Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Powerful, gripping, immensely thought-provoking & frequently nerve-wracking.

This is a spell-binding book. And really, there is nothing quite like an eye-witness account… I was drawn to this book like a magnet because of its personal significance for me. The sequelae of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution of course, amongst other issues resulted in me being born in Australia & not in Hungary. (My parents were amongst those 200,000 Hungarian refugees who fled or escaped before the iron curtain well & truly came down for the next three decades). This of course resulted in me being cut off from my relatives because I was born in the antipodes (aka: Australia). & if history had been otherwise, would have been my culture. Be warned, once you pick it up - you will find it very difficult to put down! If the word irony, ever needed to apply anywhere, then it can be said that the biggest irony is that at the time of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Austria was completely free of the Russians, that is, it had ceased to be occupied by the Russians. Thus, as Korda so clearly points out: Hitler was born in Austria, as were many of his worst henchmen. It is Hungary that paid the price & suffered for 3 decades for Hitler's crimes. To me this is the biggest irony of the millenia & akin to a Greek tragedy. Michael Korda who was born in Britain but whose father, Vincent Korda was born in Hungary, surmises that Hungary was a reluctant ally for Hitler, or Germany. However, I can attest to this fact. Hungary was indeed a very reluctant ally of Germany in the WW11l. Fearing major reprisals from Germany if they refused to be an ally, they virtually under duress fought with the Germans in WW11. For example, my grandfather, Resser Győrgy (in Hungarian the surname comes first) or in English: George Resser. He was born in Pilisvorosvar, a German speaking town about twenty kilometres from Budapest, which is the capital of Hungary. My grandfather had a German surname. My grandfather's commanding officer, also a Hungarian, expressed his serious resentment & or his anger at be...