian was looking forward to this meeting. Ian was tormented by a foreboding, and a feeling that he had lost his innocence.
Maria was a pure, a beautiful wonder.
He had been
pure, too, before this.
During the German occupation he felt he
had led a charmed life.
In captivity he had felt invulnerable.
In the hospital he had felt in th palm of God.
Always, without
quite realizing it, through all that, he had kept his innocence. And now he didn't feel innocent any more.
He knew he was
walking down a dead-end street and the only way to get out of it was to turn back.
with all his heart he wished he didn't have to
turn back, away from Tonus. her.
He loved her and didn't want to leave
But within his heart of hearts he knew it was wrong.
didn't want to face that.
Ian
He wanted to live in the golden halo of
a beautiful illusion. Tonus went to confession that morning and she knew what she had to do and that she didn't like it at all. since reading Imre's letter.
She had cried alot
She knew the decision she had to
make would affect the lives of the two brothers in a fateful way, irrevocably and profoundly.
-200-
141.
Tonus was at a loss for words.
She tried to smile, but tears
came to her eyes. Ian felt adrift. was to come.
He wished he could stop the flow of what
He knew he couldn't.
He glanced around nervously,
looking at the details of the room:
the lace curtains, the ornate
setting, the small table, the uncomfortable chairs, the shape of the electrified candles, the waxed hardwood floor.
He looked in
all directions except into Tonus' eyes. Both remained silent.
The waitress came.
Ian suggested a
pot of tea, but Tonus ordered Viennese coffee.
Even that small
detail
in with
alarmed
Ian,
as
Tonus
wishes--at least up until now.
invariable
fell
Ian's
That tiny show of independence was
a signal he understood, or imagined he understood, too well. Tonus order.
remained silent after the waitress left with their
She couldn't very well tell Ian, her future brother-in-
law, that she didn't want to see him any more.
That would have
been cruel considering the doctors had told him he had only a few more months to live.
And if he should live being Imre's brother
practically guaranteed they'd keep seeing each other. She didn't want to say that anyway. as a
friend without hurting him.
She wanted to keep Ian
She wanted to say the words
which would ensure their friendship.
She wanted to say words so
carefully chosen that he wouldn't suffer a fatal relapse.
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The waitress brought their coffee and tea.
Ian watched the
seconds tick by as she put down the china and the pots with slow deliberation.
The silence unnerved Ian more and more.
It was he
who finally broke it. "Tonus, very quietly.
you don't have to say anything," he said at last, with tremendous effort he added,
were going to say
I
and I understand."
"I know what you
He wanted to say "darling"
as the first word, and when he substituted it with her name, barely used lately except in company,
he hoped Tonus would understand
that subtle message as he earlier understood when she had ordered coffee instead of tea. Tonus slowly wiped the tears out of her eyes and started to say
I
"It is impossible
I"
but she couldn't continue.
Ian's hand reached across the table.
She clutched it with an
unexpected force, making him realize the violence of her feelings. He knew she was trying to keep calm. He remembered the force with which Maria had clutched at him before he had returned to Budapest so long ago. him to stay.
Tonus wanted him to leave.
knew so well--had the same end result: alone.
Maria had wanted
Yet both movements--Ian he was to find himself
He dreaded the prospect especially after he had felt so
loved. After Tonus had released his hand he sipped his tea, because he was thirsty I
but just for something to do.
not
In the
Pripet marshes he had been too intent on survival and the news of Maria's new lover had barely registered in his brain and not at
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all in his consciousness. Maria--and Tonus, too. eyes dry.
Now he fully realized that he had lost
He tried to keep himself erect and his
He even produced a tentative smile, as he had when the
MVD officer had interrogated him. Tonus was grateful for that smile. Not with words of explanation, but with looks and touches, the two were able to communicate. Ian made a decision on the spot.
"I'm going back to BUdapest."
She opened her mouth to say something, then her face lit up with a faint smile.
"Would you do me a favor?" she asked.
