Mr. Chairman, this past October, Hungary celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising. As President Bush said in his October 18 Presidential Proclamation, “the story of Hungarian democracy represents the triumph of liberty over tyranny.” Like the President, I honor the men and women who struggled – not only in 1956 but for many years thereafter – for democracy in Hungary. 

The following remarks were made by Istvan Gereben, a man who came to this country after the 1956 revolution, but who never forgot his homeland. They were delivered by Mr. Gereben in San Francisco on October 22, 2006, at the “Remember Hungary 1956” Commemoration, at the California State Building.

REVOLUTION, REBIRTH, FREEDOM: 
HUNGARY 1956

From the shadows of blood, iron bars, gallows and simple wooden crosses we step today into the sunshine of remembrance, hope, duty and responsibility. During the past sixteen years the ideas, guiding principles, heroes and martyrs of 1956 gained amends. The moral and political legacy of the Hungarian Revolution, however, still, even today, is misunderstood, misrepresented and waiting to be fully appreciated. 

We remember…our friends, the “Kids of Pest”, the colleagues, the relatives, the familiar strangers. The brave Hungarians. Let’s remember the dead here, thousands of miles away from their graves but close to their soul, grieving woefully, but full with hope. We pray for those who in their defeat became triumphant. “For what they have done has been to expose the brutal hypocrisy of Communism for all mankind” –declared Archibald McLeish in the Special Report of Life Magazine in 1957. 

Why did it happen? 

The best answer can be found in Sandor Marai’s poem: “Christmas 1956." Angel from Heaven.” 

The whole world is talking about the miracle. 
Priests talk about bravery in their sermons. 
A politician says the case is closed. 
The Pope blesses the Hungarian people. 
And each group, each class, everybody 
Asks why it happened this way. 
Why didn’t they die out as expected? 
Why didn’t they meekly accept their fate? 
Why was the sky torn apart? 
Because a people said, “Enough!” 

They who were born free do not understand, 
They do not understand that 
“Freedom is so important, so important!” 

The fight waged by Hungarians in 1956 was inspired by a burning desire for freedom of the individual and the nation, by want for national independence, by thirst for full national and individual sovereignty and by hunger for inner democracy. This Revolution against the Soviet occupiers was a defining moment in Hungarian history and in the nation’s political culture. 1956 was one of the most powerful nail driven into the coffin of an evil and fraudulent tyranny. 

Then and continuously since we witness the expression of praise, admiration of and support for the aims of this miracle that is called the Hungarian Revolution. 

Let’s refresh our memory with some of the more striking observations by our friends here in America and elsewhere in the World: 

President John F. Kennedy: 
“October 23, 1956 is a day that will forever live in the annals of free men and free nations. It was a day of courage, conscience and triumph. No other day since history began has shown more clearly the eternal unquenchability of man’s desire to be free, whatever the odds against success, whatever the sacrifice required” 
(Statement, October 23, 1960) 

President Ronald Reagan: 
“The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a true revolution of, by and for the people. Its motivations were humanity’s universal longings to live, worship, and work in peace and to determine one’s own destiny. The Hungarian Revolution forever gave the lie to communism’s claim to represent the people, and told the world that brave hearts still exist to challenge injustice” 
(Excerpt from the Presidential Proclamation issued on October 20, 1986.) 

President George W. Bush: 
“On the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, we celebrate the Hungarians who defied an empire to demand their liberty; we recognize the friendship between the United States and Hungary; and we reaffirm our shared desire to spread freedom to people around the world.” 
(Excerpt from the Presidential Proclamation issued on October 18, 2006.) 

Milovan Djilas: 
“The changes in Poland mean the triumph of national Communism, which in a different form we have seen in Yugoslavia. The Hungarian uprising is something more, a new phenomenon, perhaps no less meaningful than the French or Russian Revolutions…The revolution in Hungary means the beginning of the end of Communism.” 
(Excerpt from: “The Storm in Eastern Europe,” “The New Leader,” No. 19, 1956) 

The New York Times: 
“We accuse the Soviet Government of murder. We accuse it of the foulest treachery and the basest deceit known to man. We accuse it of having committed so monstrous crime against the Hungarian people yesterday that its infamy can never be forgiven or forgotten.” 
(In an editorial in the paper’s November 1956 issue.) 

I could continue with Statements made by Albert Camus, President Richard Nixon, Sir Leslie Munroe, Henry Kissinger, Leo Chern, Pablo Picasso, Nehru and I could read hundreds and hundreds of pages from the Congressional Record listing the praising remarks of hundreds and hundreds lawmakers uttered in the past 50 years. All the words were saved for posterity, everyone can find and savor them. 

October 23, 1956 happened when two powerful ideas – tyrannical communism and the eternal human principles of democracy – met and clashed in the middle of Europe, in the small and defenseless Hungary. In this inherently uneven conflict blood was shed and lives were lost. Imre Nagy and his colleagues were arrested, tried and most of them along with countless Freedom Fighters were executed on June 16, 1958. 

Since their death, the political and human challenge has been to find the rationale for their supreme sacrifice. This rationale is the indestructible dignity of every human being. By refusing to beg for his life, Imre Nagy repudiated his personal past for a more hopeful future of Hungary and the world at large. 

