Kiss, Tamás: 'I knew exactly what to expect'

By November 5–6, 1956, only a few university students remained in Szeged and those had sunk into total apathy. The ones from the countryside had gone home if they could. I lived quite far away, in Balatonederics, and transport was uncertain, so I didn't set out. Teaching had been suspended, but we were still receiving meals at the university canteen. I was living at Eötvös College by then. This, incidentally, had been set up in Szeged in September 1956, and there were around twenty of us, three from the law faculty, who'd been selected to live there by the university administration. I was very proud to be there. In November, I had two places to live as I still had my digs, as well as a shared room at Eötvös. So at times I was at Eötvös and at times I went out to my digs. Andris Lejtényi had disappeared - it turned out later he'd defected. A group of around twenty to thirty of us met regularly at the MEFESZ office, which we'd been given by Professor Baróti before the revolution broke out. We talked politics and analysed events. A fourth-year pharmacology student tried to revive MEFESZ, but there wasn't much point, as there were hardly any students left in Szeged. There was one other thing that I took part in. Imre Tóth and his group began to produce anti-Kádár pamphlets and I joined in a few times and helped to distribute them. At the end of December, I finally went home to Balatonederics.

Did they talk at home about what they'd done during the revolution?

The subject wasn't discussed. Let me give you a personal example, which I think is typical of the period. I of course was arrested and put in prison, and I had pangs of conscience because of my father. How was he going to cope with the fact that his little son was in prison, not university, after he'd justifiably been hoping for better things from him? Early in the 1990s, a good while after my father's death, it finally became possible to examine police and court documents, and I was amazed at what I read in an environment study produced by a local policeman: 'It's typical that his father, Ignác Kiss, a teacher in Balatonederics, was secretary of the revolutionary committee.'I knew nothing about it before. It was a great weight off my mind, because if he'd been secretary of the revolutionary committee, he must have understood that I couldn't have stayed out of things. There'd been a demonstration in the village, they'd sung the national anthem, they'd knocked down a red star and they'd elected a revolutionary committee - that's all that had happened. So the reprisals were relatively mild as well: two people were interned, but my father didn't have any trouble.

So I was at home during the last days of December. I went back to Szeged sometime around 10 January. I'd been there a few days when my landlady met me in a fearful state and told me a division of 'pufajkás'had been looking for me and they'd turned my room upside down. Well, I thought, I have to get out of here at once. I should just say that a few days before, I'd had enough sense to burn all the MEFESZ papers I had in the little iron stove - rule books and other things, as well as pamphlets and membership cards. So I'd left no written evidence behind. I got on the train and went home. At home I told them there was a problem, they were after me. The council of family elders decided I had to defect. I even set off to one of my relatives'in Vas County. I arrived in the evening and the plan was they would take me across at dawn, but at dawn I announced I wasn't going after all. I decided to solve the problem by spending a week with each of my various aunts, uncles and cousins in Transdanubia. The talk in Balatonederics may have been that I'd defected. I went back to Szeged sometime in March, but as soon as my friends saw me, they told me to leave at once as the police had been combing the city for me. So I went into hiding again. I got a letter from the university sometime at the end of April, summoning me to a disciplinary hearing. I thought this was no joke and if I didn't go, I'd be kicked out of university. I arrived in Szeged in the morning hours and went into the university. They looked at me in horror, as if they'd seen a ghost, and told me again to get out of there at once. I turned round and left. I was less than a hundred metres from the university when two plain-clothes detectives stepped up to me and took me by the arms, and one of them asked, 'You're Tamás Kiss, aren't you?'I said yes and they said, 'Right, so come with us and don't make any fuss!''Fine, just don't handcuff me,'I said. Then we strolled into the police station in Kossuth Lajos fasor, about a kilometre away, where they welcomed me with great glee, saying they'd finally found the guy they'd been chasing for four months.

Had they looked for you at your parents'place as well?

