Soviet domination and Communism died at age 73. In a statement to BosNewsLife News Center, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said Gergely Pongratz died Wednesday, May 18, apparently because of a heart attack. "This is a loss for Hungary. He was an important person for Hungarians and for Hungarian democracy," added Gyurcsany, a former Communist himself.
During the revolution, Pongratz was commander of one of the key resistance groups fighting the Soviet Army, explained Dezso Abraham, secretary general of the World Council of Hungarian 56ers revolutionary veterans group.
2,000 REVOLUTIONARIES
Based around the Corvin Passage in Budapest, some 2,000 revolutionaries, including four of Pongratz’s brothers, were able to hold off the advancing Soviet troops for several days, destroying some 25 enemy tanks. “The Corvin Passage battles were an inspiration for the revolution and their fighting spirit was taken up by the whole country,” Abraham said in a statement released to media.
For a few days, between October 28 and November 4, Pongratz believed they had won the battle.
"The whole country was in glories…. The Soviet troops [had left] Budapest, and the meetings are going on with the Soviet government that they’re going to leave Hungary, and Hungary is gonna be a free and independent country. Now can you imagine how we [were] feeling at that time? We were in the glories, in the heaven," he said in a recent interview with the American network Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
However eventually Soviet shelling crushed the Corvin Passage resistance on November 10. Yet, Pongratz continued to take part in revolutionary activities until leaving Hungary a few weeks later.
FIGHTING AGAINST SYSTEM
"We [weren’t] fighting against the communists, we were fighting against the communist system, which is not the same," he told PBS about those days. "I don’t say [that] many, but some of the guys who…were a little bit older, they had a red booklet in their pocket. They were members of the communist party but they were Hungarian patriots. What was important, and I cannot emphasize [this] strong enough, it wasn’t the hatred but the love for freedom, the love for a free Hungary, to live in this country as Hungarians, free," he said, according to a transcript seen by BosNewsLife News Center.
"England is entitled to be in England, Germany [in Germany], France [in France], the United States [in the United States]. Why [did Hungary have] to be occupied by a foreign country? And that’s what we wanted — the Russians to get out…. Again it’s not the hatred — it’s the love for freedom and for our country which gave the weapons in our hands," Pongratz added.
After the revolution, which lasted less than a month, Pongratz lived mostly in Spain before settling in the United States in the 1970s. He returned to Hungary in 1991, after the fall of the communist regime.
"NICKNAMED BAJUSZ"
Nicknamed ‘Bajusz’, or moustache, during the uprising due to his stylish whiskers, Pongratz, set up a museum in 1999 dedicated to the revolution. Located on the outskirts of the town Kiskunmajsa, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Budapest, the exhibit includes a T-55 Soviet tank similar to those used in 1956.
Born on February 18, 1932 in Gherla, a city in heavily Hungarian-populated western Romania, Pongratz moved to Hungary with his family after the Second World War. He was working as an agricultural engineer in the countryside when the revolution broke out on October 23, 1956, and quickly went to Budapest to join the struggle.
At least 2,000 Hungarians died during the 1956 revolution and events linked to it, according some estimates, while many more were injured. About 200,000 Hungarians fled the country. Many Hungarians, including Christians and political dissidents, were imprisoned and tortured by Hungary’s feared Communist security forces.
Pongratz, who was divorced, is survived by a son and daughter living in the US, Abraham said.
(With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Hungary)
