This 23 October marks the 69th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, an attempt to free the country from the tyranny of Russian occupation. I was only eight years old but memories of the uprising are still vivid in my mind; my reaction to London fireworks make me realise I must still have a kind of PTSD.
The slaughter of children in Gaza and the stories of Ukrainian children abducted to Russian camps are particularly upsetting for me. I feel the terror these families are facing as I remember my own childhood trauma.
Life in Budapest in 1956
My early childhood was spent in the oppressive, grey world of Russian-ruled Hungary. There was a shortage of fresh food, with long queues outside shops.
When I started school at six years old, my parents forbade me from reciting poems or songs I learned in the classroom. They also forbade me from repeating anything I overheard at home, and I was especially not to mention that I had religious instructions in a basement room of our building.
October 1956 revolution
In Central Budapest, while my mother walked me home from dance classes, we saw a crowd gather outside Budapest Radio where my father worked. There was a buzz of excitement in the air.
I watched a young man climb in reach of the flag above the station entrance and cut out the emblem in the middle. It was a sickle and hammer.
The crowd cheered and my mother started to walk faster, telling me it was best to get home quickly. Soon after we got home, we heard the noise of lorries and then a loud bang.
A student demonstration had started an uprising.
Our world changed
My younger siblings and I didn’t understand why our world had changed so drastically. Gunshots and the sound of bombs falling on Budapest kept us awake. The house next door had collapsed, struck by a bomb.
Our father then decided that the bathroom walls might best withstand an attack on our building. For three weeks, my siblings and I were confined to the bathroom, even sleeping in the bath tub. Father told us many stories to distract from the sounds of fighting outside our building. My one-year-old brother was more difficult to calm down when the noise woke him up.
After those three weeks, at last the noises stopped.
A battle hard fought
People were celebrating the revolution’s brief victory against the Russian army. But the scenes within the familiar streets bore witness to the fierce struggle of the revolutionary fighters.
Everywhere was the rubble of collapsed buildings and in a square, there was the shocking sight of a woman’s body covered with a Hungarian flag. Atop the flag was a handwritten sign that read, “Here lies a Hungarian mother shot while trying to find food for her starving family.”
Our family had managed to survive on what we had in the larder. After two days, when all we had left was flour, lard, and sugar, we ate steamed or fried dumplings.
Our mother slipped out to find some food, despite our father’s protests. She returned empty-handed with a gunshot wound to her leg.
Russian suppression
After the brief celebrations of freedom from occupation and tyranny, the thunder of Russian tanks started rolling through the streets of Budapest.
The brief resistance from the small group of revolutionaries was followed by the murder of Hungary’s elected PM. Cardinal Mindszenty fled to the US embassy and so began the brutal persecution of anybody involved in the resistance.
The journey to freedom
When the hope for freedom from oppression died, our family set off on an arduous journey to flee to democratic Austria. We left all behind to catch a train that was heading to Vienna.
After two hours, the train suddenly stopped and everybody was told to leave; the conductor announced the train must return to Budapest. I would have been glad to return home.
Instead, my eight-year-old self had to walk through deep snow for an entire dark December night, not understanding why we had left my crying auntie and great-grandmother behind at the station. I just held onto my mother’s hand, and walked and walked.
Life in Vienna
Due to the considerable number of Hungarian refugees, accommodation once we reached Austria was limited to crammed refugee camps. Men stayed in separate accomodation, while woman and children slept on mattresses in the large halls of former barracks still showing signs of WWII of not quite ten years before. Our dormitory was noisy as traumatised children cried in the night.
After a year, when we were given a one-bedroom flat for the five of us, it seemed like luxury.
After four years in Austria, our family moved to Germany for our father’s job. We were still in a small flat and as the only foreign child in a small town, I was bullied and struggled to make friends. As a teenager, it was particularly hurtful to hear of birthday parties without ever being invited.
Nobody chooses to become a refugee.
Immigrant is a dirty word again
The word immigrant, often with the word ‘illegal’ in front of it, dominates British media and politics. For me, as a former child refugee, the negative connotation of the word is personal as it brings back traumatic memories I seem to have buried when I came to Britain.
When my family moved to England in 1970, following the marriage of our mother to an Englishman, it felt like a homecoming. The leafy Kent countryside, with the wonderfully exciting London only half an hour’s train drive away, was a different world which seemed magical to a teenager whose world up until then had been full of upheaval.
Having a bedroom of my own in a six-bedroom house with a beautiful garden felt like a sign that I had found sanctuary.
England became my home and finally I felt safe.
UK is not my sanctuary any more
This is no longer the case. The world feels unsafe again. It seems that we, who live in countries where we had not been born but had migrated to, are the cause of all evil in our country of choice.
We take people’s jobs, we are the reason the health service is crumbling, and we pose a danger to women and children. It is not economic inequality from the country’s 10% holding 43% of wealth, and successive governments cutting back investments into infrastructure that makes people poor, but us immigrants.
Despite the fact that only a very small minority of migrants come as refugees into the country, they are the worst of us migrants. They are housed in disused hotels making their owners money. They get pocket money as they are not allowed to work.
This life of luxury is the reason some Britons are unemployed and the cost of living is rising.
Migrants contribute to this country
Like most migrants, who sought sanctuary in this country, I have worked and contributed by paying taxes. I saved up to buy a home; I bought VAT-rated goods and ate in restaurants, paying the staff who also pay taxes. I even became a civil servant.
My sister looked after mental health patients in Cardiff, also paid tax, and raised her children without receiving benefits. In her Austrian passport is a stamp giving her ‘indefinite leave to remain’ however it now seems some Britons want to deport her. Her British-born children and grandchildren might miss her.
I have taken British citizenship, i.e I am naturalised. To the chagrin of some British political parties, I cannot be deported. Of course, being white means I don’t have to fear being attacked for being a migrant.
Trust in this country is gone
I look like I am safe, but I do not feel safe any longer. The people who are behind Brexit have destroyed my trust in this country. People stand up against animal cruelty when an innocent dog is abused, but allow the dehumanisation of people who seek sanctuary.
We, people who happened to be born in countries where we faced tyranny, trusted this country to give us shelter.
Who will stand up for us?
