University Daily Kansan Supplement
Page 5
Aftermath of Revolt
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informers," Swan said. "Anyway, they didn't trust each other. After we talked to all of them for a while, and tried to show them the American version of the 'twist,' we split up, having already made secret arrangements to meet four of them after the larger group disbanded."
It was then that the two Americans separated. Wahl went with one of the Hungarians and Swan went with the other three. They arranged to meet later that night, then set out to tour the city on foot.
"Some of those young Hungarians have become very calloused," Swan said. "They live something like animals. They have learned what they can do and get away with, and what they had better not attempt.
"There were many people on the streets all through the night, and we would be walking down the street talking about the uprising when suddenly they would quit talking or change the subject abruptly—they had seen someone who was a member of the security police, or had noticed that someone on the street was trying to listen to what we were saying.
"We would wait until the suspicious person moved on, or if he was behind us we would stop and look into a store window until he passed." Wahl said. "Then we would take up the conversation again, talking about what had happened during the uprising or what it is like to live in a free country, or in a Communist country."
One of the students Wahl talked with was only 14 years old at the time of the uprising. Although he took no active part in the fighting, he remembers the revolution well and the days immediately after the fighting.
"He said that the Russians moved their regular troops out and brought in Mongolian and Chinese troops," Wahl said. "The Mongolians were young, some of them under 16. They did not even know where they were, and had no idea they were fighting Hungarians. They had been told that they were being moved to Egypt to fight the Western Allies at the Suez Canal, and that the Danube—which flows through Budapest—was the Nile River."
After the fighting, the Hungarians tried to bury their dead, at least the ones they could find, but the Reds made no
real effort to bury theirs. The students said that the stench became almost unbearable after a few days, and the builders were in such a hurry to rebuild the city before the U.N. inspection team arrived that they merely leveled the rubble and built new streets over the rotting corpses.
After the uprising, the Russians had great plans to rebuild Budapest into another Moscow. One of the plans included the building of a subway similar to the one in Moscow.
"But something went wrong." Wahl said. "Instead of excavating for the subway they tried to tunnel for it. The tunnels collapsed and the project was abandoned. About all you can see of that plan are some long-legged towers which were to have been the subway exits."
About 5:30 Sunday morning the two Americans and the four Hungarians met at a pre-arranged place and decided to call it a night.
One of the Hungarians invited the two KU men to spend the rest of the night at his home. They accepted the invitation and the Hungarian led them to his house, going in first to make certain that it would be all right for him to bring the
(Continued on page 8)
A Street in Budapest, Fall 1956
Bob Swan and Bob Wahl
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