Magyar Baráti Közösség

ORMBK  :: Hungarian Revolt Contributed to Oregon Culture ::

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Megjegyzés: In 1986 on the the 30th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution The Oregonian interviewed Ede Hamar. The article is reprinted here as it is currently not online and is only available via microfilm.

The Oregonian, Sunday November 2, 1986

The cream of Hungary’s population fled their homeland 30 years ago this month as the Soviet army crushed a 14-day rebellion against Moscow’s domination of a once independent nation.

An estimated 200,000 Hungarians turned their backs on their homes, jobs, treasured heirlooms and ― in some cases ― families, to seek freedom and opportunity in the non-communist world. Approximately 38,000 of the self-exiled Hungarians were welcomed to the United States in the months after the 1956 revolt.

Inspired by the heroism of the Hungarians who, against overwhelming odds, had risen up to fight Soviet tanks with gasoline-filled bottles, American church groups and individuals volunteered as sponsors to help the refugees settle in a new homeland.

Among those groups was the Oregon Committee for Hungarian Refugees. During its three months of existence, the Oregon committee worked with charitable agencies to bring 220 refugees to Oregon and provide them with transportation, temporary housing, orientation, job placement and permanent sponsors. More than 2,000 contributors donated money for the committee’s work.­

The mass exodus produced tragedies of it’s own. Couples who remained in Hungary sent children into exile, hoping for a better life wi­th less repression. Joseph Kusner, separated from his wife and three children in 1956 and was not reunited with them in Portland until 1964.

Children and grandchildren of the 1956 refugees have swelled the numbers of Oregon residents sharing a proud Hungarian heritage. Recounted here are the odysseys of one individual and two families who came to Oregon as the result of the most serious challenge ever faced by the Soviet Union to its domination of Eastern Europe.

Hungarian’s trail to U.S. started atop Soviet tank

By Paul Manley

of The Oregonain staff

Thirty years ago in late October a German magazine photographer took a picture of Ede Hamar standing atop a Russian tank in the streets of Budapest with a Hungarian flag.

The course of Hamar’s life was changed by the publication of that photo ― along with the wounds he suffered a few days later as he machine-gunned another Soviet tank during the Hungarian revolution of 1956.

Actually Hamar said this month in his Southeast Portland office, in the German photo he was not waving the Hungarian flag, he was pounding with the flagstaff on the Russian tank, trying to persuade the Russian crew to come out.

“I spoke fairly good Russian,” said Hamar whose first name is pronounced as if it were Eddie. “I was standing there, pounding with the flag, telling them to come out. ‘We won’t hurt you, we just want your tank.” was the message Hamar was trying to convey.

Eventually, Hamar said, the Russians did come out and he and his fellow freedom fighters locked them in a storeroom. Then they went back to harassing other Soviet tanks.

Friends among Soviets

It was the last week of October 1956 and the world stood in awe as Hungarians with light arms and Molotov cocktails ― gasoline-filled bottles ignited with a wick ― chased the Soviet tanks out of Hungary’s capital city, which the Russians had occupied since 1946.

Hamar says one reason for the Hungarians’ success, however short-lived,  was that the Soviet troops had been stationed so long in Hungary that they had made friends with the Hungarians and in many instances turned away from confrontations with the freedom fighters.

The uprising began on Oct. 23 when a group of university students arrived at the communist controlled Radio Budapest offices and demanded to broadcast to the people of Hungary their demands for changes in the puppet government’s policies.

Hamar was 20 then, “an angry student,” he recalled, in his second year of university studies.

“I was involved from the first,” he related. “I was among the student demonstrators who first went to the radio station and then to the parliament building to present our demands.”

“It was peaceful demonstration until the Hungarian secret police opened fire.”

The secret police, Hamar said, “were a lot worse than the Russians ever thought of being.”

By the next day, when the Hungarian army and the regular police had turned their guns against the Russians, Hamar and his fellow students took some .22-caliber rifles from a police station and learned how to make Molotov cocktails, which became deadly weapons against tanks.

When members of the hated secret police were captured, crowds became vicious and Hamar recalls more than once incurring the wrath of fellow Hungarians as he stepped into put an end to the misery of a prostrate “informer.”

“None of us students was anti-communist or pro-communist.” Hamar insisted “It was just that ‘this is our country’ and we wanted our people to decide for themselves” who was going to run it.

After withdrawing the tanks and crews that had been stationed in Hungary, Moscow marshaled replacements during the five days while the rest of the world held its breath. Had the Hungarians won? But on Nov. 4 reinforcements moved in to crush the revolt.

