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Remembering Hungary's Freedom Fight Barry Farbera So why go to Norway in mid-December? I assure you it wasn't for the climate. And it wasn't for the ski opportunities. As Cousin Guerney points out, "There's enough unhappiness in the world without people tying sticks on their feet and sliding down mountains." It was to complete a mission that began almost exactly 50 years before; one I felt duty-bound to fulfill. On Christmas night of 1956, I found myself in the Austrian village of Andau smack on the border of Hungary, which had erupted in spontaneous fury again its Soviet occupiers and suffered the full destructive might of the Red Army. That was the Hungarian Revolution. It was the year the Hungarian people either cut or burned the communist red star out of the middle of their red, white, and green flag and waved what was left over as their new "freedom" banner. It was the year the Hungarian Freedom Fighter was Time magazine's "Man of the Year," and the year 35 thousand patriotic Hungarian lives were lost in that freedom fight. It was also the beginning of the end of communism in Europe, but that's another story. Two hundred thousand Hungarians out of a population of only 10 million headed westward through the new hole in the shattered Iron Curtain, and my assignment as a young reporter was to go to the Austria-Hungary border and follow the fleeing refugees to the Red Cross camp a few kilometers inside free Austria.
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From there it was on to Munich where those refugees who'd been accepted by America were gathered. Then onward across the Atlantic to Camp Kilmer in New Brunswick, N.J. winding up back home to spotlight the handful of Hungarian refugees destined to build new lives among American southerners who welcomed them as heroes of the hottest moment of Europe's Cold War. There were no reporters on our sector of the border, meaning that when reporters arrived and saw the rescue operation they immediately put their pens and pads and cameras aside and joined the rescuers. By the time I got to the border, Christmas night, the drill was set. The rescuers waited on the Austrian side of the border canal. Every hour or so a group of 40 or more refugees would arrive on the Hungarian bank. We had a rubber raft with a rope tied to the stern (our "freedom navy") and two men with paddles would row the raft over to the other side and fill the raft with four or five refugees.
When the refugees and one of the boatmen were settled in the raft, somebody from the far bank would give the OK, and we would pull the rope and bring the raft and its occupants over to our side of the canal. It worked flawlessly for most of the night and we got over 200 refugees out. The sky began to lighten, and that told us our night's work was done. The refugees knew not to come after dawn. We took the rubber raft back up the ridge into Austria and tied it to the top of the land rover and headed back to the Red Cross shelter in Andau, Austria about six kilometers away. Just as we were about to pull out, one of the Irish boys came running up the ridge from the canal yelling, "Another group of refugees just arrived on the Hungarian bank!" This was madness. It was almost full daylight. The refugees knew how dangerous it was to try to cross the border during daylight and besides, there was a light coming out of the woods deep into Hungary which could only have been the bad guys; Soviet troops or their Hungarian AVO communist police. The next scene may have been an animated cartoon speeded up to comic extent. We ripped the rubber raft off the top of the Land Rover, rushed it back down to the canal, and threw it into the water whereupon the boatmen with their paddles jumped in and scooted across the canal. The hurry-up caused somebody on the far bank to give the OK too quickly. They, indeed, had five of about 40 refugees in the rubber raft — but each one of the boatmen thought the other boatman was in the raft! That left us in the following predicament. We had one boat load of five refugees plus the boat on our side of the canal. But both boatmen were stranded on the far side with both paddles and no boat. And it was now full daylight and the frightening light in the woods was getting closer. I was second man on the rope and paralyzed with fear and confusion. The first man on the rope was Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway, head of the rescue operation. Without even an instant's hesitation Thorvald belly-flopped into the raft and tried desperately to paddle across with his bare hands. It was a ridiculous scene. Christmas night, way below zero wind-chill, sun coming up, communists closing in, and a lone Norwegian vainly trying to paddle his way across the canal with his bare hands. I remember wondering if I would ever in my life be able to laugh at this. The answer would eventually be yes, but it took an awfully long time. Thorvald miraculously found a pole sticking out of the water. I say miraculously advisedly. Canals don't usually have poles strewn about. We'd all been standing there literally all night and none of us had noticed that pole right there in front of us. I'm not sure if atheists divide into separate sects, but I know we believers do. I've always been this kind of believer; that God gave us enough miracles in the ancient days so that if we don't now believe, it's our problem. If you, however, or anybody else at that border canal that night chooses to claim that God threw down that pole like a dart into our problematic dartboard, I can't argue with you. Thorvald grabbed the pole. Fortunately it was not rotten. It was sturdy. While our breath froze for reasons independent of the cold and our blood screeched to a halt in our veins, Thorvald successfully poled his way to the far bank of the canal. Big improvement. We now had the refugees, the boatmen, the paddles, and boat all on the same side of the canal. We went back into the speeded-up-animated-cartoon mode and quickly got the 35 or so Hungarians safely across the canal and up into Austria. The light in the Hungarian woods was now closer, but whoever was holding that light seemed to us like the villain in a marionette show who had failed to kill or capture the freedom-lovers. Thorvald's career took a vertical trajectory. He became mayor of Oslo, Norwegian minister of defense, and minister of foreign affairs; in effect, secretary of state. His son, Jens Stoltenberg, is now prime minister of Norway. It may sound like a strange debt, but I felt I owed the people of Norway the facts about what a hero they had in Thorvald Stoltenberg. I wrote an article and tried to give it away to a Norwegian newspaper or magazine. None was interested. I was told that the people of Norway know well what Mr. Stoltenberg did for the Hungarians at that time. Like hell they did. They may well have known that he headed up certain relief committees and worked tirelessly to ease the plight of the 200,000 Hungarian refugees who fled Hungary, but they had no idea he'd belly-flopped into a rubber raft on a border canal and tried to paddle with his bare hands over the frozen water in dangerous daylight with communist forces approaching the scene from the distant woods. Finally, thanks to Arne Phillip Fraas, a Norwegian TV veteran with a lot of experience in America, the story found a champion. Fraas gave the written description of that night to Norwegian TV correspondent Geir Helljesen who took Thorvald back down to that very spot on the Austria-Hungary border canal and let him relive it almost exactly 50 years later. The next night, thanks to Helljesen's intervention, Frederick Skavlan, who conducts the top TV talk show in Norway, brought Thorvald and me together on the air to tell the tale whether Thorvald's paralytic Norwegian modesty liked it or not. The deed was done. The itch was scratched. The duty was fulfilled. Those refugees Thorvald helped save are now free. Their Hungarian homeland is now free. I, however, remain enslaved. I'm imprisoned by the unrelenting and unanswerable question of whether I would have belly-flopped into that rubber raft if I'd been first man on the rope, and not right behind Thorvald.
Editor's note:
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