Life During the Turbulent Post-WW I Years (1918-1923)

Resistance, Prison and Escape During Communism

Around mid-December 1918 we finally arrived home to Ivánc where we learned from the newspapers that, taking advantage of the monarchy’s collapse, the Romanians had invaded Transylvania. The only opposition facing them consisted of a hastily organized battalion manned mainly by recent returnees from the battlefields outside of Hungary. Understandably, my friend Hegyi wanted to leave immediately to join the battle against the Romanian invaders. I did not need much persuasion to accompany him, so we left together for Budapest and reported to the military authorities there. Our orders were to report to Kolozsvár in Transylvania where we arrived a few days before Christmas. Since we were assigned to different units Hegyi and I separated in Kolozsvár and I never saw him again. I joined a unit under the command of lst Lt. Béla Szilágyi and soon engaged the advancing Romanian troops along the Szamos River. During the next couple of months we fought several battles against the Romanians and succeeded in slowing their advance. On March 1, 1919 the platoon under my command pushed back the enemy and retook the village of Sikárló which was held by a Romanian unit. As a result of this engagement I was recommended for promotion to Ensign which took effect on March 15. During a subsequent engagement I received a leg wound and was taken to a hospital in Szatmárnémeti. Two weeks later, in mid-April, I was released and sent home to Körmend where my parents lived since their move from Ivánc in January.

The immediate aftermath of WW I was devastating for Hungary. The monarchy collapsed, the emperor was forced to abdicate the throne and went into exile. A turbulent period of about 18 months followed. The economy lay in ruins, the money became worthless and many people were on the verge of starvation. The thousands of disorganized soldiers straggling home from the front lines only added to the overall chaos. During this time a number of political parties attempted to form a government, bring order to the chaos and try to resist the territorial encroachment by countries surrounding Hungary. Eventually the first post-war central government was established. Under some semblance of order Hungary was declared an independent republic which replaced the almost 900 year old kingdom.

Unfortunately, the tragedy of a lost war created further massive internal dissents, political maneuverings and other problems which in turn prevented any attempt to establish a lasting stability in the country. Various party coalitions tried to form new governments but these lasted only for a few weeks. For example, just during the five months prior to my return to Körmend, Hungary had four different governments. Naturally, these chaotic times were ripe for communist agitators who took advantage of the situation and seized power in March 1919 from the Social Democrats. The communists, led by Béla Kun and supported by the socialists, established a nine-month long so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”

which resulted in a nationwide Red terror.

By the time I arrived home many people in Körmend had enough of the communist government and its wide-spread atrocities. They had started to organize a clandestine, underground resistance group and asked me to be its leader. I accepted their trust without realizing the deadly consequences it set into motion.

Under the new communist regime May 1 had become an important holiday. As many other localities the neighboring small town of Nádasd also organized a celebration on that day. Since Nádasd produced excellent local wines many of its citizens became quite drunk during the festivities despite the nationwide prohibition against the sale of alcohol. A large group of people decided to vent their pent-up frustration against the local communist municipal leadership, the so-called Directorium. Fueled by the excellent wine the group broke into the town hall and beat up members of the Directorium who tried without success to curb the rapidly deteriorating festivities. Two days later, on May 3, the communist central government sent an armed unit of so-called “Worker Guards” or “Red Guards” from Szombathely to Nádasd in order to put down the “rebellion.” They arrested about 50 people suspected of having participated in the melee. The prisoners were taken to Körmend and locked up in the basement of the Batthyány castle.

The same evening several men in our resistance group, myself included, were having dinner at the Zöldfa Inn, quite oblivious to what was going on at the nearby caste. We left the inn at about 11:00 p.m. and went home to sleep. My mother woke me three hours later saying that someone with a very important message wanted to see me. The fellow was from our group and told me about the Nádasd incident. He also said that all of our friends were at the Zöldfa, waiting for my arrival. I dressed, grabbed my Steier pistol and hurried to the inn. By the time I arrived the atmosphere was highly charged; the fellows were ready for action. A few minutes later someone came in and reported that a Red Guard truck was parked at the Korona Inn on the main square of the city. Apparently the driver was inside the Korona and according to the report the truck contained a machine gun and what appeared to be several crates of ammunition.

