Original subtitles

Michael Daniel Kale, aged 17.

Dead in the gutter of Kálmán József street,

Budapest, Hungary.

The date is Monday, October 29th, 1956.

It is morning, a harsh morning.

Everywhere can be seen the scars of revolution.

Because for six days,

Budapest has been agonised by an armed revolt against its communist government.

It was begun, as so many revolutions are begun, by students.

These are their faces.

It was their ultimatum to the government on October 23rd,

which set in motion the gear wheels of revolution.

They are the faces of embryo technicians,

lawyers, artists and teachers,

all fevered with the social discontent of their time.

A discontent which has spread itself from the most advanced of students,

to the most junior of schoolboys.

From their secret and forbidden meeting places,

the revolution has brought the students and the workers,

out onto the open of the streets of Budapest.

Joined by soldiers and other civilians,

and armed with a few sub-machine guns, grenades and ancient rifles,

and bearing their national flags and emblems,

they march in procession to defy the Hungarian government,

and the Russian tanks it has called in to suppress them.

On this morning, October 29th,

such a procession passes up our Kálmán József street.

Their purpose, demonstration.

The objective, Parliament square in the centre of the city.

But they are never to get there.

For suddenly the crowd is fired upon

by police snipers and machine gunners on the roof of a nearby barracks.

In a few moments, many of the marchers are lying dead on the ground below.

But the crowd finally manage to fight their way into the building.

Then for a brief moment, the oppressed become the oppressors

as the crowd take their revenge on the uniformed men inside.

The dividing line between murder

and justifiable execution is difficult to find.

And in the fury of the moment, no one looks for it.

Those freedom fighters who died have been moved further down the street

and lie flag-covered in the dust.

Around them, the everyday life of Budapest starts again.

The grocery rounds-man, whose van has been smashed by a Russian tank,

plods his way from house to house with his bicycle,

his tyres slashed to ribbons by the broken glass in the road.

Here is one of the dead, a schoolboy.

He will be buried in an improvised plot in the nearby park.

One of the men goes off to find the boy's family to tell them of his death.

They must come and identify the body.

The boy's name was Michael Vela Imredi aged 18 years and three months.

Eight minutes ago, he had tried to throw a grenade

through one of the police barrack windows.

He had missed. Some of his friends had laughed at him.

Then a bullet from a police sniper had hit him in the back and killed him.

The man on the left is Tamás Varasi, a primary school teacher, aged 37.

A reserved and quiet man.

He only openly joined in the revolution the day before this.

Because, as he said,

"I can no longer sit still and do nothing,

"when my friends are being killed in the streets outside my home."

Now he is actively organising a local first-aid post.

Kálmán József street lies in an industrial suburb called Újpest,

which like the entire capital has taken on the appearance of a wartime Hungary.

The one small thing that Tamás can find time to do for the Imredi family

is to send one of the young boys who knew him at school to take them home.

The first-aid post is in the cellar at the rear of this ruined house.

It is packed with the wounded from many neighbouring streets.

The conditions down there are not good.

The walls are running with water from the nearby river

and there is an acute shortage of dressings.

Only the very seriously wounded can be moved across to the hospital,

which is two blocks away across a road junction

still under heavy shellfire.

The name of this girl is Margit Zeke.

Aged 33, she is the fiancée of Tamás.

A journalist, she tries to find time between helping him with the post,

to finish a series of articles she is writing

for one of the revolutionary newspapers.

These two have both been on their feet all through the night,

working in the cramped confines of the cellar dressing the wounded.

This little boy seated in the rubble is called Robert Fodor.

His nickname is Roby and he's aged 12.

This is his sister, Zsuzsa, who is 17.

Their father was killed the day before yesterday in the street fighting.

They both saw it happen.

Zsuzsa has tried to be practical and put the tragedy out of her mind.

But young Roby can't and won't let anyone do anything for him.

Not even his sister. And that doesn't help her very much.

This very noisy young man's name is Ernő Szigeti,

a garage hand from Kőbánya.

He's trying to get everyone to listen as he tries to persuade Margit Zeke

to read the latest article of hers recently published

in the revolutionary literary gazette.

At first she doesn't want to, but soon she realises that she has no choice.

Everyone wants to hear the words of freedom she's written.