"Of course, Tonus." "Take this letter to Imre," she said and reaching for her bag, she pulled out a blue envelope and handed it to Ian. Next morning Ian went to the hospital for an extra supply of vitamins.
At the British Army headquarters the duty officer
strongly advised against the trip, but Ian's mind was made up. gave I an a pass as far as Vienna.
He
He had few possessions and
packing took little time. Ian went to the railway station alone the next day to catch the train to Vienna.
He arrived before dark and went straight to
Johnny's, only a stone's throw from the Hofburg, the Austrian emperor's residence.
After he rang the ornate bell, Ian was sur-
prised when Johnny himself opened the massive doors.
"Ian, I've
been expecting you," he said in greeting. "Tonus called," he said in explanation.
He was dressed in
gray flannel trousers and a smart Austrian hunting jacket.
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The beautiful inside of the palace had remained almost intact. There was thick dust everywhere.
The sad looking enormous velvet
curtains were split in places, the walls devoid of paintings, and the rooms bare but for a few pieces of furniture, covered by graycolored cloth. Johnny didn't have to explain that Vienna was prudent to have her women look old and her homes worn in the days of the Red Army liberators.
"Felix Austria," the centuries' old motto,
Austria" still held.
The U.S. Army was there and Vienna, as well
as Austria, was partitioned into four zones: and Russian.
"Lucky
U.S., British, French
The Inner City, where Johnny's palace was located,
was ruled by all four powers, chaired by the four in rotation, one month at a time.
Vienna and Austria escaped the fate of Budapest
and Magyarland, ruled solely by the Russians. Ian badly wanted to unburden his sorrow.
He decided not to.
Johnny was an old acquaintance rather than a close friend.
Both
belonged to the same set, and despite the lack of close relationship, Johnny made his home available to Ian without any questions or reservations. The two sat down for supper in Johnny's living room upstairs, where he kept a small apartment waiting until the world around him was ready to settle down.
Ian asked about the siege of Vienna.
"Luckily only one bomb hit the place," said Johnny. servants were able to put out the fire."
"The
The family's vast estates
were lost in Magyarland but Johnny--Felix Johnny, thought Ian-still had a large estate in Western Austria in the American zone.
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Ian explained he wanted to get back to Budapest.
Johnny
tried to dissuade him, too, but when he realized Ian's mind was set, he willingly made his contacts available. "Your sister Ellen," said Johnny with a saving touch of irony, "turns out to be quite a business lady. the run between Vienna and Budapest. her next shipment leaves Vienna.
Her trucks regularly make
I'll find out tomorrow when
I'm sure her driver can take you
back to Budapest if you are so foolish as to want to go there." "My little sister Ellen?" exclaimed Ian. "After Aunt Ilka died ... II replied Johnny. IIMami died?1I exclaimed Ian a second time. IIDidn't you knoW!?1I
asked Johnny,
surprised.
II Everybody
knows. II IITonus didn't tell me. II II I thought Uncle Egon would or Bela would. II IIBarely talked to Bela.
He and Christina ... "
II I know. II IIHow did she die?" Johnny explained. IINobody told me.
Perhaps they wanted to spare my feelings. II
"Well frankly Ian, old boy, I'm sorry I was the bearer of bad tidings.
Let me get us some good Napoleon brandy.
A few bottles
managed to survive the war." Ian had barely touched any alcohol for a year. wedding he had only sipped the champagne.
-205-
At Lotti's
Three thimblefuls of
the French brandy was too much for him.
He promptly fell asleep.
Johnny and has valet carefully put him to bed. Ian woke up a few hours later and vomited violently. of blood scared him.
He fell into despair.
women closest to him:
Traces
He had lost the three
Maria, Tonus and his mother.
A fire worse
than the one he had helped to put out at the Buda townhouse burnt his insides.
He was falling apart.
It was lovely to fall into
oblivion, but his ravaged intestines were aflame and would not let him sleep.
Gradually, he cried himself into oblivion.
The morning after, Ian felt too weak to get up. Johnny made a phone call to Graz. line.