The opportunity was too good to pass up. We decided to capture the weapon with the ammunition and free the Nádasd prisoners, especially since we knew that they could expect no mercy from the brutal Red Guards. By the time we arrived to the Korona the driver had gone back into the cab of his vehicle and was half asleep when we knocked him out. As luck would have it, we found in the truck five Manlicher rifles and two full cases of hand grenades, in addition to the machine gun. Our group had grown to about 60 people by that time and several of the latecomers had their own rifles. I distributed the Manlichers and the hand grenades among them but kept the machine gun. I then split the group and sent about twenty of them to attack the castle from the rear, telling them not fire until they heard our frontal salvo. However, someone must have had an itchy finger because we barely got halfway across the town square when we heard gunfire behind the castle. Thus we lost the element of surprise and the Guards started to shoot at us from their posts around the castle. They also had a machine gun, and in spite of the darkness their firing pinned us down momentarily. Fortunately, there was a monument on a high concrete pedestal in the middle of the square which provided some protection while I set up the machine gun and began firing back. Three of our men died in the ensuing gun battle and several got wounded.

We heard later that the Reds lost five people, the rest escaped in a truck that was parked in the courtyard. A few minutes later we freed the men from Nádasd; they scattered after profusely thanking us for the rescue which, though costly for us, certainly saved most of them from the gallows. It was daybreak, and after taking care of our casualties and turning in the machine gun to city hall, we went back to the Zöldfa for a well deserved breakfast.

As it turned out, my troubles had just begun. At dawn the next day, on May 5, the young daughter of the railroad station master came running to our house to wake me up. She said that a special trainload of Red soldiers had arrived and were asking questions about me. I learned later that the train belonged to the infamous Peckai terrorist group which traveled around the country, hunting down and killing anti-communists. I dressed in a hurry, picked up a few of my belongings and tried to escape through the backyard garden fence. The Reds, however, were waiting for me. I was captured, taken to the castle and beaten bloody by several thugs. They wanted to hang me right there with several other prisoners but the fortunate arrival of a county judge from Szombathely prevented them from carrying out the execution. This judge, who arrived by car just as we were being led to the courtyard to be executed, happened to be an acquaintance of my brother-in-law, and he recognized me right away. He persuaded the guards to turn me over into his custody and, with an armed guard in the back seat, he took me to Szombathely. Since I was technically still a member of the military I was turned over to the military authorities there and put into the local military prison. Other than saving my life the new situation was, if anything, worse than what I had left behind in Körmend. During the four weeks that I was a prisoner there they interrogated me daily and beat me to a bloody pulp on several occasions. The beatings were so severe that when my sister Mária (Mici) was allowed a short visit she did not recognize me. In the meantime, the prison commander, an ex-sergeant, forced me to clean the prison toilet with my bare hands.

During the second week two new prisoners were put into my cell. I found out that these men were representatives and officers of the Hungarian Counterrevolutionary Committee, an organization based in Vienna, Austria, which coordinated the budding anti-communist uprisings throughout Hungary. The officers, lst Lt.

Zsigmond Szombath and 2^nd Lt. György Tichy, had been sent into Hungary to help organize some the counterrevolutionary groups but they were captured by the Reds during one of their nightly raids and thrown into my cell. The three of us soon decided that we must somehow escape to Austria.

Help came through a relative of my brother-in-law. This young man was in charge of the county library and knew many of the local civilian and military officials.

Through his extensive connections he obtained permission to visit us and was able to smuggle in some hacksaw blades, a small map of western Hungary’s border area and my German language identification card from the Ősterreichische Flottenverein (Austrian Naval Association). The reason for my becoming a member of this group, years earlier, was that as a child I had always wanted to be a sailor.

This romantic desire persisted and, at the beginning of the war, I joined the Association as a student. This naval auxiliary group consisted of civilians of all ages and being a member was the closest I ever came to being a sailor. I was very proud of the sailor cap and jacket which I was authorized to wear on special

occasions as a member. I would never have been able to imagine that my membership picture I.D. card would one day become so handy and useful.

We kept the hacksaw blades, the map and the I.D. hidden under our mattresses.

Whenever any of us had a chance to go to the only toilet in the prison, he would take one of the blades and cut away at the rusty iron bars in the window. It looked out over the high brick wall surrounding the prison buildings. It was a tedious process to slowly cut the bars without letting anyone find out what we were doing.

Still, by the end of May the iron bars were almost cut through. Around this time a new prisoner was brought into our cell. His name was Nėmeth and he wore an officer’s uniform without any rank or other insignia. His story was quite desperate.

He was from Vasvár, a teacher by profession, and a first lieutenant in the army reserve. He had spent three years at the front and still wore his uniform since he had no civilian clothing. A few days earlier he had gone to see a doctor in Nagykanizsa who had given him a prescription to fill. Nėmeth had put the prescription behind the headband of his cap since his pockets were full of things he had bought in Nagykanizsa. Upon arriving home to Vasvár he stepped off the train and was immediately accosted by a group of half drunken Red soldiers waiting on the platform. They started to harass him because of the uniform he wore. One of them noticed the prescription sticking out from behind his headband.