No, they knew very well I wasn't there. Even in that little village there were informers who said they hadn't seen me, so why turn the teacher's place upside down? Even in Szeged, they thought I'd defected, and when the others were arrested, Lejtényi and Kiss came up pretty frequently in the witness statements. From that point on, the police ransacked the country to find us. Lejtényi really had left the country, but they managed to catch me in the street. But I should add, I didn't feel like hiding away any longer. So that's how my eight months'on remand started, and it was very harsh. I was tormented with interrogations every other day from morning till night. Besides that, there was my complete uncertainty about whether I could get out of it. As a law student, I knew exactly what Penal Code I/1 meant: instigating and heading a plot to overthrow the Hungarian People's Republic. The sentence for that could easily be the rope. It was obvious what I'd been doing between 12 October and 4 November. It couldn't be denied as I was known everywhere, my name was public knowledge. So I just recited whatever I could remember, like a lesson at school. I also knew that Lejtényi'd left the country, so I tried to put things in a way that made it look as if he'd taken more of the initiative, he'd been the leader. In fact, the two of us, or more precisely three, Imre Tóth as well, had played equal parts. I really didn't hide anything, apart from the single fact that I'd spoken in Budapest at the meeting at the Technical University. In the end they couldn't prove anything, as I hadn't introduced myself there. We'd just taken part as delegates from Szeged. So those interrogated as witnesses had no idea of the name of the guy from Szeged who'd made a speech. There were two or three other things, like the pamphlet distribution for instance, which Imre Tóth and I hadn't spoken of for a long time, but around September they proved we'd done it. It turned out later they knew we'd done it in December 1956, because someone from the building where we'd produced the pamphlets was taken in for three days and it was beaten out of him. Anyway, whatever's in the case materials about MEFESZ and the university movements is fact, that's the way it happened. The names, dates and locations are exact, because if two of them couldn't remember a date correctly, the other five could correct them. So it's possible to reconstruct the development of mefesz from 12 October all the way to the 23rd.

What was the atmosphere like during the interrogations?

I was arrested around noon on 29 May and taken to the police headquarters, which had previously been the ÁVH building. I was taken into a room, where a police officer was sitting at a table and there were one or two policemen there too. The two detectives announced that they'd arrested and brought in Tamás Kiss. The first thing the police detective sitting at the table asked wasn't my name, or what I'd done, but 'How did you leave Szeged?'and he mentioned a date, March something. By plane, I answered. Very annoyed, but perhaps to relax the tension a bit too, he clapped his hand to his forehead and said, 'We never thought of that!'Clearly they'd been watching the railway and bus stations. I thought they wouldn't check the planes, so I was lucky, I was free for another two months. They didn't ask me anything else, just accompanied me up to the cells. The holding cells were right up at the top of the building. They were very small, narrow cells about one and a half metres by two and a half, with the windows onto a corridor. They took away my trouser belt and shoe laces, which is usual. I then became aware of my position. This was it, what I'd been expecting for months, I'd been arrested and I couldn't do anything to change that. Then I thought through the whole period from the middle of October to December and figured out what I was going to say. Maybe the next day or the third day, they started the interrogation with the usual questions: What was I called? Who were my friends?

You were twenty-two years old at the time, weren't you? Do people grow up fast on occasions like that?

Look, all I can say is that we were different from people in their twenties nowadays. The Second World War, growing up without parents around and in extreme poverty, it all made you very independent. That's one thing. The other is that we as law students we were clear about criminal law. They even asked me during the course of the investigation if I knew what the penalty was for what I was accused of. I knew what could be expected by someone who'd been active for more than half a day in '56. The Kádár regime had been in place for about six months, arrests and the 'pufajkás'operations were in progress, trials were underway, I knew exactly what to expect. In fact, I reckoned on worse than what actually happened.

At such times, does someone weigh up how much it's worth resisting or co-operating?

We didn't consider organizing mefesz was a crime, or the fact that we were national guards during the revolution. Before the revolution, we'd organized mefesz quite openly in the university. We'd had discussions with the rector, the dean and the DISZ committee for days on end. We thought they couldn't make this into such a serious matter, but it turned out we were wrong. What they underlined during the investigation was what they labelled 'preparations for the counterrevolution.'So they didn't take into any account the fact that we'd done things openly.

