FLIGHT OUT OF HUNGARY: FROM TERROR TO LIBERTY

This way! This way to Austria!

AS THE dark figures, feet clinking with ice, shuffled across the frozen swampland, friendly Austrian voices greeted them and white handkerchiefs waved. All last week they came, every day thousands of refugees from stricken Hungary, peasant families, workers, students, young children with notes of identity pinned to their clothing. Once across the frontier ditch they would look back, and there would be a wild shouting of names. Women refugees kissed the first people they met, turned aside and wept. Men pulled off frozen-fingered gloves and shook hands.

Some had been three and four days on the road, hiding in the fields by day, dodging Russian checkpoints. Again and again watchers from Austria saw refugees pinned down by Russian rifle fire at the frontier, captured and led away. One Soviet soldier who penetrated 400 yards into Austria in hot pursuit of a refugee was killed by an Austrian guard. Red army tanks shelled frontier bridges.

A shot of slivovitz, coffee spiked with brandy and a warm bed were on hand for every Hungarian who made it. Austrian hospitality was limitless, but Austrian housing and transport were fast becoming inadequate. By week's end an estimated 80,000 desperate Hungarians --80,000 witnesses against Russian Communism--had crossed the border to freedom. And they were still coming.

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