1956

Immigration, Revolution, and Triumph

Image: 1956 Hungarian Revolution against The Soviet Union.

I feel very blessed to be a first-generation American. The stories that engulfed me as a child no doubt have had a profound impact on my life and outlook as an adult for the better. My family’s background is one filled with hardships, but also of overcoming and defiance. The stories of struggle are real and impactful, but ultimately I like to focus on the triumph of rising and refusal to capitulate.

My mother’s birth in a bomb shelter during World War II foreshadowed a life full of roadblocks, but also resolve. Her family’s ordeals of Russian troops arriving unannounced on occasion to the village to rape, pillage, and kill introduced the feelings of true terror, but also bravery. Her years-long separation from her father, brother, and sister by the Iron Curtain wall during her formative early teen years embedded feelings of sadness and longing, but also faith.

Her family’s ordeals of Russian troops arriving unannounced on occasion to the village to rape, pillage, and kill introduced the feelings of true terror, but also bravery.

My father’s family decision to refuse to join the local communist party (as everyone was expected to) when he was a child unleashed furious forces of backlash and oppression against the family. This decision by my grandfather was too much for the family to handle in some regard, as it led to episodes of serious beatings for my father, as well as the crushing of dreams for him. Still, I am here to tell the spirits of my father and grandfather that I am forever grateful for the decision not to capitulate and join the Party. The pain and suffering that that decision of defiance brought on was not in vain. I am also grateful for the decision the family made to send my still high-school aged father away alone to try and make a bold escape beyond the Iron Curtain. He, along with my godfather and countless other young Hungarian restless souls made the daring decision to cross rivers, climb endless lines of barbed wire, and tiptoe through minefields guarded by machine-gun toting soldiers stationed conveniently in look-out towers.  

Some, such as my at the time 16-year-old uncle made it across and even managed to grace newspaper covers upon arrival in New York City as great examples of freedom seekers and fighters against the evil empire known as the Soviet Union on the very day of the start of the inspiring 1956 uprising of the Hungarian nation. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a classic David vs Goliath story; David just needed a longer time to triumph, as the Soviet Union not surprisingly brutally crushed the revolution via the usual tools of empire such as tanks and nooses. Nevertheless, the spirit of the 1956 uprising inspired countless freedom seekers around the world and absolutely was a key building block to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and Iron Curtain.

---

Click below to learn more about the 1956 Hungarian Uprising Against the Soviet Union:

Wikipedia: Hungarian Revolution of 1956

YouTube: Simple History: Hungarian Uprising, Budapest (1956)

---

Others, like my father and godfather had a longer journey before eventually arriving to the United States, as they were captured and placed in internment camps in Serbia, as well as other various Eastern Bloc nations. My father understandably did not like talking about his experience in these camps.

My father and I had a complex relationship. We were both stubborn as mules, which lead to, let’s just say explosive situations. Hungarians are known for being stubborn, angry, brutally honest to a fault sometimes, and have a penchant for gossip and holding grudges. The Hungarians, however, are also known for being extremely hardworking and will have your back no matter what if considered part of the fervent clan. A Hungarian is a great friend to have with you in a fox hole when the chips are down and things get serious. They will also feed you unbelievable amounts of delicious food if you come to visit and will booze it up with you via the biggest sized shot glasses you have ever seen while enthusiastically telling various tales. What this all equates to me is passion, buckets and buckets full of passion. 

My father’s best piece of advice he ever gave me was to “never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because you never know what tomorrow may bring.” How so unbelievably true. Oh, and his stressing of the importance of trust. Because if you can’t trust someone, honestly, what good are they to you?

The energy that immigrants bring and have brought throughout the history of our great nation has been absolutely critical to the success of the American experiment. Immigrants bring important reminders via first-hand experience of not only how brutal life can be in other parts of the world, but also how quickly basic freedoms and things that many of us take for granted can be lost at a moment’s notice.

So many of us in America do not fully appreciate how close the forces of oppression are at our doorsteps. These forces are knocking louder and louder and are starting to gather the battering rams to try and fully knock down our doors and implement a complete corporate-controlled fascist police state existence in America.

This is something that too many American citizens are sleepwalking through and falsely believe that these types of forces only exist in “those other” regions of the world, such as existing and former communist countries. Those who have lived in full-scaled oppressive countries or those who have studied and reported on it are warning us that the tell-tale signs are building up all around us in America.

If you dig deep enough, we all have such stories in our lineage of true oppression and fear, but also of overcoming and triumph. Some have just experienced it personally a little closer than others, but everyone can find these types of hardship stories in our pasts. In short, so much of the complaining many of us engage in on a day-to-day basis over mundane things such as restaurant wait times or slow internet speeds is in fact a slap in the face of our legacies. It’s time to honor the suffering and struggle of those that came before us by fighting for those in our past as much as fighting for ourselves and our future.