During my first interrogations, I just related things what had happened. Obviously not everything and not in detail. I tried to put out feelers to see what they knew and what they didn't. I only gave the names of people it was impossible for them not to know. I won't talk about what they don't know, I thought, and then we'll see what happens. Four times during the eight-month investigation proceedings, different detectives started again from the beginning: 'Now tell us what you were doing on October 1, 1956!'and from there all the way through to December. I tried to figure out what they already knew. After a couple of months, I realized they knew a lot more than I'd assumed, but they just found it difficult to handle the mass of facts. So there was an agent's report, this report and that report, and witness statements, but they expected me to fit the events together precisely, with dates. So by the end, around September or October - if I check the interrogation minutes of that time - the whole picture had more or less come together.

How much did they swing from being good-natured to ill-natured? Was it perceptible?

My first interrogator, a lieutenant or second lieutenant, wasn't a very clever or cunning detective. He wrote down what I said, but he didn't take much notice of it. I was taken up again six months later and there was a new detective, a major. He was much craftier. They put on psychological pressure by saying that others had already confessed and showing me their statements. I was informed that they knew exactly what I'd done, that they were just waiting for me to admit it in my confession. They didn't use physical force on me. I don't consider it physical force that I was in that narrow, one-man solitary cell for a good two to two-and-a-half months, or that they didn't really let me sleep at night. Though it's pretty hard being alone for two-and-a-half months.

Here's a nice story. After I was arrested in the street, I wasn't allowed to tell my parents what had happened to me. Around two months had passed when they put me in another cell, where there were four or five of us. I complained to my cellmates that my poor parents didn't even know what was happening with me. One of them somehow got hold of a bit of pencil lead and a piece of paper. I suppose he sneaked them off the table during his interrogation. Then I wrote a little letter of a couple of lines, asking the finder of the letter to inform my parents in Balatonederics, the teacher, Ignác Kiss. The lavatory window overlooked the neighbouring plot of ground. I folded the paper into a little plane and threw it out of the window. It was summer, maybe July or August, I don't know exactly. Next morning, when I was taken up for interrogation, the detective began by saying, 'Haven't you written a letter to your parents yet?'Well, I said, I haven't been given permission. 'Well, here's a sheet of paper,'he said, 'a standard printed form, write where you are!'I addressed it, wrote it and signed it. That was all I could write, and my parents received it. I found out a long time later that there were detectives and policemen living in the neighbouring building, where I'd thrown the little paper plane into the courtyard. So they'd found it and immediately taken it up to the police building. At least the detective was decent enough to let me get in touch with my parents after two months.

There were long periods of solitude. Can you train yourself in some way to bear the isolation more easily?

Yes. For instance, I'd amuse myself and pass the time by solving mathematical and geometrical problems in my head. I'd previously attended the Faculty of Natural Sciences for a year, and I remember a secondary-school pupil telling us he hadn't been able to solve a problem in the entrance exam. Well after two days'work in the cell, I proved to myself that the problem certainly couldn't be solved with secondary-school knowledge and study materials. Or I used to recall films, remembering who the director and actors were. I tried to recollect books and novels, so I wouldn't be thinking about being shut away.

After two months, you were taken to a shared cell. Did you know anyone there?

There were some I knew, and some I didn't. There was a ruse in that too, as I found out later, because this so-called cell informer, someone I hadn't known before, wrote an eight-page report on what he'd talked to me about.

When did you find out about that?

In the 1990s, when I was able to look at the materials.

Did you not even suspect who the agent in the cell was?

Not at the time, and he's died since. God rest his soul, it's over, I've forgotten about it.

Did you not think that someone could possibly report what you talked about?

We took care how we expressed ourselves, but certain things were said. No details, that's also clear from that report. In fact, it turned out later that the cell in Szeged was bugged. One report's survived, based on a tape-recording almost eight hours long. There was one other prisoner there I talked to more openly. I told him I wouldn't deny something that could be proved by two or three people, there was no point in being beaten up for that. It wasn't difficult for the detectives to piece together what we'd been doing between the middle of October and the end of November.

In December 1957, we were taken over from the police station to the court cells, on the top floor of the county court in Szeged. I spent Christmas there. By that time, I was just waiting for the trial so it would turn out what was going to happen.

