"That Knock upon the Door"

Six weeks had passed since Robert Vogeler stepped tense and ashen-faced from an airliner at New York's Idlewild airport, after 17 months in Hungarian Communist prisons. One day last week, the marks of his ordeal still etched in his face and voice, Vogeler stood before Washington's National Press Club, and for the first time told the full story of his imprisonment and torture:

Case History. "When a human being is physically and mentally broken, and placed in solitary confinement for 17 long months, his world is largely one of emotional, mental, and spiritual imagery. And if his body is further affected by stimulants, malnutrition, and discomfort close to degradation, his world becomes one of incredible unreality. I ask you . . . to think of me as a case history . . .

"I shall never forget the impressive opening of the iron gates and the loud clang as they closed firmly behind me. I was told that I was charged with sabotage, espionage, conspiracy, and the smuggling of Hungarians out of the country. Whenever I seemed to approach exhaustion, I was given coffee and cigarettes. They obviously contained strong stimulants . . . I was slugged over the ear once and dumped naked into a tub of ice water. I began to have hallucinations. The picture of my wife kept flashing before me. At the 70th hour I fell from my chair.

"Then I was presented with a so-called confession of sabotage. Before I signed that statement, we argued it word by word, line by line. That night I was awakened roughly and was launched on a period of some twelve days of further grilling. I was fed scantily . . . I lost some 20 pounds, and was maliciously subjected to hours of shouting and screaming, or alternately isolated in utter, dead, maddening silence.

"Only my suit and shoes were left to me when I was shoved into a 6 ft. by 9 ft. cell . . . The next ten days I was not allowed to wash, and my menu comprised black bread and water three times a day. The worst of it, however, was the endless routine, repeated every six minutes, of the steel peephole being opened and clanged shut. Finally, I was again cleaned up and shaved and led before the chief of the secret police. I was apparently ready to be hopped up and groomed for my trial.

"You can see readily that the incessant questioning, the unremitting pressure, the malnutrition, the copious stimulants, the screaming, the shouting, the dead silence, the cold and all the other hardships, are designed to force one to say not the truth, but what they call the truth.

"There comes a time when a person . . . believes that he is abandoned, that he will be killed in any case, and that an alleged confession will appear anyway, and so he signs the rubbish placed before him."

Lost, Abandoned. "The long months that followed were perhaps worse than anything, in their cumulative effect. I felt lost, abandoned. My captors were masters at provoking and maintaining anxiety and tension . . . I could never plan even a simple routine for 24 hours.

"After my release from prison, I found it an excruciating experience to adjust myself to freedom. Man should be able to perform the simple act of going to bed with an easy feeling, and not fear being taken from his family in the middle of the night. Probably you can now understand why I think it is such a blessing and privilege to go to bed tonight without fear of that knock upon the door."

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