MINDEN MAGYAR LEGNAGYOBB TISZTELETADÁSA NEMZETI CSILLAGÓRÁNKNAK, 1956/70 TÖRTÉNELMI ÉVFORDULÓJÁN (több nyelven)

 

LE PLUS GRAND HOMMAGE DE CHAQUE HONGROIS À NOTRE HEURE STELLAIRE NATIONALE, À L'OCCASION DU 70E ANNIVERSAIRE HISTORIQUE DE 1956

THE HIGHEST HOMAGE OF EVERY HUNGARIAN TO OUR NATIONAL HOUR OF DESTINY, ON THE 70TH HISTORICAL ANNIVERSARY OF 1956

MINDEN MAGYAR LEGNAGYOBB TISZTELETADÁSA NEMZETI

CSILLAGÓRÁNKNAK, 1956/70 TÖRTÉNELMI

 ÉVFORDULÓJÁN

(angolul és olaszul)

 

LE PLUS GRAND HOMMAGE DE CHAQUE HONGROIS À NOTRE HEURE STELLAIRE NATIONALE, À L'OCCASION DU 70E ANNIVERSAIRE HISTORIQUE DE 1956

THE HIGHEST HOMAGE OF EVERY HUNGARIAN TO OUR NATIONAL HOUR OF DESTINY, ON THE 70TH HISTORICAL ANNIVERSARY OF 1956

DIE HÖCHSTE EHRERBIETUNG EINES JEDEN UNGARN AN UNSERE NATIONALE STERNSTUNDE, ZUM 70. HISTORISCHEN JAHRESTAG VON 1956

IL PIÙ ALTO OMAGGIO DI OGNI UNGHERESE ALLA NOSTRA ORA STELLARE NAZIONALE, NEL 70° ANNIVERSARIO STORICO DEL 1956

1956: OUR NATIONAL HOUR OF DESTINY

 THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES 

(1.)

From Fratricide to Plot 301
Preserving the Culture of Remembrance in 25 Minutes, in Four Movements, as a Historical-Theological Outline

 

Out of the 14 essays I have authored over two decades as a commemorative series titled "1956: Our National Hour of Destiny through a Child's Eyes", a deeply moving, dramatic, and cathartic Hommage ’56 or a literary-theological requiem can be constructed. The core of the concept is rooted in the trauma of losing childhood innocence and the firsthand experience of fratricide ("Hungarian killing Hungarian"), interpreted in a way that passes these events down to future generations, giving them a national perspective. (Collected in a single volume, these writings can be read in the author’s private digital library by copying this address into the browser: https://anyflip.com/bookcase/pehbg – 1956: Our National Hour of Destiny through a Child's Eyes – 56 pages about 1956 through the camera of the soul).

Within the mainstream of the local memory of Győr and the broader national remembrance, I have attempted to reshape the materials written over the years into a framework that requires a four-movement structure. Several variations have been born out of this historical theme, based on the foundational experience of a broken, interrupted revolution. Before unfolding the specific movements, I share these variations with the remembering Readers and the subsequent 3–4 generations seeking authentic sources.

THE FIRST VARIATION

• Movement I: The Loss of Innocence (The Child's Perspective)
• The Concept: The intrusion of the historical storm into a protected childhood world. The rattle of gunfire, the roar of tanks, and the whispers of adults through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy in Győr.
• The Realization: The 2026 reflections of the now 78-year-old theologian alternate with diary-like, visual childhood memories. The emphasis is on incomprehension: how a peaceful weekday suddenly turns into a battlefield.
• Movement II: The Great Childhood Shock – Fratricidium (Fratricide)
• The Concept: The central pillar of this virtual drama. The realization that at both ends of the weapons, people speak the very same language. The struggle is not only against an external oppressor; the nation is wounding itself.
• The Realization: Relying on the specific points in my writings where the child awakens to the bloodiest reality of political division. Theologically, this is the manifestation of the Cain and Abel archetype on the streets of Pest and Győr, carrying deep existential pain.
• Movement III: Inner Prison Bars and Forgiveness
• The Concept: This movement forms a bridge between the past and the present. It connects the childhood trauma of '56 with later experiences as a prison chaplain in Pálhalma.
• The Realization: Demonstrating how revenge, hatred, and the refusal to forgive trap society within an inner prison. Here, the tone of the writing shifts from mourning to the sounds of repentance and spiritual purification, referencing the author's declarations of radical honesty published on the Agnus Radio website.
• Movement IV: Hommage – The Light of the Hour of Destiny (Csillagóra)
• The Concept: The transformation of the tragedy for the sake of the future. '56 is not only a landscape of grief and fratricidal war, but also the nation's "Hour of Destiny," a moment of pure moral stance.
• The Realization: An elevated, hymnic conclusion dealing with reconciliation, national unity, and the spiritual dimensions of freedom. The requiem (rest) finds its true meaning here: the wounds of the past are healed through remembrance and faith, becoming a worthy historical driving force.