A worried
He managed to get Tonus on the
The connection was full of static.
Both had trouble under-
standing each other. "Ian drank himself into a stupor," Johnny said. "Suicide!" cried Tonus.
In Magyar, "drinking one's self into
a stupor" and "drinking one's self to death" sound quite similar. "He is very sick," shouted Johnny. In Magyar the words "sick" and "hovering" rhyme. stood Ian was "hovering" between life and death.
Tonus under-
In desperation,
she switched to French: "Take him to an Eng
"The line was cut off.
again, then sent a telegram. clarified the situation.
The next day, the answer from Tonus
Ian felt better, and didn't want to go
to a British military hospital. defini tely.
Johnny tried
He might be kept in Austria in-
There was nothing holding him here any more.
wanted to go home.
Home for him was Magyarland.
-206-
He
Johnny finally understood.
Several times Ian was on the
verge of telling him about Tonus, to get him to understand better, but he stopped short each time. Ian again heard the still small voice inside him. told him to carryon.
The voice
He listened.
142.
A few days later, on October second Ian was back in Budapest. True to his word, trucks.
Johnny had tracked down one of Ellen's
Ian made his trip from Vienna to Budapest seated between
a Magyar driver and a Russian soldier who provided protection for his sister's enterprise. On the narrow highway the truck ran into an icy spot and almost skidded off the road.
The trip,
which for the forced
marchers earlier in the year had taken four or five days, only five hours.
took
The truck was stopped several times by Red Army
patrols, but was waved on as soon as the Russian guard made his presence known. What struck Ian most when he arrived in Budapest was that it was more vital and energetic than Vienna, even though Vienna had witnessed only a few days of fighting. Although Ian had grown accustomed to the pitying looks given him by almost all who had known him before, he was not quite prepared for the tears which came to Elma' s
-207-
and Aunt Mitzi's and
Juliska's eyes.
Less than a year ago he had left as a student who
had just earned his bachelor's degree. frostbitten,
Now, he was a shrunken,
dispirited person, with more scars than tufts of
hair. Budapest was in the grip of election fever.
He saw Imre just
long enough to give him Tonus' letter. "The general elections were fixed for November fourth," Ellen explained.
"At the end of the summer the Communists and their
Socialist allies demanded that the Budapest municipal elections be held before the general elections. "Not all municipal elections, but just Budapest's?" asked Ian during supper in the dining room.
"Isn't that rather unusual?"
"The Russians are up to their usual tricks," exclaimed Aunt Mi tzi, who sat at the head of the table. "The Russians
were pushing the
idea,"
Ellen continued.
"Everybody begged Imre to find some excuse to postpone the Budapest elections.
He felt a poor showing here would be used by the Com-
munists to influence the more important general elections." "Imre finally decided to rise to the Communist challenge," added Aunt Mitzi. "Was that wise?" asked Ian. "He conferred with Father Istvan.
He is on the three-man
Council of State which functions as the supreme authority until a president of the republic is elected," said Ellen.
"So it was
decided to go ahead with the capital's elections with the condition that the general elections will be held within one month."
-208-
"The communists agreed to that condition?" asked Ian. "Enthusiastically," replied Ellen. "Imre and Father Istvan took a big chance," said Ian. Ian rested only one more day.
On the fourth of November, he
visited Imre at the party headquarters on the east bank of the Danube.
It was a beehive of activity.
Ian looked into his eyes to see if Tonus had confessed her affair to him.
Imre's eyes were unknowing.
He smiled back and
answered the ringing telephone at the same time. In between phone calls Ian asked him:
R
"What pel\centage of the
vote do we expect?" "Originally one-third.
Yesterday I increased my estimate to
forty percent. " "How come?" Ian asked. "I believe the Communist Party committed a first-class blunder. The Kremlin brain trust forced the Socialists to join the Communists on a common ticket." "Isn't that a big menace to us?" "On the face of it, the new slogan 'Workers, unite' pretty attractive.
sounds
But the rank and file worker was all against
that so-called partnership with the Communists. benefit by getting some of the protest vote.
