She found that in spite of hardships that would have crushed a lesser breed, the Hadjoks had kept together, had protected one another, and had demonstrated a depth of family unity that would amaze a casual onlooker who had never known the rich experience of being one of a closely knit group. At the hospital Mrs. Brown didn’t even try to argue with the officials, whose strict rule it was not to allow families to accompany operation cases.
“Look, nurse,” she said, “I know your rules and I know they’re right. But this family has got to stay together.” The nurse started to argue, but the sick man refused to enter the hospital unless the four Hadjoks trailed along, so the rules were broken.
When the brother-in-law had been sewed up again and had recovered sufficiently, Mrs. Brown moved the entire family, at her own expense, into a Vienna hotel, and one day in a nearby restaurant some interrogators who were interested in how a family withstands the pressures of communism gathered to talk with the Hadjoks.
Janos Hadjok, the father, said bluntly, “Our whole family despised communism from the moment it reached Hungary. Three times we tried to escape. In 1948, when little Johan was a baby, we tried to sneak into Yugoslavia, but we were caught. In 1949, when he could walk, we tried again, but again we were caught and punished by the AVO. On the day the revolution broke we said to one another, ‘Now maybe we can have a decent nation,’ but when the Russians stormed back we agreed, ‘We will leave this cursed business.’ And we walked most of the way to Andau.”
“Did your children feel the same way?” an interrogator asked.
The question made beautiful Vera quite angry. Tossing her lovely head she said in clipped accents, “In school we were taught the Russian language and Russian history and how great the Russian communist state was. But we all sat there very still and bitter inside. We despised the teachers who told us such lies.”
Perhaps such sentiments from a thirteen-year-old girl made some of the questioners think that the interpreter was polishing them up and that they were not Vera’s own words; so they asked for another interpreter, but to him the girl spoke even more forcefully. “Neither Russia nor the communists in Hungary could ever make us believe the lies they told us.”
“How did you know they were lies?”
Mrs. Hadjok answered briefly. “At night after we had put out the lights upstairs we would gather in the cellar, and I would teach the children the true history of Hungary. We would discuss morality and the Catholic religion and the lessons of Cardinal Mindszenty. We never allowed the children to go to sleep until we had washed away the evil things they might have heard that day.”
There was a moment of silence in the restaurant and finally someone asked, “Did all families do this?”
Mr. Hadjok spoke. “I don’t know. You see, we never knew who the AVO were in our community, and it would have been a great risk to tell even your best friend. But I think most families did it, in secret.”
“How did you know enough history to teach the children?”
Mrs. Hadjok replied, “Books which told the truth about the great revolution of 1848 were circulated mysteriously and I had one. I made my children memorize it, especially the parts about Louis Kossuth, who was our greatest patriot. They considered this book almost sacred, since it was the only place in their world where they could find the truth.”
“Besides,” Mr. Hadjok interrupted proudly, “my father knew personally the son of Louis Kossuth, and if we had allowed that tradition to die, it would have been shameful.”
An interrogator pointed his finger at beautiful little Vera, who in a kindlier world would have been playing with dolls, and asked, “Do you know who Kossuth was?”
Instantly Vera leaped to her feet, stood calmly beside her mother and delivered an oration which rang out fearlessly in the restaurant. “Louis Kossuth was Hungary’s greatest hero, for he endeavored to bring freedom to a nation and hope to its people.” She spoke for about ten minutes, a golden flow of emotion learned in a cellar.
When she had finished, one interrogator shot questions at her. “Did Kossuth succeed in his revolution?”
“No, he failed.”
“What reforms did he specially want?’
“Freedom, a separate legislature, good judges, breaking up of big landholdings.”
“If he failed, what did he accomplish?”
“He showed us the way, for later on.”
“How long ago did he live?”
“One hundred years.”
The most pressing questions were shot at Vera, and she answered them all. When she sat down, her father said proudly, “And if you questioned her in religion or ethics, she would answer as well. My wife is a proud teacher.” Then he added, “She is brave, too.”
On the fifteenth of March, which, before Russia took over, all Hungarians celebrated as their day of national independence, it had long been customary for children to appear on the streets in national dress. Adults would wear little rosettes of national colors—red, white, green—in their buttonholes, and children would sometimes flash big bright arm bands. But under communism this became unpopular, since there were more important holidays to be celebrated, like Red Army Day and May Day. On the fifteenth of March, in 1953, Mrs. Hadjok surprised her family by dressing her six-year-old son in full national costume with an arm band so big it could be spotted a block away.
“The AVO will see it,” friends warned.
“Today he’s six,” she argued, “and I want him always to remember that on his sixth birthday he was a Hungarian.”
Proudly she sent him into the streets, and the first man he met burst into tears. The second was the policeman, who stopped the child and asked, “Where are you going?”
“Today is our national day,” Johan replied. “Where are your colors?”
“I wear them in my heart,” the policemen answered, and he brought the boy home for fear he might get into trouble.