THE SECOND VARIATION

• Movement I: The Loss of Innocence (The Child's Perspective)
• Enhanced Focus: The child does not yet comprehend the ideology of the party-state but senses the immense tension. The little boy sees that adults in the kitchen do not whisper about "parties," but about family, neighbors, the street—about everyday people. Oppression here is not a theory, but a fear that shatters the silence of ordinary days.
• Movement II: The Torture Rack of History – Party versus People
• The Concept: This is where the author's crucial realization takes place. The drama of '56 is unique because it was not an alternative political elite or another party that rebelled against the totalitarian machine, but the Hungarian people as a whole.
• Dramatic Realization: The text depicts the shock of the regime upon realizing that its enemy is not a political faction, but the person on the street: the worker, the student, the farmer. This turns the stage into a torture rack: the regime is forced to crush its own raison d'être (ruling in the name of the people) with weapons.
• Movement III: The Divided Nation – Fratricidium (Fratricide) and Contradiction
• Enhanced Focus: The tragedy here becomes two-layered. The true counter-party was the people, but these people had been divided by the dictatorship. This is what gave birth to the horror of "Hungarian killing Hungarian."
• Political Contradiction: This movement highlights the timeless trap of politics. The regime wants to homogenize the masses and force them in one direction, but by doing so, it only deepens the internal divides. Fratricide and political contradiction appear here as theological sins: division weighs upon the nation like an inner prison.
• Movement IV: Hommage – The People as a True Moral Unity (Csillagóra)
• Enhanced Focus: The resolution. The true greatness and "Hour of Destiny" of '56 is the very moment when, above all party-political divisions, the people—even if only for a few days—were capable of becoming a single moral unity.
• The Final Chord: An elevated, spiritual requiem for peace. The contradictions of politics and the wounds of the past can be healed not by a new political course, but only by the nation's transcendent, pure rediscovery of itself. The final tone proclaims: the people cannot remain forever on the torture rack of politics if they are capable of forgiveness and unification in truth.

This 25-minute imaginary, virtual historical mosaic game, built with musical and textual fragments, is not merely a historical recollection, but a timeless political-theological manifesto, warning contemporary humanity about the dangers of division and the necessity of a pure moral stance.

Scriptural and Historical-Theological Background:

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” (Matthew 12:25)

INTRODUCTORY MONOLOGUE

1956: Our National Hour of Destiny through a Child's Eyes

(The stage is dark. A single, cold spotlight illuminates an elderly, white-haired theologian sitting at a puritán desk. On the desk, an open Bible, an old inkwell, and a few yellowed sheets of paper. From afar, the faint, ominous rattling of tank tracks is heard, followed by silence.)

THE OLD THEOLOGIAN: "Time is a strange, movable dimension, but '56 remains immovable. I was still a child, barely entering my 9th year, when history—like an uninvited guest—practically kicked open the door of my childhood bedroom in Győr. On the side of the street opposite the Győr prison, where workers were laying water pipes and digging a deep, long ditch, the sequence of images burned into my soul. Suddenly, a green Csepel truck turned toward the prison gate, where an exultant crowd celebrated the released, grey-clothed, deeply tormented prisoners. Then, the ecstatic celebration was shattered by a dead silence of fear, followed by the rattle of gunfire. The uniformed soldier, standing above the driver’s cabin of the truck, fired burst after burst from a drum-magazine machine gun; the yard of what is today the Révai Gymnasium, opening to the street, echoed the ear- and soul-shaking sounds of the shots. For a lifetime, the soul-chilling cracks of that gunfire became fixed in my spirit. Along with others, dazed, I jumped into the excavated ditch. The noise of the shots, the sight of the surging crowd, and the image of mute terror frozen onto the faces of adults burned into my childish soul.