The significance of his and countless other Hungarians’ sacrifice is etched onto the political map of the 21st century. The invented hope of the Hungarian Revolution is taking shape in the recent developments throughout the world. That is the real miracle of the events of 1956 and the subsequent human sacrifices of Imre Nagy and his fellow Freedom Fighters. 

The Revolution was brutally and unavoidably defeated. 

Why was the fate of the Revolution predetermined? Why did it happen so that when we in the last days of October and the early days of November in 1956 enthusiastically and full with hope sensing victory strolled the streets of Budapest and the cities and villages of Hungary not suspecting that our fate, independently from us, already has been determined. The deadly sentence was delivered by the powers of the world? And if it is so why was the verdict such as it was? 

Even after 50 years there is still no answer. 

The questions are not new. The lack of answer frustrated many historians, political scientists but none had the determination, the skill, the objectivity and patience to provide an authentic answer. 

Robert Murphy, who, in the absence of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles from Washington, attended to the day to day business of the State Department during the Hungarian Revolution, summarized his frustration caused by not being able to find a satisfactory answer to Hungary’s demands in his autobiography, Diplomat Among Warriors, published in 1964 this way: 

“In retrospect, world acceptance of the Russian aggression in Hungary is still incredible. For sheer perfidy and relentless suppression of a courageous people longing for their liberty, Hungary will always remain a classic symbol. Perhaps history will demonstrate that the free world could have intervened to give the Hungarians the liberty they sought, but none of us in the State department had the skill or the imagination to devise a way.” 

This answer seems to be the most honest one. 

Hungarians have fallen back in the Soviet yoke. But the nation persevered. 

There are times when remembrance is the bravest action – declared Gyula Illyes the eminent Hungarian poet in the middle of the twentieth century. Today such times are present in Hungary. The time for bravery to remain faithful to the moral and political maxims of the Revolution. Bravery witnessed not against the tanks, soldiers and henchmen of the occupying empire, bravery not contesting a strange, inhuman ideology, but courage to face insensitivity, to confront and solve the problems of humdrum everyday life, the bravery necessary to assume the responsibility and sacrifice of building a truly modern country, which is democratic, committed to observe the rule of law and governed by the constitution. At the present this kind of bravery does not uniformly characterize all Hungarians. 

Hungary was redeemed 35 years after the defeated Revolution. During that 35 years her plight to fulfill the demands of 1956 gained respect and support in the West. The courage, the intelligence, the determination and the skill of the Hungarian Democratic Opposition to engage a first bloodthirsty, later sophisticated dictatorship resulted in recognition of the opposition’s leaders as authoritative spokesman for the fulfillment of the desires of the Hungarian people. They were inspired by the spirit of the Revolution and adopted its maxims. 

In the United States Presidents and ordinary citizens lined up in support behind the Democratic Opposition. The United States by publicly expressing support in words and in action provided protection for individuals and the whole community of the dissidents. 

The U.S. Government published English translations of selected samizdat literature produced by opposition activists. Many volumes each with hundreds of pages of these were printed and distributed in the 70s and the 80s. A collection of these is deposited in the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest. 

Information provided by the dissidents were used by the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation U.S.A. and the Coordinating Committee of Hungarian Organizations in North America in their countless testimonies before Congress, the U.S Commission on Security and Cooperation, and in numerous briefings presented in the White House and in the State and Defense Departments. 

A longstanding issue between the Hungarian Communist Government and the Opposition, Hungarians abroad and more significantly the United States Government was the unwillingness of the Communist Government to identify the secret location of the graves in which the executed Freedom Fighters were buried. A campaign covering several decades by U.S. Presidents, Congressman, the Commission on Security and Cooperation, hundreds of leading public figures and civic organizations culminated in a letter sent on June 20, 1988, by Congressman Frank Horton, along with forty-three other Representatives urging Prime Minister Karoly Grosz of Hungary to comply with the many requests filed with the Hungarian Government in the past and allow the family members of the executed to have access to the body of their relatives. Responding in letter dated July 18, 1988 the Prime Minister wrote: 

“My Government has the intention to settle this problem in a humane spirit in the near future, enabling the families to rebury the dead and to pay their tribute at the graves.” 

The public ceremony of the reburial took place on June 16, 1989 in the presence of 200,000 grieving Hungarians. With this act the road opened to free parliamentary and local elections in 1990 and the formation of a free Government. 

The demands of the Hungarian people were fulfilled. The building of a constitutional parliamentary democracy is under way. 

In these days worrisome news comes from Hungary indicating that the road is not smooth. The diamond of twentieth century Hungarian history that was formed in 1956 under the stresses of the circumstances and in the fire burning in every Hungarian’s heart is being tested today in Hungary. False prophets, eager mouths, zealous hands driven by dark emotions attempt to pulverize this gem into powder of coal and then burn it into ashes and dross. They will not succeed. History and we will not let them to succeed. 

On this 50th Anniversary when we remember and pay tribute to the ideals and heroes of 1956, we also affirm our deeply felt conviction that lasting freedom and democracy will not take hold in Hungary unless the precepts of the Revolution regarding resolute unity, sacrifice, human and political wisdom are practically and fully implemented. We call upon those who are responsible for Hungary’s welfare to heed to the principles for which so many died in 1956 and to whose memory we pay tribute today. 

We pray that it will be so! Lord Hear our prayer… God bless Hungary…Isten aldd meg a magyart!