Hungary 1956

I have driven past the monument on the northwest corner of MacArthur Park countless times and rarely give it any thought. Earlier this week, however, idling in heavy traffic on Sixth Street, I glanced over long enough to notice the date on the bottom of the obelisk -- October 23, 1956.

“Fifty years ago,” I said aloud, a certain wonder in my voice. My daughter, an inquisitive fifth grader, overheard me from the back seat and had some questions. Where is Hungary? What happened 50 years ago? What is the monument all about?

•

Contemporary news accounts record October 23, 1956 as a cold and blustery day in Budapest, and, indeed, throughout much of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. Emboldened by reforms in neighboring Poland, student organizations coursed through the city's streets, agitating for similar changes for Hungary. The crowds were large from the start and continued to grow throughout the day. A mood of rebellion began to take hold. A statue of Stalin was toppled. The government radio station came under siege.

From inside the station, a contingent of the hated secret police opened fire on the crowd and demonstrators were killed. This enraged the students, who refused to lift the siege. Hungarian army units arrived, not to fight the students, but to join them. The soldiers gave the students weapons. The radio station was overrun during the night and the secret police fled. The hunters had now become the hunted.

Momentum continued to build the next day as workers from Budapest’s industrial districts joined the movement in the streets. Dead or in hiding, the once-feared secret police were nowhere to be found. The hard line government collapsed and a reformer, Imre Nagy, was recalled to the premiership amid popular acclaim.

Soviet army units stationed nearby entered Budapest on October 25 and fired on the crowds in front of the Hungarian parliament. As many as 500 people were killed, but the streets of Budapest soon became Molotov cocktail hell for Soviet tank crews. More Hungarian army units joined the revolt. By October 28, Soviet army units had withdrawn from the city.

Imre Nagy and his faction of liberal Communists were now firmly in control of the government. An astounded world watched as Hungary’s leading Catholic prelate, Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, was freed from prison and as Nagy announced the end of one-party rule and Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. All Saints Day arrived to a world turned upside down.

Apprehension soon grew, however, as signs of Soviet army preparation for a return in force multiplied and as it became clear that a world already preoccupied with the Suez Crisis (Israeli tanks were advancing across the Sinai, with Anglo-French air support) would do little to help.

On November 4, the Kremlin struck back on a massive scale as 17 Soviet army divisions – more than 2,000 tanks, plus infantry and paratroops – crashed across Hungary’s borders. Resistance was fierce, but within days, the rebellion was crushed. Hungary paid a terrible price. Some sources put the death toll as high as 30,000. Another 12,000 Hungarians were imprisoned and 20,000 were deported to Russia. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion, 200,000 Hungarians left and settled all over the world, including a significant number in Los Angeles.

Cardinal Mindszenty managed to find sanctuary in the American embassy, where he spent the next 17 years of his life. Imre Nagy, however, was captured and subsequently executed.

•

One Hungarian émigré who came to Los Angeles was sculptor Arpad Domjan. In 1966, at age 60, he was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times about a monument he was designing at the behest of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation. The central element was an obelisk 56 feet tall topped by a soaring eagle. The front would contain an eight-foot mural showing three youths – a flag-bearing man helping an injured girl, a second man waving a rifle overhead.


Young people were the heroes of Budapest in 1956, Domjan told his interviewer. “Youth paid a high price in the revolt,” he said. “You could hardly walk the streets of Budapest without stumbling over the bodies of young Freedom Fighters.”

Installation of the monument at the northwest corner of MacArthur Park, near the intersection of Sixth and Park View, was completed in 1969. Cardinal Mindszenty blessed the site on a visit in 1974. Mindszenty, who had been imprisoned and badly mistreated by both Nazis and Communists, was asked during the trip to state his view of which ideology was worse. He replied that both were equally evil, but that Communism had lasted longer and done more damage.

After his death in 1977, this portion of the park was named Jozsef Mindszenty Square.

In the Eastern European Annus Mirabilis of 1989, Imre Nagy was officially rehabilitated and given a belated state funeral in Budapest. Thousands of his countrymen attended and the impact was enormous. Within a year, multiparty elections were held and Hungary became a democracy once more.

If you visit the northwest corner of MacArthur Park and look at Domjan’s mural (in the end, executed as a bas-relief in bronze), you will see that he was successful in portraying his heroes as young and very brave. The obelisk will draw your eyes upward to the clouds scudding overhead, like souls in flight.



•

For further reading:
Hungarian Revolution Portal
Los Angeles Times archives