At that time, I only understood the shock. The heart-striking, physical horror that a Hungarian kills a Hungarian. But decades later, as a prison chaplain behind the bars and as a theologian over my books, I understood the true, the hidden tragedy.

They thought, we thought perhaps, that political parties were fighting each other. We believed that ideologies were clashing on the stage of history. What a massive mistake! The stage was, in reality, a torture rack. The true counter-party to the state-party was not another political faction, but the Hungarian people themselves. A divided, wounded, yet awakening people. And this realization is the key to the greatest inherent contradiction of all politics.

Read this short requiem for our national hour of destiny. It is not for the weapons, but for the souls.

Author: Lajos Békefy

 

1956: OUR NATIONAL HOUR OF DESTINY

 THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES 

(2.)

From the Torture Rack of History to Plot 301

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;

and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” (Matthew 12:25)

 

From the Pages of the Culture of Remembrance in Győr, in 25 Minutes, in Four Movements, as a Historical-Theological Outline

FIRST SCENE: THE TORTURE RACK OF HISTORY – PARTY VERSUS PEOPLE

NARRATOR:
The confrontation between total oppression and the true counter-force. The collapse of political technocracy in the face of moral truth. The Communist Party lived in the illusion that it had permanently pigeonholed society, registered every member, and monopolized all power. The moment of tragedy and surprise comes when it is revealed that the oppressive apparatus has no legitimate partner for dialogue, because the force standing against it is not another political party—but the very masses in whose name it claims to rule. This first scene infuses remembrance with incredible tension and historical depth. Contextualizing the Hungarian events with the 1953 East Berlin (GDR) uprising and the 1956 Poznań (Poland) workers' revolt perfectly demonstrates the foundational premise of this movement: structural sin and the Babel Tower effect were the collective traps of the entire communist world system.

THE VOICE OF POWER: (Chorus or Narrator, speaking with the tone of bureaucratic coldness. A monotonous, mechanical, emotionless chorus, grinding out strict statistical data and party resolutions. In the background, metallic machine noises and the brass fanfares of Shostakovich are heard.)
The absurdity of plan fulfillment and compulsory delivery (Hungary, 1951-1953):

“By resolution of the Central Leadership of the Hungarian Working People's Party, heavy industrial production must be raised by 210 percent by 1954! The law must be enforced with the utmost severity against kulaks who fail to meet their delivery obligations or commit sabotage. Statistical report: In 1952, the number of public supply offenses reached 121,213; the number of imprisoned and interned individuals continuously rises in defense of the planned economy and the people's state. The Party administrates, the Party sees all.”

The illusion of total control (Excerpt from Mátyás Rákosi's speech, 1952):

“Our Party's membership has reached 860,000 people. Every single member of Hungarian society is pigeonholed, registered, and verified. There is not a single square inch in this country where the vanguard of the working class does not direct the construction of socialism. The enemy has no base, and the unity of the people and the Party is unbreakable.”

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE – The International Echo of Structural Sin: (The sounds of suppressed discontent, followed by exploding uprisings. The roar of the street.)
June 17, 1953 – East Berlin (GDR), the rebellion of miners and construction workers (A deep, raspy male voice resolutely shouts above the factory noise):

“We are not working for increased quotas! Enough of the lies! The construction workers and miners of Berlin are marching into the streets! We are the people, not your extras or your statistics! We demand free elections and the resignation of the government!”

June 28, 1956 – Poznań (Poland), the cry of the workers' uprising (Another desperate but defiant voice):

“Bread and Freedom! (Chleba i wolności!) The workers of the Stalin Factory have laid down their tools! It is not reaction provoking us, but hunger and your lying dictatorship! We have had enough of the Party!”

October 1956 – Győr, the voice of the water pipe ditch and the wagon factory (Hungarian voices, overlapping, in a steadily growing roar):

“The Győr Wagon Factory has stopped! Do you hear it? Production has halted! Release the innocent from the prisons! The factory does not belong to the Party, it belongs to us! Hungarian, never hurt a Hungarian!”

