Old Photos: Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Once, while I was walking somewhere with my Father, we met one of his patients. The guy had a pronounced limp. “He damaged his leg parachuting into Hungary in 1956”, my Dad told me when the guy schlepped away. For a long time this was all I’ve ever heard about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Hungarians tried to overthrow the communist regime years before a similar event happened in Czechoslovakia, and were just as brutally run over by the Soviet tanks. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.

Patriots Strike Ferocious Blows to the Tyranny was the title of the report in the Life Magazine in November 1956. (Apparently showing photos of people being shot was still OK then)

For three incredible days in Hungary last week the flames of liberty and revenge against tyranny rose high. It almost seemed as if they could go on burning….Rebel patriots stormed recklessly toward freedom, Communist henchmen reaped the frightful wrath they had sowed. The most hotly hated of the rebels’ targets were the Soviet-controlled Hungarian secret police. These were cut down as ruthlessly as they themselves had murdered countless anti-Communists. Soviet occupation troops felt the national fury. Daredevil teenagers burned up their tanks with “Molotov cocktails” until Soviet columns evacuated Budapest, leaving their dead behind them. Most of the Hungarian army, siding with the rebels, stood off Soviet troops throughout the country. Workers not engaged in the fighting went out on a general strike against communism.