When we finally decided we were going to leave, to escape to Austria. And the end of November 1956 we begun our track to freedom first by foot walking from Leányfalu to Tahi (villages north to Budapest), getting a ride on a wedding cart to Visegrád, from Visegrád to Esztergom, we slept in the Secondary School of Franciscans, they gave us shelter. And eventually we made it to Austria.
In Austria we filed papers with US, Canada and Australia for immigration. I was very surprised my father did not say that we should go to France, he served for 2-3 years in Paris at the Hungarian Embassy as a young clerk, and absolutely adored and loved Paris. But my father was quite correctly pointing out to me that to be an immigrant in Paris is different than being a diplomat. In France you can be an immigrant and your grandkids will be immigrant, they will never be integrated into French society. Looking back, I think he was maybe wrong, things worked differently, certainly a son of a 1956 immigrant Sarkozy became the president of France. But my father felt it is the Anglosaxon countries that had a great reliance on immigration. They welcomed immigrants and they helped immigrants. We filed our papers with the three countries; US permission came throguh first that is how we ended up coming to America.
My great grandfather died in December 1953. I remember vividly on his funeral. His body was laid out in the long dining room table in the Vamossy-mansion. The body was taken down to the Danube, and taken across to Pócsmegyer with a ferry boat. Both bishop László Ravasz and reverend Sándor Puszta were walking behind him. The problem was that bishop Ravasz was under house arrest, he was not supposed to leave one kilometer circle around his home. Couple days before he called the local policeman whom he remembered from bible classes and said to him: listen I know the rules, I know you are supposed to check on me everyday. I am telling you and tomorrow I am going to bury my childhood friend in the cemetery of Pócsmegyer several kilometres far from my home. The policeman replied: I have a very important meeting in Szentendre, a class I have to take so I will not be able to check you tomorrow. So that was how it was arranged that bishop Ravasz was able to come and bury my grandfather.
The malenkij robot turned out to be a long stay in Russian prison camps. I remember my father was captured on the square near the Szent Imre statue in Budapest, and the soldiers escorted him into one of the old-fashioned apartment buildings, that's where they were collecting enough people to march them to whatever they wanted to march them to. My father grew up in the neighbourhood and knew it very well, he knew that building had a back wall which can be easily scaled. And when Russian soldiers went outside to observe a military funeral - this military officer was buried next to Szent Imre szobor - my father took the opportunity and with several other people they scaled the wall and escaped and came home.
Charles Mikecz Vámossy was born in 1941 in Budapest. He came from an intellectual family both on his father’s and his mother’s side: teachers and diplomats were among his ancestors. Thus, after the communist takeover, they had to live as ‘class aliens’: Károly had difficulty getting into high school, his father worked as a night doorman, and his grandparents were deported. Finally, he emigrated with his father in 1956 to the USA, where he started a family. He currently lives in New York State and has two children (and several grandchildren).