When did it turn out you would be first accused?

When I was handed the charge sheet. In fact, that's the only document I saw. I was able to read it in the cell and even add comments on how I'd conduct my defence. I managed to avoid returning it. We were still in civilian clothes at the time and I hid it in the lining of my raincoat. I still have it. [...]

Were the reprisals in Szeged more or less severe than they were in the rest of the country?

During the revolution in Szeged, not a hair on the head of anyone in the party leadership or the ÁVH was harmed. All that happened was that eight, ten or fifteen ÁVH people were taken into protective custody, most of them at their own request, and they asked for a ping-pong table because they were bored out of their heads in prison. There was one victim during the revolution in Szeged, killed when they fired into a crowd. Bearing all that in mind, the sentences passed afterwards were severe. There was one death sentence and several sentences of life or fifteen or ten years. In the students'trial that I was a part of, the sentences were severe again. After all, an eight or ten-year sentence isn't trivial. But I must say at the time we felt we'd got off lightly. We also realized that the fact we'd begun preparations ten days before the revolution, that we'd done anything at all against the system, would be judged more severely. We were also active during the revolution, and we didn't stop after the revolution either, so that was a bit much for them. Considering all that, we didn't look on our sentences as severe at the time.

The court hearing began in January...

And it was over by the early days of February. I had a defence lawyer assigned to me. The others lived in or near Szeged and they hired lawyers of their own. I didn't think that was necessary, and in any case, my parents wouldn't have been able to afford the fees. The assigned lawyer did practically nothing of any significance. The judge was Mrs Béla Móricz, a woman of around 35 with only a secondary education. As far as I know, she was the only one at the county court who was also a member of the city party committee. The other, older judges were not so well in, and I think that was lucky for us, because Mrs Béla Móricz decided herself how many years to sentence us, she didn't have to prove at all costs what a good comrade she was. A Szeged journalist asked her in the 1990s - and the interview appeared in a Szeged paper - whether she felt our sentences had been severe or over the top. As far as I remember, she replied that they'd telephoned her because they thought the sentences were lenient, but she'd informed them that it was up to her how severe a sentence to pass. No one was to interfere, there was independence of the judiciary. So by appealing to the independence of the judiciary, she could afford not to pass sentences of, say, fifteen years or life.

What sentence did the prosecution call for?

At the end of the indictment he asked the court for the strictest, but not the heaviest sentences for the three of us, myself, Imre Tóth and Dezső Göncöl. For the others, he requested strict but just sentences. That indicates that he wasn't asking for the rope, because in that case, they would generally ask for the heaviest sentence. By comparison, the sentences of eight, ten and six years can't be classed as heavy. [...]

How many days did the trial last in the first instance?

About a month. There was a hearing every 2–3 days, about 8–10 times in all.

Was it possible to get in contact with your parents during that period?

I first met my parents during a court recess. I was able to write letters whilst I was in court custody and I wrote to tell them when the hearing would be. I managed to talk to them for five minutes once during a break in the trial. Sentence still hadn't been passed and they were also hoping it wouldn't be very severe. They knew I'd clearly receive some prison sentence as I'd already been inside for almost a year and they could see it was a major case, held in a large hall, with a lot of witnesses. About 40 witnesses were called. They were clear that I wouldn't be acquitted, particularly as it wasn't usual to acquit the first accused.

After the sentence was passed, did you think about appealing?

Yes, I didn't think the sentence was heavy, but I appealed anyway and asked for the sentence to be reduced. Just to see what would happen.

Did you consult your lawyer?

No. The lawyers assigned to the others appealed automatically, claiming that the court hadn't taken a lot of mitigating circumstances into account. Furthermore, the text of the Penal Code I/1 specifies – and this is the essential point – initiation and leadership in a plot to overthrow the Hungarian People's Republic. Well, the lawyers took the view that this wasn't plotting, because these 'children'had done everything openly. And interestingly enough - after all, almost a year passed before our case came up before the Supreme Court - this was taken into account and the grounds for the sentence was changed to initiating and leading a movement, instead of plotting to overthrow the Hungarian People's Republic. It was still the Penal Code I/1, but it wasn't so serious, because we hadn't do this illegally or secretly, and not subversively, but demonstrated, made speeches and held meetings publicly. So on that basis, everyone's sentence was reduced by two or three years on appeal to the court of second instance. Mine was cut from eight to five years. So again, that was a weight off our minds. After all, we could cope with that 5–6 years standing on our heads, they wouldn't change that again.

