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Three days later Peter Szanto, full-fledged Freedom Fighter, fought in the biggest tank battle of the revolution. When word reached the barracks that Russian tanks were coming, the colonel ordered complete quiet. The tanks came close to the barracks wall, but no one stirred. Some infantry appeared and shot up the building, but the Freedom Fighters did not return the fire. Finally there were 20 tanks, some 75 infantrymen, a truck, and an armored car outside the barracks. "Colonel Maleter came and looked down," recalls Peter Szanto. "He picked up a small nitroglycerin bottle and threw it at the truck. The truck disappeared in one big roar. Then we all threw nitroglycerin bottles and benzine flashes and used machine pistols on the infantry. It was a fine trick. We killed the infantry, got the truck, the armored car, and four of the tanks in about five minutes."
After that, morale at the barracks was skyhigh. When citizens called up to report the presence of Russian tanks or the whereabouts of the AVH, the Freedom Fighters forayed out to do battle. A week later the Soviet army returned in strength and tried to blast the Freedom Fighters out of Kilian barracks. Peter Szanto was one of the last to leave. He came out through a hole in the back wall after a delegation of local people had pleaded with the Fighters to stop the battle because the neighborhood was in ruins. When he reached home, Peter learned that the AVH had been around asking questions about him. His wife had said that he was at work, but at the truck depot he learned that they had already checked there. Tough little Peter Szanto knew that he was a wanted man. He is a wanted man today.
Lazlo Szabo
Before the Russians came back in tenfold strength, Budapest had its famous five days of freedom. There was heady talk of quitting the satellite Warsaw Pact and proclaiming neutrality. The romantic Hungarians had gone too far: back came the Russians in ruthless array. Out went Nagy, in came thin-lipped Quisling Janos Kadar. The Russian tanks and infantry were now too much for the street fighters. This is where the Hungarian revolution might have ended but for factory workers like Lazlo Szabo, foreman of a textile mill at Vac, near Budapest.
The first outbreak in Budapest, back on Oct. 23, had created great excitement in Vac. Lazlo hurried home from the factory. "A big argument started right away," he recalls. "I said a great change is coming and that we must do something about it. My father-in-law disagreed. He said everyone should lie low, or the AVH would get us. One of my wife's brothers-in-law said, 'It is madness to turn against Russian power. It will crush you.' Then my wife, who is better educated than the rest of us, said: 'Well, I am sure that if we start something, the West will come to help us. It will give them a chance to intervene, and it will show the world that our representative at the U.N. and the Russians are lying when they say the Hungarian people are contented. What has happened to us? Have Hungarians become cowards?' "
Next day Lazlo Szabo joined demonstrations which tore down the Soviet monuments, cut the Red stars out of the flags, and freed political prisoners in the Vac prison.