It has been estimated that 200,000 Hungarians fled the country following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its Soviet suppression. Of those, about 14,000, roughly one in fourteen, eventually made new lives in Australia, a country about as far from Hungary as you can get.
By Liam Saville
Behind these numbers are thousands of different stories of escape and starting again. My mother’s is just one of them.
My mum began life as a poor peasant girl, but the childhood she remembers is one of privilege. Adopted by a wealthy Hungarian couple, both doctors, she was nine years old when the Hungarian Revolution broke out in 1956. “I was very privileged,” she told me. “We lived in Buda…it was a massive old house, and we had the top storey.” But she remembers Christmas the most. “The beautiful fresh Christmas trees that were cut down just for us, and the presents. Everything was expensive. I mean, we had oranges…not many people could afford to buy oranges, particularly at Christmas.”
While my mum had the good fortune of being taken to the zoo, given swimming lessons and regularly treated to the opera, childhood looked different for John Garamszegi, whose family struggled financially in central Buda. His father, János, was originally from Zebegény but, by 1956, had settled in Budapest with his family.
John recalls the start of the Revolution. “My mother, even though she only had a primary school education, joined the initial protest march of mostly university students,” he said.
Things changed quickly, and the family were soon hiding in their basement as Soviet troops and Hungarian revolutionaries fought on the streets outside. Later, John recalls his father watching as Stalin’s statue in Budapest was pulled down. The next day, he returned to saw off a piece of Stalin’s boot, a fragment John still has today.
Credit: Photo courtesy of John Garamszegi.
Leaving Hungary
By 1956, third-generation teacher Otto Huszár was no stranger to conflict. Conscripted into the Hungarian military during the Second World War, he’d served in a mortar unit and fought the Russians on the Eastern Front before returning to his profession after the war. In his own words, “by 1956 it was obvious that the Hungarians had had enough of the so-called communism and especially the Russian occupation.”
In a memoir provided by his grandson, Ben Heydon, Otto wrote: “The American ‘free radio’ constantly encouraged the reactionary forces to act. In October it happened. The Russian forces left the country, but returned through Czechoslovakia and of course everything was lost.”
With just ten minutes of thought, Otto packed a few clothes, some nappies for his daughter, photographs and documents and headed towards Austria along the Vienna-Budapest Highway.
Photo courtesy of Ben Heydon.
For 92-year-old Anna Prevend, the Hungarian Revolution was a very different experience. Then 23 and living in Vác with her older sister, she too remembers the broadcasts. “It’s the wireless, Free Europe,” she told me. “It just started, ‘We’re coming, we’ll help,’ and they go to bloody Suez Canal.”
“When it all started, I told my sister I was going to go…there were no cars or anything running, no buses or nothing. So, I just started to walk.” And walk she did, right into the centre of Budapest, where, as she puts it, “the fun started.”
For the next six or seven days Anna played “cat and mouse” with the Russians, throwing Molotov cocktails at the troops, darting off and returning to do it again. For Anna, the Revolution ended abruptly in Parliament Square, when she was shot in the chest by a Russian soldier.
“The rest of them, well, whoever it was, they just took me, and I don’t know how, but I woke up in Salzburg…From there, they cleaned me up, and they sent me to Switzerland.”
My mother’s escape was very different from Anna’s, yet the memories have stayed with her to this day. “We all knew. Even I knew that people were dying. People were being killed everywhere,” she said. “I was told nothing. It had to be very harsh, because as kids, we opened our mouths, didn’t we? So, I was told nothing, only when we left that we were going on a trip.”
Her escape began with a late-night train ride towards the Austrian border with her mother, as her father chose to remain behind. It almost ended in disaster four hours later, when Russian troops boarded the train as they got off.
“We packed one small suitcase, and it was a long walk after we got off the train.” It was late December, and they trekked twenty-five kilometres across frozen fields, dodging Russian patrols with the help of paid guides. “Young guys took us over the border, and apparently their payment was gold watches and money.” At the border, they had to wait until after midnight, when the Hungarian border guards replaced the Russians.
