Bedraggled and mud-soaked, footsore and soul-worn, the first planeload of Hungarian refugees debarked into the crisp free air of New Jersey. A few carried cardboard suitcases holding the residue of the past. Weary men in caps, somber-faced women in babushkas, children suddenly aged, paraded into the warmth of American hands. As the U.S. Army Band played Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 hundreds of waiting Americans wept.
For American officialdom, inured to the cold, classic ploys of bureaucracy, the 1956 wave of huddled masses was a strange but warming experience. In Vienna, the U.S. Consulate staff processed the stream of Hungarians...