The Forgotten Faces

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Michael Daniel Kale, aged 17.

Dead in the gutter

of Klmn Jzsef street,

Budapest, Hungary.

The date is Monday, October 29th, 1956.

It is morning, a harsh morning.

Everywhere can be seen

the scars of revolution.

Because for six days,

Budapest has been agonized by an armed

revolt against its communist government.

It was begun, as so many revolutions

are begun, by students.

These are their faces.

It was their ultimatum to the government

on October 23rd,

which set in motion

the gear wheels of revolution.

They are the faces

of embryo technicians,

lawyers, artists and teachers,

all fevered with the social

discontent of their time.

A discontent which has spread itself

from the most advanced of students,

to the most junior of school boys.

From their secret and forbidden

meeting places,

the revolution has brought

the students and the workers,

out onto the open

of the streets of Budapest.

Joined by soldiers and other civilians,

and armed with a few sub-machine guns,

grenades and ancient rifles,

and bearing their national flags

and emblems,

they march in procession

to defy the Hungarian government,

and the Russian tanks it has called in

to suppress them.

On this morning, October 29th,

such a procession passes up

our Klmn Jzsef street.

Their purpose, demonstration.

The objective, Parliament square

in the centre of the city.

But they are never to get there.

For suddenly the crowd is fired upon

by police snipers and machine gunners

on the roof of a nearby barracks.

In a few moments, many of the marchers

are lying dead on the ground below.

But the crowd finally manage

to fight their way into the building.

Then for a brief moment,

the oppressed become the oppressors

as the crowd take their revenge

on the uniformed men inside.

The dividing line between murder

and justifiable execution

is difficult to find.

And in the fury of the moment,

no one looks for it.

Those freedom fighters who died

have been moved further down the street

and lie flag-covered in the dust.

Around them, the everyday life

of Budapest starts again.

The grocery rounds-man, whose van

has been smashed by a Russian tank,

plods his way from house to house

with his bicycle,

his tyres slashed to ribbons

by the broken glass in the road.

Here is one of the dead, a schoolboy.

He will be buried in an improvised plot

in the nearby park.

One of the men goes off to find the

boy's family to tell them of his death.

They must come and identify the body.

The boy's name was Michael Vela Imredi

aged 18 years and three months.

Eight minutes ago,

he had tried to throw a grenade

through one of the police

barrack windows.

He had missed.

Some of his friends had laughed at him.

Then a bullet from a police sniper

had hit him in the back and killed him.

The man on the left is Tams Varasi,

a primary school teacher, aged 37.

A reserved and quiet man.

He only openly joined in the revolution

the day before this.

Because, as he said,

"loan no longer sit still

and do nothing,"

"when my friends are being killed

in the streets outside my home."

Now he is actively organizing

a local first-aid post.

Klmn Jzsef street lies

in an industrial suburb called Ujpest,

which like the entire capital has taken

on the appearance of a wartime Hungary.

The one small thing that Tams can

find time to do for the Imredi family

is to send one of the young boys who

knew him at school to take them home.

The first-aid post is in the cellar

at the rear of this ruined house.

It is packed with the wounded

from many neighbouring streets.

The conditions down there are not good.

The walls are running with water

from the nearby river

and there is an acute shortage

of dressings.

Only the very seriously wounded

can be moved across to the hospital,

which is two blocks away

across a road junction

still under heavy shellfire.

The name of this girl is Margit Zeke.

Aged 33, she is the fiance of Tams.

A journalist, she tries to find time

between helping him with the post,

to finish a series of articles

she is writing

for one of the revolutionary newspapers.

These two have both been on their feet

all through the night,

working in the cramped confines

of the cellar dressing the wounded.

This little boy seated in the rubble

is called Robert Fodor.

His nickname is Roby and he's aged 12.

This is his sister, Zsuzsa, who is 17.

Their father was killed the day before

yesterday in the street fighting.

They both saw it happen.

Zsuzsa has tried to be practical

and put the tragedy out of her mind.

But young Roby can't and

won't let anyone do anything for him.

Not even his sister.

And that doesn't help her very much.

This very noisy young man's name

is Ern Szigeti,

a garage hand from Kobanya.

He's trying to get everyone to listen

as he tries to persuade Margit Zeke

to read the latest article of hers

recently published

in the revolutionary literary gazette.

At first she doesn't want to, but soon

she realizes that she has no choice.

Everyone wants to hear the words

of freedom she's written.

And for the moment all else is forgotten

as they listen to them.

On these faces, as each tragedy

is relived and talked about,

can be seen a vivid cross section

of the shifting moods of a revolution.

Gentleness and hatred,

fervour and grief.

And in these varying expressions

and on the faces that reflect them,

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