A Memoir

by Stephen Gergatz
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It was 1955; Stalin was dead and the communist terror had peaked in 1952- 53. Our family was fortunate that we were not harmed in it. We did not expect any negative sanctions in 1955, but my aunt, Sr. Geraldine Galavits, was a Roman Catholic nun in Rome ; She was considered a black mark on our status. Also I had an uncle by marriage, Lajos Hajdú Nemeth, a former member of the Small Holders Party in the 1947 parliament. He lived in Munich and worked as a commentator for Radio Free Europe. So we had two black marks. The Communist Party deemed us an undesirable element.

My father came from a very poor family of 10 children; he was the son of the blacksmith in the village of Fertõszentmiklós . In 1955 he received an award as an exemplary worker ( stakhanovite ) in the textile factory in Sopron .

My mother came from Lövõ; she had three sisters. Her father was a farmer and a respected village elder. My sister Magdolna and I attended a good public elementary school in Sopron . We lived in one bedroom in the cellar of an apartment building on Patak Street . There was electricity and running water but no bathroom--only a toilet in the hallway.

On June 22, 1955 my parents were summoned to appear at the police station on Lakner Street. They were interrogated at length about their knowledge of Radio Free Europe, and whether they were listening to its broadcasts. They stated that they had only heard it twice and were not listeners. They were informed that our uncle Lajos Hajdú Németh was an enemy of the state and was spreading sedition and lies about the country and we were suspected of being sympathizers.

The interrogation lasted all night, from which my mother finally passed out. At the end they were forced to sign a document admitting their guilt and agreeing to go into internal exile (deportation) for two years; we were to leave within 48 hours. They were told that they have Lajos Hajdú Németh to thank for this punishment. My parents could not argue with the police to rebut their slanderous statements.

The next morning, a policeman was posted on our street as a sentry. My father went to the train station to buy train tickets and order a boxcar in which to haul our belongings. That same evening we all sneaked out of the house unobserved through the garden door, and took a train to Lövõ to break the terrible news to our grandparents. They were terrified for us, and feared that they would be deported as well.

The following day we loaded the boxcar at the train depot, took along food for the trip and gave away whatever we could not fit in the boxcar. It was a slow train ride. We could look out to the countryside, but had to close the boxcar whenever we went through towns. The train stopped in Fertõszentmiklós, and all my father's relatives came out to visit us and gave us children lots of candy.

We also filled containers with water for the trip. The slow train ride, where we had to use a potty, lasted for 4 days, a distance of 165 miles. We finally pulled into Újtikos, where our boxcar was left at an unused track. My father went by horse drawn carriage to the council in the village of Tiszagyulaháza and presented the mayor our deportation document. He informed my father that there were no lodgings in town. He pleaded with them until they assigned us to a house with a vacancy on Temetõ (Cemetery) Street owned by a Communist Party member, Mária Radics. Once our lodging was arranged, father hired a number of farmers to bring their wagons to Újtikos to transport the family and our belongings to Tiszagyulaháza.

Tiszagyulaháza was a very poor, village of 500 on the banks of the Tisza river at the end of a dirt road. The nearest city was Polgár. In the fall and winter the mud made the village impassable.

We lived in one half a small adobe house with a kitchen with a fireplace and an unheated bedroom with one large bed for all of us. It had no electricity or running water. There was no bathroom, only an outdoor privy. Field mice would come into our rooms in the winter. The water from the well in the courtyard was not safe for drinking. We had to haul drinking water quite some distance from an artesian well. The area was in the typhoid epidemic zone, so we had to be inoculated against it. The homeowner, Maria Radics, lived in the other part of the house. She was a poor superstitious widow, a solitary individual. Once she smoked a peculiar weed to cure her asthma and she almost died. She asked us to put her bible in her casket in case she died. One day she covered the privy seat with holy cards. My cousin Zsóka saved these holy cards. Mrs. Radics joined the Communist party for financial reasons. She had a very large backyard and raised chickens. Her son-in-law would bring his pigs to graze in the yard. We eventually had a vegetable garden, chickens and even one pig. The land was very fertile, and we grew giant carrots, cabbages and parsnips. Everyday my father would bicycle along the levee to work as a welder in Tiszapalkonya, while my mother tended to domestic chores. She would also sew clothing for the neighbors in return for food and animal feed. She also canned fruits for us and the neighbors. My sister and I were enrolled in the village school, I in the fourth grade, she in the third grade.