Inexplicably, the soldiers assumed that the man wearing an old uniform with a piece of white paper in his cap must be a counterrevolutionary. They jumped the poor man, tied his hands, brought him to Szombathely and threw him into our cell without any formal charge.

While we were getting acquainted with the new prisoner we noticed an unusually large and noisy commotion in the courtyard. We found out that on May 27 an uprising had taken place in the village of Gencsapáti, some fifteen miles from Szombathely. It was in response to the arbitrary and forcible collection of food from the people by the Reds. A group of Red Guards led by Tibor Szamuely, one of the most notorious communist terrorists at the time, had been traveling to Csorna that day. Szamuely had stopped at Gencsapáti with his troops to put an end to the uprising. He captured about 200 men whom he brought to the Szombathely military prison the next day. These people were being guarded in the prison yard around a big fire. Nearby, behind a line of guards, congregated the crying and wailing wives of these prisoners. The loud commotion lasted throughout the night.

On the morning of June 3 several guards came into our cell, handcuffed us and took us to the nearby county administration building. We were taken to a large room where Szamuely sat behind a table with two bodyguards. After a short questioning he said he would take us with him to Csorna tomorrow. Since we had never seen Szamuely in person before we did not know the identity of the interrogator or why he would want to take us to Csorna, though we suspected the worst. On the way back to the prison one of the guards told us who the questioner had been and that we had been sentenced to death. Szamuely’s plan was to take us to Csorna where another counterrevolutionary uprising had been put down a few days earlier, and to hang us there with several other prisoners before the people of Csorna. After we heard this we immediately concluded that we had no choice but to try and escape during the night. Only Lt. Nėmeth refused to come along, arguing that he was innocent and had nothing to fear. (We found out much

later that Szamuely had indeed carried out his intention. Lt. Nėmeth, along with the mayor of Gencsapáti and several other people from the village were taken to Csorna and hanged in public).

Our prison was lightly guarded. Apart from the commander there were four armed soldiers: two in the corridor in front of the cells, one in the guard office and one at the front gate. The commander often was not there, spending his evenings in the city and returning only for the midnight change of the guards. There were several other soldiers in the courtyard but they were not part of the permanent guard force. Our guards served on four hour shifts; thus the evening changing of the guards took place at 8 p.m. Shortly after dinner we simulated diarrhea attacks and asked to go to the toilet about every half hour. By 10 p.m. the guards were visibly annoyed by the whole scenario. They took us one at a time – I was let out first. Before the guard opened the cell door I hid one of the metal legs of my bed under my jacket. As we reached the toilet I suddenly wheeled around and struck the guard with the metal bed leg. While pulling the unconscious guard into the toilet I heard the second guard opening the door of our cell to take Tichy out. He and Szombath ambushed the man and knocked him out. I caught up with them near the cell door and then we rushed into the guard office to take care of the third guard. He offered little resistance, so we ran into the toilet, broke the weakened iron bars and climbed through the narrow window. Once outside it was quite difficult to get across the high prison wall because we had no ropes. We managed without attracting any attention and then started to run toward the west.

We slowed down at the outskirts of the city and walked all night toward the Austrian border, avoiding all villages and hamlets. While still back in our cell I had marked the smuggled map, outlining a plan for crossing the border at Szentpėterfa just north of Körmend. I left this map under my blanket, hoping that it would send the pursuing guards in the wrong direction. It must have served its intended purpose; by morning we were able to reach the Austrian border at the edge of a hilltop forest. Below us was the small Laufnitz River which formed the border; it was swollen with snow run-off from the Austrian mountains.

Between us and the river was a farm house along a dirt road. We were very hungry, so I decided to ask for some food. It was risky to cross the exposed area between the forest and the farm house but we were desperate. It was afternoon and I went in alone. The farmer’s wife was kind enough to give me a loaf of bread and some cottage cheese. She warned me, though, to get out of the house right away because she was expecting the communist border patrol soon. The patrol apparently passed by every day about that time and usually dropped in for a short rest. I ran back to the hilltop where Tichy and Szombath were eagerly, and hungrily, awaiting my return. We polished off the food in no time and stayed in our hiding place until nightfall. Under cover of darkness we swam across the deep and ice cold Laufnitz to the Austrian side. We found some bushes to hide under and tried to dry our clothes, with little success.

The next morning the Austrian border patrol found us shivering in the bushes.

They took us to the local police station where we were interrogated by a police sergeant. Since I was the only one speaking German I interpreted for the three of us. He listened intently to our story but because we had no written identification

decided to return us to Hungary. In desperation I suddenly remembered the old

decided to return us to Hungary. In desperation I suddenly remembered the old