When were you transferred from Szeged to Vác?

After the sentence was announced at the hearing of the first instance the prison guards came, handcuffed us again, put us in the paddy waggon and took us to the Csillag Prison in Szeged. There they took our details again, then off with our civilian clothes and on with prison uniform. I handed in the charge sheet I had together with the civilian clothes. My clothes were in a bundle, which always followed me. In the Csillag, we were put in with common criminals in a fairly large cell. There I was allowed to be together with my partners in crime, including Perbíró. We were moved about from cell to cell. This went on until spring 1958, when the political prisoners were separated and transferred to the building known as the Little Jail. It was only political prisoners from Szeged and Csongrád County in there. After that, we were taken off to Vác some time in the autumn of 1958.

	Perbíró, József

But first let me tell a story from the time when it was just the politicals in the Little Jail. What liberties we took! We'd been sentenced by then and everyone was relieved.

There was this section commander in the Little Jail, a short sergeant who really hated us and messed us around when he could and always talked down to us, and one morning he told us the cell was filthy and we had to mop up. There was a deal floor and the trusties brought a bucket of water, a scrubbing-brush and a floor cloth, and we gave it a scrub. It was our task to clean up the cell. Anyway, Cigu, as we called him, came back about ten o'clock, looked round and declared, 'This place is still filthy, start all over again, the trusties'll bring some water!'Fine. We poured the water out and most of it ran away through the cracks in the floor, then half an hour or three quarters of an hour later, we knocked on the door and said we were finished. Cigu came back again and told us it was still dirty and we wouldn't get lunch until the cell was clean. He had water brought again, and again we made as if we were scrubbing. Well, what was there to scrub? We'd scrubbed twice already. He did that to us twice more, by which time it was about two in the afternoon. Lunch had been sent round to the other cells at noon, but we didn't get it till much later. We spooned up the soup and handed back the mess-tins. Then the domestic came and filled the mess-tins up again. There was a table by the cell door, where the cell captain would put the mess-tins as they were handed in through the hatch. When the trusty had handed them all in, Jóska Kendi, the cell captain, stuck his fork in, put some of the potato noodles in his mouth and announced they were cold. We all caught on right away. Kendi knocked on the door and the trusty asked what he wanted. 'The potato noodles are cold, warm them up or we're not going to eat them!'The domestic went away and about five minutes later, the loud footsteps of six to eight screws could be heard coming along the corridor, headed by Cigu and some political officer. The cell door was torn open, 'What's this? A hunger strike?''No,'said Jóska Kendi. 'It's not a hunger strike. It's just that the sergeant has only just given us lunch and the potato noodles have got cold, and we've asked for them to be warmed up.'The political officer had enough sense not to make things any tenser and told the trusties to take the food back and warm it up. And so they did. They took it away, warmed it up and brought it back, and we ate it. But that wasn't the end of the matter, of course. Next day they began interrogating us. People were taken one by one to see the political officer, who started on about a hunger strike and sedition. We all said, pardon me but this hasn't got anything to do with a hunger strike or sedition. In the end, the 'sedition'was dealt with by withdrawing letter and parcel privileges, that is to say by a prison disciplinary measure. It was typical that we allowed ourselves the luxury of behaving like that at that time.

So you were transferred to Vác.