From that day on, Johan was a Hungarian. In the cellar his parents taught him the fiery old poetry of Hungary and it became his chief joy to declaim it, but they warned him that he must not speak it in public, for the AVO might hear about it. But at the age of eight he entered a speaking contest for boys and girls of ten, and in the big school he dramatically recited an intensely patriotic poem. The effect on the teachers was astonishing and several wept silently. At the conclusion of his recitation one older instructor openly applauded. Apparently spies reported this teacher to the AVO, for later on he was taken away.
“School was not easy for our children,” Mrs. Hadjok said. “We dared to apply for religious instruction, but Vera was flatly told that if she attended such classes she would not be promoted. The leader of the school went so far as to forbid her ever to come into the school again if she studied religion. But later on, when the teacher who had applauded Johan’s recitation came back from the AVO, he bravely established secret classes for religious training, even though he knew that if he were caught again he would probably be beaten to death. He was an excellent man.”
The battle between school and parents never relaxed an instant. “The communists had everything on their side,” Hadjok explained. “Candy, fruit, games, terror. We had only one thing, the lessons at night.”
Mrs. Hadjok said, “We taught them above everything else to trust in God. But almost as strongly we told them to hold together as a family.”
Hadjok explained, “The more the communists tried to destroy our family life, the more we taught family loyalty. It was like their pressing us down all day, in every way you could think of, but at night we grew up strongly again.”
“Take Vera,” the brother-in-law said. “At six she disliked the Russians. At nine she hated them. At ten she understood the evil of communism. At thirteen she is a holy patriot. She knows and understands more than I do.”
“When communist teachers lectured to such children,” Mrs. Hadjok said, “the boys and girls knew what lies they were being told before the teacher stopped speaking.”
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sp; “Weren’t you afraid the children would betray you … by accident, I mean?” an interrogator asked.
There was a long pause in which the five members of the Hadjok family contemplated the studied chances they had taken in preserving their religious and intellectual life under communism. Each member knew exactly what exquisite judgments had been made, what fundamental risks had to be taken, and above all, what complete faith had to be invested in the children. The Hadjoks were unable to speak of these delicate judgments, for to do so would have been to lay bare the very soul of a family, but the interpreter suddenly said with intense emotion, “Perhaps I can explain what a Hungarian family went through. I’ll speak in English and they won’t be embarrassed.”
The interpreter said, “When we watched our children growing up there were moments of unbearable anxiety. We would see our sons come home from school wearing bright red ties and repeating communist lies. When we asked them who they loved they would say, ‘Mama and Papa and Brother Stalin.’ They would bring us pictures of Stalin to put in our living rooms. And we would know that their teachers were asking them each day, ‘Do your parents love Comrade Stalin?’ and we would have to make believe that we did. And almost every night when we went to bed, we husbands and wives who had young children would whisper, ‘Do you think they are old enough yet to know?’ And usually the husband would say, ‘Not yet.’
“But the time always came when the mother would cry, ‘I won’t see my child perverted any longer. Tonight we will tell him the truth.’ And the father would protest, ‘Not yet! The boy is only eight.’ And then mother and father would begin to inspect their child with an intensity that no other parents could possibly know. ‘He’s a good, honest boy,’ the mother would reason. ‘He’s strong and honorable,’ the father would agree. Then there would be more whispering at night and always the mother would be the one who pleaded for the family to take a bold chance and save this child.
“Now the family would look about Budapest, trying to find some other family it could trust. Hints would be dropped, always with the intention of discovering at what age a child could be trusted with the entire security of his family. A man would say to a lifelong friend, ‘Can a child of eight—’ He wouldn’t finish the sentence but the friend would reply, ‘I talked to my boy at nine.’ That was all. But the mother would have quietly found some other woman who had talked to her children at eight. Or another wife would grow pale and say, ‘Not before ten …’
“You see, this family had to judge the exact moment at which a boy could be saved from communism and yet not too soon for fear the child might inadvertently blurt out the truth and destroy the whole family. Because if the AVO suspected, they simply came around some night and took the father away. Sometimes he was never seen again.
“More whispering, more consultations. I myself have been asked by at least six of my friends, and three times I have participated in the first family meeting. It was almost always at night, and the parents would bring the children together and they would ask casually, ‘What did you learn in school today?’ and the child would explain how Russia and Stalin were the only things Hungary could trust in, and the father would say simply, ‘That’s all a lie, son.’
“It was a terrifying moment. You could feel death in the room, and then usually I would speak and I would say, ‘Istvan, do you know what death is?’ and regardless of what Istvan replied, I would say, ‘If you ever tell anyone about tonight, your father will die.’
“Always the children understood, and they would begin to ask questions, and pretty soon the mother would say, ‘We want you to keep in your heart certain things that will help you.’ And usually it would be a part of the Bible or a poem of Petofi’s.
“But the moment always came when such a father had to discipline such a son. Then the father would take down the strap with the certain knowledge that if the boy wanted revenge on his family, he could have it. Nevertheless, the father had to trust his earlier judgment. I remember when I had to discipline my son. When I was through he stood looking at me, and he knew that I was afraid, but he also knew that since I was afraid I would never have whipped him if he had not needed it … that more than my own life I wanted to see him grow up to be a good man. Out of such moments our family life was built.”