I believe we'll
I'm sorry Ian, but I
have to run off to make a speech." Ian was gripped by the election excitement, and tried not to feel lost amid the comings and goings.
Many of the congressmen he
had first met the previous summer were there, now in positions of
-209-
power and influence. Istvan.
He glimpsed the towering figure of Father
Someone told him that Congressman Andras had been executed
by the Gestapo last Christmas.
He noticed in one of the small
offices the Reverend Zoltan Tildy, who had cautioned against violence at the underground meeting at the Hoyos estate, conferring with a delegation.
Dezso,
who had cared for him near Miskolc
after his escape from Budapest was there, engaged in an animated discussion with Uncle Freddy. Congressman Zoltan Peffer, the party's candidate for attorneygeneral,
gave a delighted whoop when he noticed Ian.
you, dear boy!?" delight.
He exuded confidence.
"You made it after all!
"How are
His big smile was full of
Wonderful!"
"I see you are full of spirit!" replied Ian. "Do come into my office. talk there."
It's a hole in the wall, but we can
Alone together, Zoltan and Ian looked straight into
each other's eyes. "Tough?" he asked with affection. "Miraculous," replied Ian. "You know Ellen went with Istvan to see that little goon who runs
the Communist Party about finding you.
He promised them
everything and nothing ever happened." I an gave him a capsule account of his experiences. can see," he concluded, track of me. field.
"As you
"there is no way anyone could have kept
The Russians don't believe in paper work in the
Not like the Germans
"
-210-
"We know a lot of local Nazis who are now the most ardent Communists," Zoltan interrupted him.
"But go on!"
"There is no administrative set-up to keep track of people. If Stalin himself and his Gestapo chief Beria had issued a command to find me, I still would not have been found. II The two friends chatted excitedly for about half an hour. Zoltan grabbed Ian's forearm.
"Are you strong enough to accompany
me on a tour of a suburban district?" he asked, pushing back his shock of hair with his fingers. III'm game for anything," replied Ian smiling. "Of course you are!
Come with me to the ninth district which
as you know is a working class area. wi th a speech or two.
Let's help the local lads
Just our presence will help, you'll see."
Zol tan got hold of one of the few party cars. "You can see the war of the placards and billboards," he said on the way. one.
"The Communists are outspending us at least ten to
We put up our posters and during the night they are covered
with the slogan 'Workers unite'! done.
You'll see!
poli tical
But our lads are not to be out-
There is a tremendous surge to lay a solid
structure on our thousand-year-old traditions.
All
hopes seem to be centered on our party. " At the southern outskirts of Budapest the pair bounded into the small house of a local Unionist candidate.
Within a short
time a small crowd appeared in front of the building. immediately recognized when he came out to greet them. up on a chair and made his first speech of the day.
-211-
Zoltan was He stood
"The Budapest elections are but a rehearsal for the national elections to be held next month," he said in his clear, optimistic vOJ.ce.
"We all know that the masses of the Magyar nation are
resolved to put their trust in our party.
Let me remind you the
party unites the working people of our fatherland, the industrial workers and the peasants." A loud applause greeted him. "Now it is up to the people of Budapest to show that we have the interest of our country at heart.
We need your support, we
need your votes for our victory in the capital.
It is absolutely
vital that we win in Budapest, so we can convince the world that we are determineq to keep our independence, that we cherish our freedom!" By this time, the small crowd had swelled to a big one. "And I have with me here Ian, the son of Tibor Chabaffy. \I "We want Chabaffy! \I shouted someone from the back of the crowd.
Zoltan gently pushed I an forward.
At the end of Zoltan's third speech, Ian's first few halting words blossomed into a well-rounded sentence: "My father has an important message for all of us which he is sending through me, who have just returned from Russian captivity: 'Vote for freedom, vote for the Union of peasants and citizens 1 Ian felt he was finally doing something useful. daily rounds with Zoltan until the election-day.