I began my career in Vác in the SC - solitary cell - section. There were three of us in one very narrow little cell. We were again sleeping on straw or straw sacks. All at once, a month later perhaps, someone said, 'Get your stuff and come with me,'and we were put into a larger, fifty cell as they called them. There were about 22 of us in there, including several university students, intellectuals and engineers. It turned out they were putting us together to make up a team, because they'd set up two workplaces in the prison. One was a so-called translation office. That's been described a lot already, the place where Imre Nagy's supporters and well-known people had been put together in two or three cells and made to translate technical or heaven only knows quite what sort of books, for the Interior Ministry. Well, our work was to do what was presumably, in my opinion, industrial espionage, in a chemistry laboratory set up by the Interior Ministry inside Vác Prison. We analysed the chemical properties and composition of various textile and other dyes. We were clearly carrying out just part of an assignment. Maybe there was a similar lab somewhere else, I don't know exactly. It was just the sort of job for us. Everyone could do it and we worked hard. The people in the cell all had a similar outlook and about the same level of education. We made a very good community in the cell and the work was great too. The laboratory was run by an Interior Ministry major who came out from Budapest every morning. After a month or two, the major realized we weren't to anything bad and we made a good team, and if we asked him for something, some little concession, he'd fix it for us. An Interior Ministry major commanded respect there. The little prison-guard sergeant or section leader would stand to attention when Comrade Major appeared. Anyway, we spent about eighteen months under quite bearable conditions. During the second half of that period, for instance, the exercise for the lab workers wasn't just the usual walking round and round in circles. We were allowed out into the courtyard and within that confined area, we could gather in little groups to sunbathe, walk, or chat. By the time the amnesty came in the spring of 1960, the concessions had gone so far that this major had arranged for the cell doors to be kept open after work and we could go from cell to cell. We had to be back in our cells for supper and lock-up; everyone had to be in his place according to the specified order. This team broke up when the 1960 amnesty came and they let out the ones with sentences of five years or less.

There'd been rumours over the previous months. There was a prison newspaper; the technical engineers had tinkered about with a radio and we could listen to the news. Information had leaked in through the guards as well. This major of ours didn't take secrecy too seriously either. We knew there'd be an amnesty in spring and we were all looking forward to it. When the screw came at last and said, 'You, you and you get your stuff and come with me, you're getting out,'it turned out that the amnesty only applied to short-sentence people and a few privileged prisoners. Then the ones left behind started the Vác hunger strike. That's pretty well-known. As a result of the hunger strike, some of my old cellmates were taken to Sátoraljaújhely, some to the Transit Prison and some to Márianosztra. I wasn't involved as I was released on 1 April 1960.

How much did being inside tell on you?

My fellow prisoners were a similar age to me, 22 or 23, people who'd just left parents at home or perhaps brothers and sisters, and we coped with prison much more easily than the older guys with small children, wives and families. It was very difficult for them. They got information at visiting times or in coded form in letters, learning that their families weren't being left alone either. They'd been sacked from this place or that, so that the wife hadn't got a job and their social situation was really bad. These prisoners were tormented by the thought that they couldn't do anything about the situation their families were in. The younger ones accepted much more easily that we were going to be inside for a few years. We said we'd pick up life outside when it was over, and that was all there was to it.

Visiting times generally left everyone unsettled. At least I was like that. If there was a visit every six months, I was fine for six months, but it was days before I was back to normal after the visit. No matter how much you were looking forward to seeing your folks, it was much harder to put up with prison after the visit. We plodded through our work. We also had books, and at the end, they were even showing films sometimes, always some meaningless Soviet film, but at least it was something different from the cell. It was very difficult after the visits, though. [...]

The group in the fifty cell, or the lab workers to be more precise, kept in touch after release. Friendships were kept up, even though we were all scattered in different directions. I remained friends with some of them right through the thirty years of the Kádár period. I haven't made a single new friend, I haven't established a friendship with anyone since. I've had good relations with colleagues at work and lots of new acquaintances, but not what I'd call a friendship, except with my old cellmates. And those relationships still survive today, I trust them completely, I'm frank with them, and I can talk to them about everything. By 1999 or 2000, we had different opinions about present-day politics, though. Some of us support the MDF, some the Christian Democrats, some the SZDSZ or the FKgP. There are people with all kinds of political sympathies, and a great many with no interest in politics at all.

Did it not turn out later that any of them hadn't deserved your friendship?

