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Kadar's last resort was to starve Budapest out of hiding. Food was offered, in exchange for surrendered arms. The rebels, who had done no looting during their days of pride, now began looting shops and department stores. Food trains halted by the Russians outside Budapest were hijacked. Hundreds of radio sets were taken from one factory, presumably so that the rebel underground could listen to the outside world. Monitors reported the faint voice of a Hungarian radio "ham" calling: "Give us news! Say something! Give us news. We ask for news ..."
Guilt & Innocence. Among the thousands of refugees from the Soviet terror was a 68-year-old Englishwoman whom rebels had released from seven years' solitary confinement in a 4 ft. 6 in. wide, fungus-ridden AVH cell. Said onetime lecturer and translator Dr. Edith Bone: "I was a 'secret prisoner.' No one in the world knew about me except the secret police. There are many thousands, perhaps millions, living, rotting like that in Iron Curtain countries." Explained Dr. Bone: "I was innocent [of the charge of being a British spy] but I was also guilty. I had been a Communist and I had helped build the machine of which I was the victim. That is why I am almost glad to have shared the sufferings of the many, many thousands more innocent than I."
As an epitaph for the (estimated) 20.-ooo dead of Budapest, a Hungarian in Vienna quoted a phrase from Virgil: Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor, which translates: "Some avenger will some time arise from our bones." The question was, when?