• \I
He kept the
The Communists,
beginning to sense that the tide of public opinion was running against them,
further increased their propaganda pitch to the
-212-
workers.
Day by day Zol tan and Ian received increasing vocal
support from members of the Socialists who were disgusted with the unified ticket the Reds were forcing on their leaders.
Many offered
to support their party. On the morning of election day all the leaders and many of the campaign workers congregated at the Union Party headquarters. Ian barely had room to stand up in Zoltan's office. murmur rose from the entrance of the building.
An excited
Vas, the Communist
mayor of Budapest, had shown up, the same man who 1n early spring had given Ellen the license for her business.
To everyone's sur-
prise he asked, "Do you have any complaints whatsoever against any authori ty or election board?" "In several districts," replied Zoltan, loudly enough so all could hear him,
"the chairmen of the election boards refuse to
recognize our party election supervisors. II II I f
that is so,
please corne along in my car and we'll
straighten out these problems,
II
said Vas.
IIWe can afford to give
your party this advantage. 1I Imre was aroused by the superior tone of his voice and shot back,
IIYou appear to be quite certain about the victory of the
joint ticket of your party and the socialists?! II III have no doubt whatsoever, II Vas replied, IIWe, the workers, are going to get an absolute majority." Later in the day Ellen and Elma accompanied Imre to the polling place in the first district, which included the citadel.
Ian,
legally a British subject, didn't vote of course, but went along
-213-
with them anyway.
They were greeted with polite applause.
the line the word spread that the Chabaffys had arrived.
Down The
Union Party's election supervisor came out to greet them. "We all want you to vote without having to wait in line, II he said. IIThank you, but we prefer to wait in line, II said Imre.
II That
is the true meaning of democracy." After casting ballots, the clan left in one of the rickety party cars to election headquarters on the other side of the Danube. III bet we get at least thirty-five percent of the vote, II said Father Istvan on their arrival. "I
bet a minimum of forty percent, II replied Imre.
"I bet forty- five percent," cried 201 tan. "You are all way too optimistic,
1/
remarked Reverend Tildy.
"I think we'll be lucky to get one-third. II The smallest district near the Chepel island industrial complex, which had only one hundred and four voters, mostly steel and railroad workers, reported first. "Forty-eight votes for us," announced Father Istvan.
"The
Communist ticket got forty-three, the rest of the parties three." Zoltan watched the blackboard. "We got the absolute majority!" exclaimed Zoltan.
A big
applause greeted the announcement. "We are going to win!" cried Imre. He was right.
By midnight,
the official results were all
tabulated.
-214-
Votes
Seats
union of Peasants & citizens
285,197
121
Fusion of Socialist and communists
249,711
103
35,146
16
All others
The Russians had expected this election to be the graveyard of the nation's hopes.
Confident that the working class districts
of the capital would vote for the Communist-socialist fusion ticket, they expected a resounding victory. Fifty-two percent of the vote went to the Unionists. "Did Moscow forget that the Russian Army raped and pillaged all electoral districts regardless of class distinctions?" cried Zoltan. "We'll have our man 1.n the mayoral seat!" exulted Father Istvan.
Everyone was jubilant.
"We have no time to waste," declared Imre.
"The general
elections are only four weeks away." "A miracle," murmured Ian. "The women have done it!" smiled Ellen.
143.
A week after the Budapest elections, Imre received a call for the Reverend Tildy, the chairman of the Union Party.
-215-
"Marshal Veroshilov has invited us to see him," he announced. The Red Army marshal greeted the pair with effusive cordiality. He was Chairman of the Allied Control Commission, which virtually controlled the country until the peace treaty between the Allies and Magyarland was to be signed.
He had also been Stalin's boon
companion for more than a quarter century. Voroshilov's presence was proof to Imre how important the Russians regarded his homeland.
The Americans and British were
represented on the control commission by two junior generals who, unlike voroshilov, had not direct access to the man wielding supreme power in the United states and the United Kingdom.
