Prime Minister Péter Magyar paid tribute to the demonstrators of 1956 and their yearning for freedom in an address at a ceremonial wreath-laying on Bem Square in Budapest on Thursday, held to mark the 70th anniversary of the Revolution and Freedom Fight. Magyar also announced the establishment of a museum commemorating the heroes and victims of the 1956 uprising.
The prime minister said that when the university students setting out from the Technical University, and the Budapest residents who joined them gathered, they did not yet know that they were revolutionaries; they became so only hours later, when the first shots were fired at the Hungarian Radio building. But they already knew something of themselves, he said: that with their silent march and their dignified procession they had become free Hungarian citizens, “and this could never again be taken from them.”
“No later retribution could take it from them, nor the tramping of Soviet boots, nor the prison years, nor the decades spent under oppression,” he said.
“Nor could they take away that strength which also fills us whenever we grow weary, whenever we lose faith in Hungary for even a moment — that strength which also carries us forward. For nothing is stronger than the will of free Hungarians and the courageous stand of free Hungarians,” the prime minister said.
The prime minister said that it was a matter of “shame and pain” that in seventy years, and even since the change of regime, the nation had failed to discharge one of its greatest debts: there was no single, worthy place dedicated in its entirety to the memory of the heroes and victims of 1956.
He said that, in homage to the heroes of the Revolution and Freedom Fight, the government undertook to create in the coming years a “worthy shrine of Hungarian freedom”, establishing a museum of 1956 that pays tribute to the victims, to those who fought, and to the nameless heroes.
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Magyar said the martyrs of the revolution would never be forgotten: the innocents led to the gallows, the martyrs buried in unmarked graves, the courage of “the Pest lads and the Pest girls”, the thousands tortured in prisons and the hundreds of thousands driven from their homeland, the innocent victims of the firing squads, and the pain of Hungarian families torn apart.
“Their names and their sacrifice live forever in our hearts and in the memory of the Hungarian nation,” he added.
He said the proof of their victory was that Hungarians could celebrate with cheerfulness, pride and a sense of liberation. That cheerfulness, he said, proved that the Hungarian people had not been broken and had not bowed their heads, and that people could still look one another in the eye today, backs straight, proudly, with a smile.
“We know that the sacrifice was not in vain: the homeland is free, and we have a common future,” the prime minister said.
Magyar called the flag with a hole, born when the Rakosi coat of arms was cut out of the national colours, a world-famous symbol of the 1956 Revolution. Everyone understood it, he said, because it said the same thing in every language: this is our country, and we want to decide its fate. That is why it is still raised high with pride today, he said, because the hole in the middle of the flag is an everlasting symbol of Hungarian freedom.
Magyar described presenting awards to former ’56 university students as one of the most uplifting experiences of his life. Those who stood up for the homeland seventy years ago “are still among us”, he added.
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The prime minister also declared that dividing the nation “is a sin”. He said there were still some who failed to understand that there were minutes and hours when “we are Hungarians only, without qualifiers, without regard to origin or political sympathy”; they could still decide whether bowing their heads to 1956 or their day-to-day political interests mattered more to them, he said.
Anyone arriving with respect and good will would be embraced as a friend, he said, “but we will not yield an ounce of our freedom.” The nation had grown into its own history and looked forward to its independent future “with heads held high and unshakeable faith”, he added.
Paying homage to every hero of 1956, the prime minister closed his address with the words: “Long live the free, truly independent Hungary.”
Most of those attending the ceremony arrived at Bem Square with a torchlight procession setting out from the Technical University, part of the Gloria Victis 1956 memorial series organised by the Rákóczi Association. The march commemorated the student assembly held at the Technical University on October 22, remembered as one of the defining events of the revolution, at which the students set out their demands point by point and decided that, in a gesture of solidarity with the Polish people, they would march to Bem Square the following day, October 23. Many of the marchers waved national flags and the pierced flags symbolising the revolution.
The Rakoczi Association wrote on its website that 15,000 secondary school and university students were taking part in its commemorative programmes. Some 3,500 of them, from 170 schools in Hungary and abroad, were arriving in Budapest between October 21 and 23 for the memorial events.
After the ceremony on Bem Square, the participants marched to Imre Nagy Square, where the prime minister lit the flame of the revolution.