During my interviews, I heard variations of the same story again and again. A woodcutter led John Garamszegi’s family through the forest with pálinka to bribe the guards. Marie Hanzlik Brown’s parents escaped at night, while Simone Brigit’s mother, Brigitta Rati, crossed on foot at Christmas. Different routes, but remarkably similar stories of escape and leaving almost everything behind.
Onwards to Australia
Many of the ‘56ers bound for Australia spent months in Austrian refugee camps. Most eventually travelled by ship from various European ports, though some, like Anna, flew to Australia.
My mum spent six months in the Austrian mountains. “It was somewhere in the mountains, but I don’t know where,” my mum told me. “It was a big chalet right up in the mountains…there were a lot of Hungarians. It was like a camp.”
Eventually, they were cleared to travel to Australia. As my mother’s uncle was already here, they were accepted as sponsored migrants rather than refugees, though they almost didn’t come at all. “The biggest thing was that Mum got an offer in America from the Mayo Clinic…yet knocked it back because at that stage my uncle was still alive.”
They arrived in Sydney on 14 June 1957 aboard the US transport ship, USNS General Harry Taylor. But in a cruel twist of fate, my mother’s uncle died before they landed. They still avoided the migrant camps and moved into her uncle’s apartment with his partner in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill.
For many Hungarian refugees, the migrant camp at Bonegilla in northern Victoria became their first Australian home. John Garamszegi’s family lived there for months, as did Otto and his family. Originally a military camp, Bonegilla was basic and, for many, not necessarily the warm welcome they might have expected.
John remembers seemingly endless meals of mutton, and his father constructing an improvised heater to make life more comfortable. Marie Hanzlik Brown recalls her mother, Katalin, describing “corrugated iron sheds and basic cooking,” while “possums used to be on the roof, and she’d feed them bananas.”
Making a New Home
As the Hungarian arrivals began building new lives, learning English and finding work often determined what came next. My grandmother already spoke English, but my mum didn’t. That changed when they moved to Brisbane after my grandmother found work with the Red Cross while waiting for her medical qualifications to be recognised. Away from Sydney’s Hungarian community, my mum had to learn English. “There were no Hungarian kids at Coorparoo State Public School,” she told me.
Other Hungarians spread across the country in search of work. Anna found herself catching sheep for shearers before heading to Mount Isa, where she met her husband and began building a life in Australia.
“We are Australians now,” she told me. “We made the best of it, and we did very well.” Otto, a former school principal, found his qualifications weren’t recognised and worked in factories before eventually returning to teaching. Marie’s mother, Katalin, needed to start again, becoming a dressmaker after being unable to find mechanical work.
Seventy years on, just what Hungary means to those ‘56ers and their families varies enormously. My mum is unequivocal: she’s Australian. Anna sees it differently. “You never lose that; you’re always Hungarian.” John is different again. He spent years distancing himself from the Hungarian community, but now that he’s retired, he describes himself as a “born-again Hungarian,” though he’s clear that Australia is his home.
As for me, I’m both Australian and Hungarian and hold both passports. I grew up knowing surprisingly little about Hungary and speaking almost none of the language, yet as I’ve gotten older, my connection to the country has grown. My mum, now in her late seventies, summed it up best when she told me, “I’m Aussie. You’re more Hungarian than me.”
What is clear, though, is that the generation who lived through the Hungarian Revolution is disappearing, taking their stories with them. So, if you are lucky enough to have a ‘56er in your family, talk to them. Ask them about Hungary, about leaving, what they left behind and the lives they built afterwards. Just do it now, before it’s too late.
To learn more about the uprising that shaped the lives of Hungary’s ’56ers, read our article on the outbreak of the 1956 Revolution: 1956, October 23 – Start of the Hungarian Revolution