The interpreter paused a moment, then put his hand on little Johan Hadjok’s tousled blond head. “This family knew,” he said, “that when they started teaching this little fellow the truth he could have destroyed them.”
The Hadjoks had been able to follow the English fairly well, and while the group looked at little Johan, Mrs. Hadjok said, “That was a chance we had to take.”
It was therefore a tightly knit group that faced the outbreak of the revolution. “Without our saying a word,” Mrs. Hadjok said, “Vera and Johan, at the first news, solemnly burned their Russian books. ‘We’ll never study them again,’ the children swore. In many other families the same thing happened.”
“But what gave me the biggest thrill of the revolution,” Hadjok said, “was when Johan, without prompting, began to recite aloud, as if he was no longer afraid of anything, a poem of Petofi’s.”
“Who was Petofi?” an interrogator asked.
Johan quickly replied, “Sandor Petofi was the glorious poet of the 1848 revolution, and a brave fighter and a good man.”
“That sounds like a recitation,” the interrogator replied. “Tell me in your own words who he was.”
The restaurant was filled with Hungarians and they grew silent as this fair-haired child of nine looked at the stranger and said in a clear voice, “Petofi was a young actor who never made much money. In the revolution he did fight some, but what he did that was best was to write poetry. From street corners he would recite his poetry, and all over Budapest other people would recite it, too. The poem I like best is this.”
In a childish voice, but with tremendous emotion that rang throughout the restaurant, Johan Hadjok declaimed the beautiful and flaming words of Hungarian independence:
“Arise, Hungarians, the Fatherland calls you!
The time is now! Now or never!
Live oppressed—or live in freedom.
That is the question to be decided!
By the God of all Hungarians, we swear, we swear
That we will never more be under the yoke!”
When he stopped, the restaurant was silent. Mrs. Hadjok, remembering the years of patient instruction, wept. Mr. Hadjok blew his nose and looked proudly at his son. Some of the interrogators bit their lips, and at adjoining tables Hungarians who had been nurtured on Petofi were silent.
To break the tension one of the interrogators whispered, “Pay no attention. A Hungarian is never happy unless he’s weeping.”
After the group had laughed at this partly true comment, there was to be a moment even more electric, for Mr. Hadjok said, “Against such children, what could communism do? Does this explain why in all of Budapest you could not find one child who fought with the Russians?”
An interrogator asked, “But didn’t some of the students from the Marx-Lenin Institute march against the freedom fighters?”
Hadjok looked up in blank astonishment. “They did?”
“Yes.”
“Many?”
“Only a few.”
“Those poor, poor souls,” the Hungarian said. “How could they have done it?” He pondered this question for a moment, then reflected, “Probably because their parents never taught them Petofi’s great poem to his baby son.”
“What was it?” a stranger asked.
“Vera,” Mr. Hadjok said, “you recite it.”
In the once more noisy restaurant Vera Hadjok, more beautiful than a dance of childhood, rose, held her hands to her side and said softly at first, then in almost terrifying tones, the words Petofi had once written as he looked down upon his baby son. The translator kept pace with her in whispers, and again the restaurant grew silent. This time the poem was not a battle cry, no call to fury against the en
emy. It was the poem of a man longing for a new Hungary, a man trying to look into the future of a nation he deeply loved. “He pleads with his son to be a good man,” the translator whispered. “He wants him to be a good man all his life. He says this boy will be a better man than Petofi has been. He will know a better Hungary than Petofi has known.”
When Vera finished no one in the restaurant could look at another. There was only the ache of exile, and the silence. Then, in the agonizing pause Vera volunteered an astonishing bit of information. “We had to leave Hungary, you know. We wanted to leave, but after what Johan did, we had to leave.”
“What did he do?” a stranger asked.
In some embarrassment Mr. Hadjok explained, “At school a big Russian boy—he was the son of an official—insulted Hungary and Johan tried to cut off his ear.”
Again there was nothing to say, but after a while an interrogator asked Vera, “How did Petofi die?”
“There are two theories,” she said in precise Hungarian. “Nobody really knows, but when the Russians invaded Hungary to crush our revolution of 1848, it is thought that Petofi died resisting some Russian lancers. They ran him through the heart. But others claim that the Russians wounded him and then, because he insulted them without stopping, they buried him alive. In either case, he died at the age of twenty-six.”
It is obvious that the elder Hadjoks were determined that their children should not grow up to be communists, and although they acted both in secrecy and in isolation from their neighbors, we can judge from what the interpreter said of his own experiences that many other Hungarian families were similarly determined. These facts, if taken alone, would justify the Soviets in claiming that the major thesis of this chapter is false.
I have contended that communism failed to win the young people of Hungary in spite of unprecedented pressures brought to bear on youth. I have claimed that Stalin’s boast that he could accomplish anything with the pliable minds of children was proved false.