Coming To America: My Long Journey To Freedom!

Table of Contents

Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1 My Family Genealogy
Chapter 2 My Earliest Memories of World War II
Chapter 3 Growing Up Under Communism (1945-56)
Chapter 4 1956—The Hungarian Revolution
Chapter 5 The Escape
Chapter 6 Living in Austria (1956-1958) .
Chapter 7 Coming to America (1958)
Chapter 8 The College Years (1958-1962)
Chapter 9 Our Wedding (1962)
Chapter 10 Starting Our Family and Living in Cleveland (1962-1970) .
Chapter 11 Moving to New York State (1970-1974)
Chapter 12 The Virginia Years (1975-1992) .
Chapter 13 Life in the Garden State (1992-1999)
Chapter 14 Early Retirement (1999-2006)
Chapter 15 How Cancer Changed My Life in 2005-2006
Chapter 16 My View on Life
Chapter 17 My View on Family
Chapter 18 My Faith
Chapter 19 My View on Political Correctness and Immigration
References

Chapter 5
The Escape

It was a gray, cold winter day on December 23rd in 1956. We got up early that morning and dressed warm as we had no idea what we would be going through in the coming days. We knew that we wanted to escape but had no idea whether our plan would succeed. We also knew that we may encounter some snow on the way and that we likely would have to walk a great distance, so we had to wear the warmest clothes and best footwear we owned.
I didn’t have boots or shoes that would cover my ankles, so I decided to wear my boxing shoes. Shoes with paper thin soles, but they were high enough to cover my ankles. Little did I know how they’d perform in deep snow.
Since we had to leave our apartments with as little notice as possible, we could only take with us what we wore. Of course, we dressed as warm as we could. We could not take suitcases as they would call too much attention to what we were doing. All we took was a small bag, everything else we had to leave behind.
Our next door neighbors were ready early too and came over to our apartment. It was daylight when my parents locked the door of our apartment with all our earthly possessions locked into the tiny three-rooms.
We walked down to the end of our street and up one block to catch a street car to the main train station in Budapest. After a short ride we arrived at the station, purchased our tickets and boarded a train to Gyor.
Gyor was a large town west of Budapest and only about 25 kilometers from the Austrian border. Our plan was to get to that town by train and continue on foot from there to the Austrian border. I had with me a map, a compass and a hunting knife for protection. All three of these items came in handy at one point or another during our escape.
We boarded the train with hundreds of people. Many of them were large families with small children. As we looked around in our car, we were wondering how many of these people had the same idea as we did. Some of these families had luggage and what looked like bags of clothing with them. If someone had relatives near the border and could prove it by having the proper documents with him, he was allowed to go almost to the border. All we had was the compulsory little red identification booklet that everyone had to carry in Communist Hungary. It was the size of a passport with the customary Communist ‘hammer and sickle’ emblem printed on the cover. Anyone caught without it was subject to arrest and imprisonment.
We of course had no relatives near the border, not even fake documents. So we weren’t sure what was waiting for us and what obstacles we had to overcome as we approached the border. The train made many stops as it was inching toward Gyor. It began to snow fairly heavily. It took most of the day for the train to get close to Gyor.
It was getting to be around four o’clock in the afternoon, when suddenly the train began to slow and a few minutes later it came to a full stop.
As we looked out the window, there was no sign of a station only snow covered fields as far as the eyes could see. As soon as the train stopped, two Hungarian soldiers with machine guns boarded the train and began to ask for everyone’s little red identification book. They began to slowly move through the car toward us. As ordered, we gave them our identification papers which they decided to keep rather than returning them to us. We were among those that didn’t have the proper papers to travel this close to the border. We knew that Gyor was still some distance away but had no idea just where we were. The soldiers told us that everyone whose identification papers they kept were under arrest and would have to get off the train here. And with that one of the soldiers jumped off the train while the other remained on board to guard us.
As they began unloading people at the further end of the train we acted very politely, allowing others to go ahead of us as we were not overly anxious to get off the train. We were taking our time with the hope that something would happen that allowed us to get away from our captors.
There was a large family ahead of us with two older women and six or seven small children. It took them a fairly long time to get off the train with all the children, the suitcases and other possessions. About half of them got off the train when suddenly the train jerked forward and begin to move slowly. The women and children screamed. There was a real concern that one of the children could be hurt. The soldier that was guarding us, quickly jumped off the train and began to blow his whistle to stop the train.
Here was our opportunity to make our move. I whispered to my parents and to the other family with us, “this is our chance to get away.” With that I motioned everyone to follow me as we ran to the other end of the train. Everyone was too busy to notice what we were doing, so we jumped off the opposite side of the train.
As we hit the ground, we began to run as fast as we could for cover in the nearby trees and bushes. We hid there for what seemed like an eternity. We heard soldiers searching for us but fortunately they were not able to find us. An hour or so later, the train began to move again. As it disappeared in the distance continuing toward Gyor we saw what would have been our fate if we wouldn’t have gotten away. There were a dozen or so trucks fully loaded with people, which began to move toward Budapest. Poor souls we thought, who knew what was awaiting them.
As the trucks finally moved out of sight, an eerie silence fell upon us. It also dawned on us that we were all alone in the middle of nowhere. Without our little red identification books, if captured, we were facing certain imprisonment. By this time, it was getting dark. Not knowing where we were, we decided that the best thing to do was to follow the train tracks in the direction the train headed toward Gyor. We figured that sooner or later we would reach a train station, or at least a switching station where we could get help from someone.
As luck would have it, we only had to go about 2-3 miles before we reached a switching station. It was a small building beside the train tracks. We quietly walked around the building in the dark and looked in the window to find much to our relief that there was only one person, a middleaged man sitting at a desk. We decided that we would ask him for help. If he was not going to help or would try to notify the authorities, we could always over power him, as there were three of us men.