To counter-
balance the presence of Voroshilov, the Western powers would have had to have representatives of the stature of an Eisenhower or Marshall, a Montgomery or Alexander.
The key strategic importance
of the Danube valley for the future of Europe, Imre noted bitterly, was not recognized in Washington and London. Voroshilov had the rosy face of a baby and a beautiful head of snow-white hair.
After exchanging a few pleasantries about the
beauty of the Magyar countryside and the reconstruction of the Queen City of the Danube, Voroshilov went straight to the heart of the matter. liThe elections are coming up, preter.
11
he said through his inter-
lilt would be in the best interests of your war-ravaged
country if it were not torn any further by political battles. would be happy to lend my name to such a scheme. 11
-216-
I
The chain-smoking Tildy lit another cigarette as the Russian marshal continued: II
I think it would be a proper idea if your parties would
submit a common electoral ticket to the voters.
Representation by
the various parties could be settled at an inter-party conference. This scheme would have the great advantage of saving the Magyar people from a lot of excitement. " Imre listened to this suave prattle with mounting indignation. The wily Muscovite had come a long way since he had served as a corporal in the Czar's Army. ] "It would be perfectly undemocratic!" said Imre firmly.
"The
voters wouldn't have a chance to vote for the party of their choice." "But they did,
II
countered Voroshilov.
II
It
your party has the greatest popular following,
1.S
a fact that
consequently it
should get the largest number of candidates on the ballot. " "Let the people decide," Imre interjected. "Believe me, a single ticket has the advantage of simplicity." "Simplicity lies in leaving the decisions to the voters," said Imre. "A single ballot would remove all confusion," persisted the Russian.
The reverend had left the tug-of-war with the corpulent
representative of a world power at least twenty times bigger than Magyarland entirely to his much younger partner.
Now, he finally
opened his mouth. "Well, what proportion should be given us?" Tildy asked, "in your opinion?"
-217-
"That would depend on an agreement between the maj or parties, " Vorshilov replied.
"We would feel comfortable if your could get
at least forty percent. " "Forty!?" exclaimed the astounded reverend.
"In the capital
we got fifty-two percent!" "We are bound to get even more in the national elections," added Imre.
"The rural voters are the foundation of our strength!"
"Let us tell you something," continued Stalin's cohort with his majestic "we."
"We should not be responsible for creating an
uncomfortable situation for the workers' parties.
We do not wish
to give them a disproportionately difficult start in the contest." with deepening shock, both viewed Moscow's deceptive web spun out in front of their very eyes. "You shouldn't strive for an absolute majority," suggested Voroshilov, "but we might favorably consider giving you as much as forty-five percent of all the candidates." The wrangling went on for hours.
It became uglier as it went
on. "If you keep up this reactionary attitude, we might be forced to unify all the other parties!" snarled the Russian.
"That would
be the end of you!" "We'll take that chance," said Imre quickly. "You stupid aristocrat!" shouted Moscow's Gauleiter. "That's what the Nazis and the Gestapo called me." calmly interrupted him.
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Imre
"We'll increase our garrison here from six hundred thousand to three million soldiers!" Voroshilov went on menacingly. "You want to completely finish off our starving country?" asked the terrified reverend. "What is there to discuss any further?" added Imre. "We might agree to
forty-seven and one-half percent
"
Voroshilov said a little calmer. "You might?" asked Imre. "We will," replied Voroshilov after a pause. "Let's agree to an inter-party conference," said Imre wearily. "Let's see what that will bring."
He wished to get out of the
Russian bear hug and breathe some unpolluted air. "I support that," announced his partner. After some further haggling, Voroshilov agreed.
It was only
after he had that Imre countered, almost casually, with an important condition:
"Of course, our agreement to such a conference is
subject to approval by our members." As soon as Imre got back to his office, he called Ellen. "Bad news," he announced when she appeared an hour later. "The Russians are bent on forcing a unified ticket on us." "That's outrageous," cried Ellen. "We have to handle this remarked Imre.
intelligently,
not emotionally,"
"The more adamant we become,
the more stubborn
they'll be ... we'll have to find a better way." "I'll talk to the Americans about it." l
,
"And Ian to the English."
