Hungarian Martyrs

THE BRIDGE AT ANDAU (270 pp.)--James A. Michener-- Random House ($3.50).

Through World War II (Tales of the South Pacific) and Korea (The Bridges at Toko-Ri), James A. Michener kept his sense of gaiety and gallantry. The Hungarian revolution of October-November 1956 left him with nothing but anger and a good reporter's determination to put the whole cruel, confused and courageous episode on the record.

In Korea the bridges used by the North Korean army were a device on which Michener could focus a narrative of plain warfare. In the more complex ideological war of Hungarian against Hungarian, and Hungarian against Russian, he has used the bridge near the frontier village of Andau, leading from Hungary toward Austria, as a deeper symbol. The book is Michener's report on what may well be the most important event since the Russian Revolution itself--the first full-scale revolt of a Communist country against the Moscow Moloch. It is a painful and memorable book.

For weeks, with other newspapermen and officials. Reporter Michener hovered about Andau as the beaten but defiant Hungarian Freedom Fighters trooped, limped, staggered or were carried away from the Russian terror. From hundreds of interviews Michener compiled composite portraits of key types in the revolt in Budapest. Streetcar conductors who showed a sudden talent for working antitank guns, Kremlin-decorated soldiers who turned against the Russians, peasants, fugitives from the Red prisons--these make up the glorious and pitiful cast of Michener's story. Their names are mostly fictitious, but they will be long remembered.

JOSEPH TOTH. a young locomotive-workshop hand, began the opening day of revolution, Oct. 23, 1956, with a warning from his foreman to attend more meetings of his Communist study group. Michener traces Toth hour by hour from his home and workshop to his place before the Budapest radio building where the first big battle broke out. As in a dream, young Communist Toth found himself involved in an instinctive surge of resistance against the AVO (Hungarian Security Police). He fell senseless from bullets fired by those who had promised him the earth.

PETER SZIGETI was typical of the new men who had done well out of the Stalinist new order for Hungary. A peasant's son, he had been sent to school, been given foreign-service training, and became a prosperous, dedicated Communist Party official. Yet he was also a Hungarian. His devotion to Petofi, the great 19th century poet-patriot, led him inevitably into the anti-Russian resistance.

CSOKI ("Little Chocolate Drop"), a noncom in the Russian-trained Hungarian army, is made a symbol of all who faced Russian tanks with small arms and gasoline "cocktails." Says Michener on a note of hope: "Of the 400 Communist soldiers in the [Budapest] barracks on the night of October 23, not a single one remained faithful to Communism."

TIBOR DONATH is a portrait of the kind of Hungarian who became--under Russian tutelage--a career torturer for the AVO. It is a gruesome caricature of human nature at its most bestial; yet step by step, Reporter Michener has made the incredible monster a believable horror. The unprintable acts attributed by witnesses to Donath lead Michener to quote with approval the verdict of "one of America's finest and gentlest newspapermen," who said: "I was in Budapest at the time and although I believe that revengeful death accomplishes little, I devoutly believe that the human race would have been better off if the Hungarians had assassinated every one of the 30,000 AVO."

There are some hard words for the U.S. from refugees--the long delay before moral support came in President Eisenhower's message, the now familiar charges of inflammatory U.S. propaganda that could not be backed by real help. But these are minor matters compared to the ferocity of the Red terror. Often Reporter Michener himself appears amazed by the enormity of it, and to vouch for his accuracy he finds it necessary to declare solemnly that he has never fallen for phony horror stories--or for Red-baiting. To buttress the point, he cites his distaste for Wood-row Wilson's witch-hunting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who comes into the book as a stray ghost from a poignantly innocent past. The U.S. has lost its innocence about Communism, but still, Michener asks himself whether his story will be believed in all its details by a prosperous and relatively carefree nation. He cites Mrs. Maria Marothy, who now Jives in Ohio. Michener wonders: If some day a good neighbor at the A. & P. should ask what happened to her hand, will she be believed when she tells that it was broken by the rubber clubs of the AVO?

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