Rumors among the townspeople had it that we were Communist agitators that were sent to live there to force collectivization on the farmers. Naturally they were very suspicious of us. In school my classmates teased me and called me a traitor. Once at a school outing a rock was thrown at my head and I started to bleed. The teacher sent me home.

The schoolchildren were very poor. Some of them had no shoes and did not go to school when the cold weather came. I myself was an excellent student. We played a lot in the fields and enjoyed the outdoors tremendously. I especially remember the Lajtos and Répási children. The teachers were very poorly paid and had to supplement their income by growing their own vegetables. Once a year the students were taken to these plots to work the garden. We would only do minimal work.

My father had to bicycle seven miles to the town of Polgár to register at the police station every two weeks. Although my parents were not allowed to leave Tiszagyulaháza for a two-year period, my sister and I went to Budapest in the summer of 1956 for a few weeks. My cousin Zsóka came to Tiszagyulaháza for a few weeks; that summer, aunt Margit from Budapest was our chaperone for the train trips.

While my grandfather from Lövõ was visiting, late one night while we were all in bed, the police from Polgár came for a surprise inspection. Fortunately, they never found out about our grandfather's visit because they did not go into the bedroom. We all were very frightened that evening. The police in Polgár were extremely nasty and insulting.

We were devout Catholics, I was an altar boy, but some of the villagers stated this was all for show to throw them off balance and win their confidence. My father had a new prayer book, and the villagers said he just bought it for the occasion. However they had trouble reconciling the fact that my father knew most of the church hymns by heart.

The villagers eventually came to like us very much, and we could buy staples from them. There was only one general store in town with limited supplies. There were no newspapers or radios. Our mail was censored. We did get one package from the U.S. from an unknown person on which we had to pay a duty for the used clothing. My sister got a very pretty dress.

The news about the 1956 revolution took a long time to reach us, and we heard conflicting stories. The villagers collected food for the revolutionaries in the city of Miskolc . One refugee from Miskolc sought shelter in Tiszagyulaháza. My school teacher removed the Communist shield with the red star from the school and gave it to me to return to the village council. My father was asked by the revolutionary council in Polgár to testify against the police but he simply stated that they never harmed him and he had nothing bad to say about them.

A total of six families, twenty two persons were in internal exile as a result of the Lajos Hajdú-Németh charges. They were scattered throughout eastern Hungary in the villages of Vekerd, Mezõsás, Újiráz and Besenyõtelek. We corresponded with these relatives, who wrote to us that they were planning to return to their homes in Western Hungary . We had a meager Christmas in 1956, packed our belongings into another boxcar in Újtikos and started our trip back to Western Hungary . Because of the revolution, the train schedules were erratic and our progress slow. We spent New Year's Eve in the Kõbánya train depot listening to gunshots, mortar shells and sirens in the distance. We saw damaged buildings from the train.

We made it back to Sopron , where we eventually learned that the revolution against the Russians was lost and realized it was illegal for us to move back before the expiration of our two year exile. My father could not find a job or lodging in Sopron , therefore, we moved in with our grandparents in Lövõ. Lövõ was occupied by Russian soldiers. They were bivouacked in the fields. Once when we went to Fertõszentmiklós to visit our grandparents, the whole house shook when a Russian tank rolled by. The Russians distributed soap, cigarettes and matches to the population. Otherwise they pretty much left us alone.

To settle in Lövõ, we needed police permission, which they refused to give us. My father visited attorneys and government officials in Gyõr , the county seat, but they all stated that we have not served out the term of our two-year exile, and must return to Tiszagyulaháza. The police gave my father a deadline by which date the family would have to leave Lövõ. If we disobeyed, they threatened to beat my father and take me and my sister away. This is when my father began to plan our escape. He went with a trusted woodcutter (Lajos bácsi ) into the forests to scout out our escape route. My father carved X-es into trees and memorized a path through the woods. On March 9, 1957 , he came home from Fertõszentmiklós and announced that this is the end of all our appeals. No community in the area would accept us, and the next day the police were to come for us for disobeying the order to leave Lövõ.

We were in the middle of lunch eating spinach stew with our grandparents and mother. We did not even finish our meal. We got on our knees and recited the Our Father and the Hail Mary. My father got his attaché case with our deportation papers and identity papers. Our grandparents blessed and kissed us. We put on our winter clothes, and hurried out the back of the farm in silence, through the fields in mud and snow.