Well, it's an awkward subject. All I know is that they did try to recruit perhaps one or two of our group, but they immediately told us about it: 'Well guys, I didn't tell them to get stuffed, but I'm not going to tell them anything.'I do not know about anyone becoming an agent or abusing our friendship and trust. [...]

We were called out of the cells on 1 April 1960, several of us. We changed our clothes and they sat us in a paddy waggon and took us to the lower station at Vác. Twenty minutes to half an hour later, the train arrived. We were all pale and white when we got on. We could see people knew we'd just come out of prison.

Were you given any instructions about how to behave when you got home?

Just a few days later I had to register at the police station nearest to my place of residence. I went to my parents'place in Balatonederics. We were really pleased to see each other when I arrived. The next day I went in to the police station at Tapolca with my release papers. They told me I'd have to report in every week on Saturday or Sunday. That went on for a while. Then one time I asked how much longer I'd have to keep reporting every week and they told me I didn't have to come any more.

How did you manage to find employment? You were expelled from the university, weren't you?

I was excluded from every university in the country. This was quite obvious although no one ever told me so. Sometime in 1963 or 1964, I looked out the bulletin listing the names of those banned. Well, I started off at home with my parents from April to July. I couldn't get a job and I just tried to recuperate. It was no real problem for them to cook for an extra person. I didn't have any other requirements. Some time in July or August I said, right, now it's time I got a job, I'll look for some gainful employment. The point here again is that I didn't have a family to support, unlike those who were five or ten years older than I was. They had to get jobs straight away and support their families. My parents kept me for several months. I couldn't get a job in Balatonederics, there wasn't any employment in such a small village. So I made enquiries for a while in Tapolca, but I didn't find anything I liked. Finally I heard from a distant relation, a doctor in Győr, told me to go there and he'd get me a job as a labourer in the wagon works. He knew someone there. So at the end of August or beginning of September, off I went up to Győr and started work as a labourer in the wagon works. Initially I lodged with the mother of this relative. Later I moved to digs elsewhere.

Were you taken on without further ado?

They wouldn't ask a labourer about his record. I already had a job record; I'd worked for a year after secondary school. They didn't even ask why there were a couple of years missing. In any case, Győr's a long way from Szeged. I was a labourer with a crane-maintenance crew of fifteen or twenty, working with the fitters. Then I managed to get a licence to drive a forklift truck, transporting tools, materials and people. About twelve months later, I thought I ought to try to get up to Budapest, as a good few of my old cellmates were living there, as well as people I knew from secondary school. After several rejections I found work in the Kőbánya Machine-Tool Works by responding to an advertisement and I became a warehouse labourer. There were three or four of us working in the warehouse under a foreman.

Then I realized I was hardly going to rise above a labourer unless I got a college diploma, so I enrolled at the Technical College of Political Economy, which wasn't far from the factory. A year later, I had a technical diploma in political economy, which provided a qualification as a certified accountant, company planner and statistician.

In September 1962, I met my wife, Klára Csikós, who lived in Balassagyarmat. She'd been a high-school classmate of Endre Derzsi, who'd become my best friend in prison. When I talked to him there about what we'd do if we managed to escape and where we could find a safe place to hide, I'd given him my parents'address and he'd given me the address of Klári Csikós. Well, we never got round to escaping. Klári had got divorced by 1962. Then that September meeting became a marriage on 30 December. It's typical, looking at the wedding pictures, to find alongside the close relatives, ten or twelve of my fellow prisoners. Misi Nagy, Lajos Tóth and Péter Józsa, for instance, and Imre Tóth as my witness. After the wedding, we invited the guests up to the Budapest Citadel for bread and dripping and a glass of wine. I then moved to Balassagyarmat, where Klári had a flat. She got me a job through an acquaintance, as a lowly clerk in the Film Industry Company and I worked there for a whole day. The next day, the manager told me that an ex-screw from Vác, who'd recognized me in Balassagyarmat, had burst in and told him he would inform the party committee straight away if they employed counter-revolutionaries like me. The manager's request was that we should part company without making a row about it. I said fine. I'd worked there for one day, on 2 January. After that, I couldn't get a job for several months. Later I became a machinist with the General Industry Company, making little washers on a press; I worked there for a couple of months. Then I was employed by a cooperative farm, as an accountant this time, as I'd obtained my diploma by then. After that came the model farm of the Szügy agricultural polytechnic, where I was an accountant. My wife was caretaker there and I got into the model farm with the help of acquaintances of hers. I worked there for about a year. Meanwhile the poultry hatchery in Balassagyarmat was extended, and my wife, who knew people in the county agricultural department which controlled the hatchery, talked to the personnel officer, János Szabó, and he stood security for me. I was the single accountant. There were twenty of us altogether.