The Babel Tower Effect: (The Old Theologian slowly raises his head and speaks directly to the audience. Movement II of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 fades out. Following the military, mechanical drum rolls and aggressive brass passages, the theologian's voice echoes through the stage space.)

THEOLOGIAN: “They thought they could build it. They thought that if their power reached the heavens, if the tower of their ideology rose above the clouds, they would become the Lord God on this earth. This is the true Babel Tower effect of communism (Genesis 11:1–9). They believed that if they administrated every human being, if they pigeonholed every soul, they could alter the order of creation. But the law is unalterable: hubris breeds collapse. When the tower reached its absolute highest, the Party suddenly lost its common language with reality. They did not understand the street, they did not understand the worker, they did not understand the child. The language of their own people became foreign to them. And because there was no common speech, power was forced to attack itself with weapons. For if the opponent of the Party is the people itself—then the barrel of the gun always points at one's own reflection. This is how the stage became the bloodiest torture rack of history.”

(The Old Theologian falls silent but remains in his place, staring blankly ahead. In his contemplation, he repeatedly recalls the words of the biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel: “This is only the beginning of what they will do. Now nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Genesis 11:6-7). How many times has this scene been repeated in the history of humanity, of nations, of our own people? The Babel-like confusion of mutual misunderstanding, because people—including those in power—thought more and differently than what would have been sufficient, useful, humane, and innovative. We are all trespassers of boundaries—individually and in groups, within power and outside of power. The revolutionary momentum and dramatic end of '56 carry this historical lack of moderation and misunderstanding within themselves. As a memento. But who learns from this warning? Who learned, and what did they learn, from that national hour of destiny? When the red stars fell into the dust. Yet, that hour of destiny, along with the numerous lessons of recognized historical constellations, still shines brightly in our national memory today. Will we consider at least a few of these on the anniversary—the seventieth?)

Author: Lajos Bekefy

 

 

1956: OUR NATIONAL HOUR OF DESTINY

 THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES 

(3.)

The Divided Nation – Fratricide and the

 Resolution of Paradox

NARRATOR:
This part is one of the central pillars of this mini virtual drama. It is the realization that at both ends of the weapons, people speak the very same language. The struggle is not only against an external oppressor; the nation is wounding itself. The tragedy here becomes two-layered. The true counter-party was the people, but these people had been divided by the dictatorship. This is what gave birth to the horror of "Hungarian killing Hungarian."

The historical parable of Cain and Abel, of fratricide, highlights the timeless trap of politics. The regime wants to homogenize the masses, forcing them in one direction, but by doing so, it only deepens the internal divides. Fratricide and political contradiction appear here as theological sins: division weighs upon the nation like an inner prison.

THE OLD THEOLOGIAN: (in a soft, reflective, slow narrative voice)
Lines from a children's poem echo within me now: “A child's eye is the strangest power, just try it on others or on yourself…” (Imre Szűcs: The Child's Eye). For the first time in my life, there, in the ditch dug for sewage pipes along the street side of the Révai Gymnasium yard, I confronted the reality alongside others: the fratricidal history of Cain and Abel is not a thing of the past. It was happening right before my eyes on the streets of Győr, Pest, Mosonmagyaróvár, and other towns and villages—in October 1956. And it continued in the shattering, deathly silence of the crushed revolution, during the oppressive months following November 4th.

First, it happened in front of the entrance to the Győr prison. “The ÁVÓ is coming!”—and a few moments later, machine guns roared. The fleeing crowd forced me down into that trench, which stretched along the street opposite the prison, behind the Révai Gymnasium, due to sewage repairs. I tried to peek through the tangle of legs and arms. I caught sight of one of the “prides” of Hungarian socialist industry: a dark green Csepel truck. Mounted on a multi-legged stand above the driver’s cabin was a massive machine gun. The uniform-clad soldier fired burst after burst into the air. A monstrous thundering filled the street. Then, suddenly, there came what we later read in Sándor Márai’s poem: “What surged here like the sea? / Why did world orders tremble? / A people cried out. / Then there was silence.” (Angel from Heaven).