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"We'll mobilize world opinion with Father Bela and Zoltan's help, also the nation's." Within days, the BBC and the Voice of America sharply criticized the unified ticket idea. western outrage. behind it. tions,
What turned the tide was not
It was the Union Party itself and the people
The party leadership was besieged by indignant peti-
phone calls and deputations.
The drivers of the meagre
eight-car fleet of the party unanimously decided to strike if the leaders accepted the plan.
The people regarded it as a communist
plot to rob the people of the right to vote. Father Istvan and Imre decided to call the party's executive commi ttee into session, Moscow's plan.
knowing full well that it would reject
The following morning the newspapers headlined the
decision. The Communists beat a hasty retreat when they realized the whole country was in an uproar about the Voroshilov plan. only a temporary truce.
It was
Communist goon squads showed up to use
persuasion of a more forceful kind.
After a sharp protest from
the Union Party leaders, they were withdrawn. But Union Party was not much better prepared for the general election than for the Budapest showdown. small contributions.
Imre had received only
with some aggressive work, these ran into
the thousands and tens of thousands and enabled the party to run a lean but spirited campaign. I an
joined the
speakers touring the countryside.
He was
particularly busy around Miskolc where Dezso had organized two or
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three appearances every day.
Ian spoke until he got hoarse.
The
outpouring of affection moved him to the depth of his soul.
The
people had been waiting for centuries for this occasion and were ready to cast their ballots for freedom and peace. running high.
Enthusiasm was
With experience, his speeches got punchier and his
lines hit harder.
His theme was freedom and integrity.
Ian's
speeches were deeply emotional, Imre's intellectual. Imre and Ellen were touring in Transdanubia and the Lowlands in the weeks before the election.
The three Chabaffys met only
occasionally, barely snatching a greeting and a smile. The spirit of the campaign was so upbeat that Ian was able to rise above his private disasters and personal challenges. Imre nor Ian felt any hatred towards the Russians.
Neither
The Magyar
voters were eager once the business of politics had been taken care of during election day,
to get on with the pursuit of
happiness. Imre's talks centered around the two slogans of the party: "Law, Order, Security,1I displayed in block letters on the campaign posters;
and "Peace, Wheat,
Wine,1I under a picture of a prayer
book, a loaf of bread and a cluster of grapes. A miracle was about to take place:
the only free election
ever held under Russian occupation anywhere, reflecting the Russian Goliath's contempt for the Magyar David.
Moscow could not even
conceive the possibility of a defeat for the Communist party. had power,
It
backed by the bayonets and the secret police of the
occupation power.
It had unlimited funds.
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It had a leadership
imported from Russia, who had received intensive training in the Kremlin's schools of terrorism, subversion, sabotage, and Stalinist brutality.
It could not possibly make a mistake.
Remembering Voroshilov's clumsy threats, lessly.
Imre worked tire-
Ellen, remembering Elma' s abduction, worked just as hard.
The Chabaffys, the rest of the party leaders and the rank and file,
performed prodigies of organization and endurance.
Their
cause was right and they knew it.
144.
November fourth was election day. The voting began at eight in the morning. and over had a right to vote.
Everyone twenty
The only exceptions were people who
held positions under the government appointed during the German occupation. Each ballot carried the sYmbols of the parties along with the names of the top candidates for the district.
The turnout in
Budapest was even better than for the municipal elections. was a sense of excitement in the air.
There
Here there was an oppor-
tunity to cast a vote in a secret ballot, which would go down in Magyar history as the most crucial election ever held.
This ballot
would surely test the maturity of the voters, and their judgement, which had enabled Magyarland to exist in the Danube valley for over one thousand years.
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The people cast their votes.
The results were astounding.
Imre was at party headquarters with the entire Chabaffy clan. The mood was one of optimism.
A sense of history was in the air.
People were aware of the magnificence of the occasion. By evening, the first results had started to trickle in. late night, the reports were flooding in.