And for the moment all else is forgotten as they listen to them.

On these faces, as each tragedy is relived and talked about,

can be seen a vivid cross section of the shifting moods of a revolution.

Gentleness and hatred, fervour and grief.

And in these varying expressions and on the faces that reflect them

can thus be seen the whole enigma of the Hungarian people.

A highly strung and volatile nation,

romantic, tempestuous, proud and arrogant of their heritage,

capable both of cruelty and generous kindness,

the Hungarians possess a complex national makeup not easily understood.

This is Erzsébet Sulyok, aged 44.

Her only son was killed yesterday.

István Berek, aged 19.

Parents deported five years ago and not heard of since.

Éva Rokos, aged 17.

Has a common sympathy with István.

Her mother being killed three months ago by security police.

Der Bán, aged 37, foreman at a machine factory in Újpest.

And Mátyás Vajda, 40,

a charge hand at the same factory make strange co-patriots.

For one, Vajda, is a social democrat,

and the other, Bán, a staunch communist,

and consequently they are both forever arguing.

This is Katalin Vardas, aged 18, art student.

For her young years, an advanced cynic and anti-communist.

László Dondosi, 24, librarian.

And before the revolution, the organiser of a discussion circle,

forbidden by the security police.

Each of these people, highly individual, each with conflicting ideals.

It is, therefore, too naive to conclude

that the one common belief strong enough to bring these people together

must be their genuine love of their country

and their desire for its freedom?

The desire for which they are obviously prepared to die.

This is an old truck disguised as a military ambulance.

In it, five members of the AVH security police,

are trying to escape from the siege of their party headquarters

down in the city centre.

But they don't get far.

Called the AVO,

these are the men who've held down the country with an iron grip of terror.

What are these men?

Are they traitors and bullying opportunists of the worst kind?

Or are they unwitting dupes?

And if the freedom fighters had actually won the revolution,

would any of them have donned similar uniforms to hold these men in check?

By the 30th of October,

the Soviet forces had withdrawn to the outskirts of the capital.

And Imre Nagy, the premier, had set up his provisional government.

The revolutionaries were now in complete control of the city.

Four days, the people of Budapest lived under the illusion of freedom,

until the morning of Sunday, November 4th,

when Imre Nagy broadcast the following message

to the Hungarian people.

"This is Imre Nagy speaking,

"chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic.

"In the early hours of this morning,

"Soviet troops launched an attack against our capital city,

"with the obvious intention of overthrowing

"the lawful democratic government.

"Our troops are fighting, the government is in its place.

"I hereby inform the people of Hungary and the entire world of this situation."

Searchlights pick out the grim chaos in the rubble,

as on the evening of the 4th of November,

Russian tanks pour into the city and lining the squares and street junctions,

fire shell after shell into the buildings held by the freedom fighters.

Office blocks, apartment buildings and hospitals are fired on indiscriminately.

Parts of many buildings collapse on their defenders,

and scores are buried alive.

The noise of gun firing is deafening

and everywhere is smoke, brick dust and rubble.

Time and time again,

students and young children are dragged out from beneath the rubble.

It is terrible to watch.

There is no time to bury the dead.

There is not even time to grieve for them.

There has to be a right and wrong in any human conflict.

This most tragic of revolutions can be no exception.

But in any conflict between two major creeds,

one of which you believe in,

there has to be a final taking of sides.

And if those who happened to believe,

as these Hungarian freedom fighters believed,

had taken a strong moral stand on their behalf,

at the time when it most mattered,

then it is more than likely that 20,000 of these people,

need not have given their lives or their liberty for this belief.

Tamás Varasi, dead.

Margit Zeke, refugee.

István Berek, executed.

Éva Rokos, executed.

László Rova, dead.

Der Bán, killed.

And Dan Kelman, dead.

Mihály Kiss, executed.

János Zigzai, deported.

Refugee.

Executed.

Deported.

Missing.

Killed.

This is Imre Nagy speaking,

chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Hungarian People's Republic.

In the early hours of this morning,

Soviet troops launched an attack against our capital city,

with the obvious intention of overthrowing

the lawful democratic Hungarian government.

Our troops are fighting, the government is in its place.

I hereby inform the people of Hung…