First, Cain fired, then our Abels fired back. Hungarian Cains and Hungarian Abels. To this extent, the biblical story was modified. This was the first great silence in the history of '56 in Győr. It lasted only a few seconds, but it carried such weight that I can still feel it physically on my shoulders, on my soul. There, in that sewage trench transformed into a foxhole, a shattering realization emerged, shaped by fear and tears—a sentence I can never forget: HUNGARIAN IS KILLING HUNGARIAN!

Then, the sharp camera of that wondering child's eye turned within me. It was October 24, 1956. In front of the grey, depressing Town Hall, there was a catafalque. It was peculiar because the coffin was draped in the national flag. In the very center, a large, empty hole gaped; the cut-out Rákosi crest was gone, leaving only its ghost. No, at that moment, the phrase did not cross my mind (HUNGARIAN IS KILLING HUNGARIAN!), though it has so many times since. Back then, it was simply a confrontation with death, facing the unanswered questions: “Who lies in the coffin? Who killed them, and why?” Left without answers under the slate-grey sky of Győr.

NARRATOR:
“Hungarian, never hurt a Hungarian!”—a recurring, painful cry. This sentence highlights the fact that the greatest crime of a dictatorship is not physical destruction, but the psychological fracturing of a nation into two or more parts. The true counter-party was the people, but the regime successfully turned the sons of the people against one another (the ÁVH, informants, conscripted young soldiers). The hatred of the years following 1956 did not birth freedom, but an invisible, inner system of prison bars inherited across generations. The dangerous temptation and inner contradiction of politics is that while it promises order and unity, it always feeds on division.

(Dark, heavy, string-led requiem movements, such as Lacrimosa-like motifs, follow one another in the inner spaces of our imagination, underscoring the grief and helpless rage that hundreds of thousands felt in European refugee camps and at home, on the national Golgotha, during those weeks.)

THE DAWN OF THE HOUR OF DESTINY (CSILLAGÓRA)

NARRATOR:
Nevertheless… in the midst of this very terror, something began to be born. Something that, over the years, condensed 1956 in every Hungarian soul into an unparalleled experience of uniqueness, solidarity, and fraternity. It enveloped the memory of those who remember with a kind of national sacredness. It is perhaps no exaggeration to write: then and there, the People, the God-given people, seemed to merge into a moral unity, into a true nation. This became the dawn of the Hungarian National Hour of Destiny (Csillagóra). The flashing of our historical hope in the heavens and in memory. The birth of a relentless protest and hope in the Carpathian homeland that things can be different. The true greatness and "Csillagóra" of '56 is the very moment when, above all party-political divisions, the people—even if only for a few days—were capable of becoming a single moral unity.

THE OLD THEOLOGIAN:

Indeed. Back then, perhaps only as an inkling, but indestructible hope truly dawned beneath the clouds of fear. The victory over party-political division and the internal fortitude of national koinonia (communion) that helped us survive. Because of this, and in my view only because of this, '56 does not end in defeat on the historical torture rack, but in a moral triumph. Those few pure days gave strength to many for decades, lasting all the way until 1989. Until the regime change. Experiencing or remembering that for a few days during those hours of destiny, pejorative party warfare ceased, and the nation—like a single, large, pulsating organism—became one in truth, was an immense powerhouse for the Hungarian people.

As a theologian, I see it today just as I perceived it back then, even if unformulated: the Holy Spirit walked among Hungarian hearts in those hours of destiny, embracing us in the same mysterious way He has embraced the Father and the Son from eternity unto eternity. It was the beautiful experience of what sages of faith have lived through for millennia: when amidst human confusion (in confusionem hominis), the only secure divine guidance suddenly appears (Dei providentia).

Soli Deo Gloria for the Hungarian National Hour of Destiny!

Even today, seventy years later, it remains our deep, strong, and valid experience: the contradictions of politics and the wounds of the past cannot be healed by a new political course, but only by the nation's pure rediscovery of itself before God (coram Deo). The people, and even more so the nation, cannot remain forever on the torture rack or the stage of politics. It can transcend every phenomenon of the torture rack or the stage with the power of its Hour of Destiny. If it is capable of forgiveness and unification in truth.

(A majestic Protestant choral hymn doused in brass, emerging from the darkness and the grief of the requiem—“As Pants the Hart” or “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—which is the voice of reconciliation and indestructible hope, closes this second sequence of scenes in the concert hall and stage of our imagination).

(To be continued until Oct. 23)

Author: Lajos Békefy