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Workers and students roamed streets, ignoring curfew. Passing the U.S. legation, they cried: "Why don't you help us?" At 11:09 a.m. Nagy proclaimed that if workers and students "misled by hostile elements" surrendered in the next three hours, they would not be punished. Ex-President Zoltan Tildy appealed to workers to surrender. Said Communist-tamed Archbishop Josef Grosz: "I give you the point of view of the Catholic Church . . . We condemn murder and destruction." At 12:58 the radio announced: "Only two more minutes to escape the death sentence."
Murder in the Square. The Communist maneuver might have succeeded but for the menacing presence of the Soviet tanks. Around noon a crowd began gathering in front of the huge neo-Gothic Parliament building facing the Danube, intending to present Premier Nagy with a petition demanding the withdrawal of all Soviet troops. Soviet tanks and a phalanx of security police blocked all entrances to the building. Trigger-sensitive young Russian tankists became unnerved by the milling crowd around them and began firing indiscriminately into the mass of unarmed people. In a few minutes hundreds of men and women were lying dead or wounded on the ground, while others crouched for cover behind statuary and columns, or lay flat on the pavement.
The massacre in Parliament Square sent Budapest mad. The Soviet embassy was raided, Soviet automobiles fired, the contents of a Soviet bookshop burned in the street. Said a visitor: "I saw a column of rioters march with arms outstretched into machine-gun fire. Students were killed en masse by the Soviet tanks." Workers fought their way into an arms depot at outlying Fot, got themselves machine guns. Others made gasoline bombs out of wine bottles. Soon Soviet armored cars were burning in the streets. Street barricades were strengthened with overturned buses. Hungarian railroadmen tore the hammer and sickle insignia off their uniforms, held the railroad terminal for the rebels. Fierce battles broke out for control of a Communist Party headquarters and the Karoly military barracks. The Communist newspaper Szabad Nep was stormed, and rebel broadsheets were soon distributed proclaiming the now famous 16 points. Out of the fog and smoke that obscured the sky, Soviet jet planes roared down with cannons blazing.
That evening Radio Budapest was calling for doctors and supplies of plasma, asking rebels not to fire on ambulances. In the lightless streets surgical operations were carried out by flashlight. The dead were picked up in trucks. The famed Hungarian National Museum, containing unique, irreplaceable art treasures, and a score of other Budapest buildings were burning. The sniper's single shot rang short and clear beside the bark of the heavy-caliber Soviet tank guns. On Radio Budapest, Party Leader Kadar said that only surrender and complete defeat awaited those who stubbornly continued to fight. The Hungarians continued to fight.