We hatched more than a million chicks over the ten years I was there. There I was really able to work under normal conditions. They knew about my '56 past, but the personnel officer of the agricultural department, the János Szabó I mentioned, just made a mental note of it and I wasn't pestered, I was just left in peace. Well, I was left in peace to some extent. Some six years after I got the job, a peace and friendship train was organized from Balassagyarmat to go to Moscow, and my boss, Pista Szarvas, told me they'd put me on the list too, because we liked each other and worked well together. I was looking forward to the trip enthusiastically, and finally being able to go abroad somewhere. I'd even started to pack when Pista dropped in a couple of days before departure, white as a sheet, to tell me I couldn't go after all. I'd been crossed off the list; counterrevolutionaries weren't allowed to travel, they said.

What year was that?

It was 1969. In 1970, though, I thought I'd try to resume my university studies. At the time, we were bringing up the two children from my wife's first marriage, who were very small. In 1966, we had a son of our own as well, so we were a family of five.

Anyway, in 1970, I wrote an application to resume my university studies. I was in luck again, as it turned out, because it wasn't the boss, just a deputy who saw my application, and I was told I could start again from the beginning by correspondence, at Eötvös University here in Budapest.

So I worked and studied very hard for five years. I was in my thirties by then and I had the three children, so it was no picnic. It was fortunate that I had the kind of job where I could go home if I had nothing to do. I did my work precisely and accurately, and I was always the first in the county to file the financial reports and budget statements I needed to hand in.

I conducted all the business and financial affairs of the company. I completed the university course in five years and obtained a doctorate in 1976. Meanwhile the poultry hatchery was wound up by the county. It was decided centrally that it wasn't an official responsibility, no task of the county council's to supply the county with day-old chicks. So we wound up the whole firm, selling everything off and closing the gates. After that, I went to the Balassagyarmat artificial insemination facility as chief accountant.

Having got my law degree, I decided to try and get a job in my profession. A legal advisor's post came up at the Őrhalom cooperative farm. My predecessor had retired and I was taken on as the lawyer. The cooperative president had been the village headman before the war. He was a loyal, honourable peasant farmer and my record was more of an advantage than a drawback in his view. So I spent ten years again at the cooperative, with a quite self-contained, independent set of tasks to perform. The farm was a joint one covering seven villages, with several hundreds or even thousands of people. Ten years later, I went over to the Drogunion enterprise as a legal advisor. I spent five years there and I'd have had four or five years to go before retirement when the political changes of 1990 swept in. In the summer of 1990, I was approached by a group of six or eight young people from Balassagyarmat, all of them about thirty years old, who asked me to be their candidate for mayor. They knew I was a fifty-sixer.

	Tamás Kiss and András Hegedűs B. in the 1956 Institute

What party was that?

The SZDSZ. Listen, guys, I said. This is too much to ask, I've only got four years to retirement and I've got a job to do. How can I leave the factory in the lurch? But they kept on pleading with me, and in the end, we agreed I run for a local council seat instead of for mayor. The SZDSZ and FIDESZ won the election hands down. These two parties won 13 of the 19 seats, including the positions of mayor and deputy mayor. I wasn't a member of SZDSZ, but I finally agreed to stand for deputy mayor, on condition that I was given independence in economic and legal matters. Then came the election of the mayor; the representatives elected György Németh as mayor and myself as deputy mayor. Of course I had to give up my job with Drogunion, there followed four years as one of the leaders of the city, which were appealing, very hard work, and perhaps successful too.

Interviewer: Adrienne Molnár. Date: 2000.
Editor: Adrienne Molnár.
Translator: Adrian Bury.