By
By dawn it became evi-
dent tht the Union of Peasants and citizens had scored a great victory.
The morning papers with the following results printed on
every front page quickly disappeared from the newsstands: Number of Seats Unionist
Percentage of Votes
245
60
socialists
70
17
communists
70
17
All Others
24
6
The results were so overwhelming that no one dared to question the fairness of the election.
A few district leaders had
complained that the Communist Party trucks and cars had ferried their own people from polling place to polling place.
These inci-
dents were forgotten in the euphoria following the announcement of the results. The Union leaders gathered at party headquarters the day after the balloting. "Did you know," asked Father Istvan of Ellen, "that our friend, the top Communist we visited about Ian, barely got elected in his county?
Somehow, enough votes were scraped together to have one
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single Communist congressman elected in the whole county. friend,
Our
being on top of the list, squeezed in by a handful of
votes." The shouts from the street in front of the building drowned out Ellen's reply. in his life.
Ian had never seen so many smiling faces before
He hugged everyone in sight and everyone else hugged
each other. Expectations were great:
the Russian influence would lessen;
the occupation would soon be over. the future looked bright.
The present was glorious and
Didn't the Russians promise to respect
the independence of the Magyars?
Didn't they agree to stop inter-
fering in the internal affairs of the country?
Yes, expectations
ran high. The people demanded speeches from the leaders. elders,
like the Reverend Tildy and Father Bela,
limelight.
Imre let his shine in the
When his turn came, his heart jumped as he rose to the
most tumultuous ovation of the day. at home and abroad.
"We can look forward to peace
You have spoken in favor of independence,"
Imre said to the crowd,
"We can expect that the Russians will
respect the wishes of the people.
We will be allowed to rebuild
our shattered homeland in peace and harmony." The crowd cheered wildly. The two top leaders of the Unionists were summoned by Marshal Voroshilov and Pushkin for an audience.
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"Congratulations to your victory," the Russians greeted Reverend Tildy and Imre.
Imre could hardly conceal his gratification,
and the marshal his disappointment. "We are satisfied," Voroshilov continued, again using the majestic "we,ll "with the election results' fairness." Imre wondered what had happened allowing Stalin's deputy to play such a different tune that day?
The Russian pair were visi-
bly shaken by the peoples' verdict, yet they verged on graciousness and friendliness. Pushkin kept looking at his boss, rather than at the Magyars. The marshal continued:
"It appears to be an honest election and
we wish to draw an honest conclucion. II
It was the visitors turn
to be stunned. Stalin's best friend stepped closer to them.
IIWe wish to
have a closer understanding with your party, II he said. ously represents the majority of your people." murmured thanks. nation.
"It obvi-
The two Magyars
liAs you know, the Soviet Union is a peace-loving
We wish to have peaceful relations with all our neighbors, II
he continued.
"And we want peaceful relations with you Magyars."
Imre could scarcely believe the evidence of his ears.
The
marshal left the greatest surprise for the end of his welcoming speech. "What we wish to convey to you is this.
Our friendship with
Magyarland should rest upon the firm foundation of friendship with the Union of Peasants and citizens."
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In all the other countries of the Danube valley Communist agents seized power under the guise of IIfusion tickets. II land was the sole exception.
Magyar-
However, in Czechoslovakia a Musco-
vite agent named Gottwald became the overlord, in Yugoslavia Tito, in Bulgaria Dimitrov, in Rumania Bodnaras.
And in Magyarland a
IIstupid aristocrat. II outside the older Magyar spun around to face the younger. III attach great importance to Voroshilov's remarks,1I he said. IIWe were both concerned for some time,1I Imre added, IIthat the Russians would deal only with the Communist Party and no one else ... II IIYet now it looks," continued the reverend, lias though we no longer have to fear the schemes of the Communists. II Imre was exultant.
II We , 11 be able to strengthen our relations
with the western democracies! It was good to be alive.
II
Imre felt he had come a long way, a
very long way from the depths of Gestapo prisons.
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