Tag #136477 - Interview #77987 (ladislav porjes)

As I was the only one at the radio station in Prague that spoke Hungarian, and as the Budapest radio didn’t have any regular correspondent, I was chosen as the ‘war’ correspondent. It wasn’t a very lucrative job, plus I had to leave my terrified wife at home with our two little daughters, but my desire to prove myself was stronger. So in October of 1956 I boarded a special army plane in Prague. The Czechoslovak embassy sent a car for me, which took me to a hotel for foreigners. I had brought a practical leather coat with me for the foul fall weather. My clothing, seemingly so practical, was however soon to become my greatest handicap. For I didn’t suspect that leather coats were somewhat of a uniform of the otherwise plainclothes members of the Hungarian secret police. The rebels of course despised them, often they hunted them like wild game, caught and tied they poured diesel or gasoline over them, and like this hung them head down from the street lamps, so that they would slowly roast over fires that they built under the lamps.