The replacements, Hamar said, were largely Mongolian troops from Siberia who were brainwashed to believe that the Hungarians would eat them alive.

 He said the main tanks would move through the streets of Budapest with tank commanders standing in the turrets as if they were on parade, making them easy targets for the freedom fighters in buildings along the route.

About dawn on Nov. 5 Hamar was on the sixth floor of a building, “defending an intersection” with a group of students, as a Russian tank approached Hamar fired a machine gun burst from a window and ducked, but not before he had been spotted. The tank unleashed a cannon barrage at the building and steel beams and masonry collapsed around Hamar.

A falling brick took off three of his fingers and chips of brick and mortar left him blind in one eye and impaired vision in the other.

When his friends took him to a hospital, “only emergency surgery was available” Hamar said laconically. That meant amputation of his right hand.

During the five days in the hospital, “most of the resistance was crushed.” Hamar said “they were looking in the hospitals for wounded people, who would be arrested and charged with insurrection.”

“I got out of the hospital, and three days later they captured me in one of the suburbs of Budapest where I lived. I was interrogated for about eight days, and then transferred to a central prison in Budapest.”

Thanks to efforts by his comrade in arms, the transfer failed. While Hamar was riding in jeep with his captors, his friends shot the driver and a lieutenant who was escorting Hamar to prison.

The police “were hoping to make a real example of me.” Hamar said. “They had found a German magazine with the picture of me standing on a Russian tank”

Hamar fled south toward the mountainous frontier between Hungary and Yugoslavia and joined about 80 other freedom fighters who were “harassing the Russians to enable more Hungarians to escape” from the captive country.

In January 1957 the Russians chased his guerilla group across the mountains into Yugoslavia, which by that time had chucked the Moscow yoke. The Yugoslavs “put us into camps that were pretty well guarded, but they didn’t turn us over to the Russians.” said a grateful Hamar.

Broken U.S. promises

Applications to migrate to other countries were not answered, so Hamar and three companions stole away from the camp and crossed the Yugoslav frontier into Italy, then made their way to France and eventually to Germany.

In late 1957 or early 1958 a group of U.S. news reporters and photographers toured the camp near Nuremberg that Hamar and his friends were sharing with a group of refugees who had not been resettled 13 years after the end of World War II.  A Life magazine reporter interviewed Hamar and when his report was published he found himself deluged with offers to relocate in the United States.

Up to that point Hamar had been trying to win admission to other countries, but not the United States. “I had a real strong feeling because a lot of promises had been made in the U.S. Embassy” in Budapest that were not kept, he explained. They were “promises of help ‘that should be there any time’” to help the freedom fighters during the uprising.

“The fighting went on longer because of those promises.” Hamar said. “It cost a lot of young people their lives.”

“I didn’t have the understanding then of the (U.S.) political system.” Hamar said. The uprising “was right in the days before the (presidential) election.”

Hamar decided he couldn’t blame a whole country for the failure to fulfill the promises, and a Scappoose family sponsored his admission to the United States in August of 1958. He spoke no English, but did know German and he struck up an acquaintance with a Portland woman who had been raised in a German-speaking household. In July the next year they were married, and today Ede and Hazel Hamar have a home on 3 acres in the Scholls area where they used to raise horses. In 1963 they adopted a son Ted.

Starting in 1959 the names Ede Hamar and the Industries for the Blind became almost inseparable. He started work there on the production line ― “it was basically a broom shop” he said ― and as his English improved he moved up to higher responsibilities. Now he is the stat agency’s contract procurement specialist, which means he solicits firms such as Tektronix Inc., Electro Scientific Industries Inc. and Norm Thompson Outfitters Inc. to contract with Industries for the Blind for projects like packaging knives, electronic parts and candy. “When I came here, a lot of people ― and some in this agency ― offered me a helping hand.” Hamar said. “I feel an obligation to repay that.”

Colleagues at Industries for the Blind say that Hamar has been an outspoken advocate for providing work for handicapped people and he has repeatedly cajoled and adm­onished legislators to loosen purse strings so that more jobs can be provided. The state funds the rental of the building and four staff positions, but the rest of the materials have to be paid from income earned from the work that is done.

Hamar enjoys fishing and hunting, and has not allowed his skills with a gun to get rusty.

As for the authorities in his homeland, he says “I still feel they will feel better if I am dead. They know I will try to raise guns or money or whatever if the opportunity comes.”