(3 of 5)
The crowd was still nervous and trigger-happy, and newcomers were astonished at how many hands would come out of pockets clutching hand grenades when the cry "Panzer" went up, as a T-34 rumbled into a street, or when a few shots hammered through the air from no one knew where.
Wonderful Hour. Savage reprisals did not outlast the first tense hours of freedom. More typical of anti-AVH demonstrations was the ancient lady dressed in mourning, carrying in one hand a huge black flag the size of a bed sheet and in the other a little bunch of white asters, who marched at a funeral pace three miles to the AVH School for Communism. Naturally the AVH had long since departed, but the old lady had a wonderful hour tossing framed portraits of Lenin and Stalin and clouds of Communist propaganda out of the windows.
A quieter atmosphere, but one which could scarcely be called normal, gradually descended on Budapest. Old women with brooms began sweeping at the doorways of blasted buildings. Rebel work teams searched abandoned vehicles for salvaged weapons. A man with paint pots went from tank to tank painting over the Soviet red star with the Hungarian Republican emblem. A couple of rebel tanks tried to shoot the huge red star off the flagpole of Parliament House, but failed.
There was also fun to be had pulling down Soviet war memorials. High on Gellert Hill, antlike figures swarmed around Sculptor Szigmund Strobl's i soft, statue of Freedom, a graceful woman guarded by the bronze statue of a Russian soldier. Slowly the crowd, pulling on lines attached to the soldier, rocked the statue back and forth, until he tipped forward on his face. There had been no looting in the city thus far, but to walk abroad at night was to hazard being shot at (see PRESS) or stopped by some tough young rebel and made to show identity papers.
Thursday, All Saints' Day, was for the first time in a decade an occasion for joy. Peasants brought food to the city and refused to take money for it. They pressed bread, vegetables and even live ducks and geese into the arms of astonished shoppers. Old peasant women taking food to the hotels and hospitals were offended if their gifts were not accepted. The city was aglitter with candles. Where the massacre which had sparked the revolution had taken place, one thousand candles formed a circle. Everyone who passed knelt for a brief moment.