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WhereAreTheyNow?

THE HUNGARIAN REFUGEES, 50 YEARS ON

GUEST EDITORIAL BY UNHCR GOODWILL AMBASSADOR ANGELINA JOLIE

The last week of October 1956 was one of themost dramatic in the second half of the 20th cen-tury. Two entirely separate crises erupted, both of

which had important and long-lasting ramifications for thefuture course of the Cold War and the relationship betweenthe two emerging Superpowers – as well as for the develop-ment of the United Nations.

On 23 October, while the British, French and Israeli gov-ernments were in the middle of a secret three-day meetingin Sèvres, near Paris, whichwould lead directly to a mo-mentous upheaval in the Mid-dle East (the echoes of whichstill resonate today), a group ofengineering students in theHungarian capital Budapestdecided to hold a demonstra-tion – not about the situationin Hungary, but about Poland.

News had been swirlingaround Budapest about unrestin several other Soviet satel-lite states: riots in East Ger-many, rumblings in Prague,and above all a serious revoltin the Polish city of Poznan inJune, which had been crushedby the army.

The Budapest students hadheard rumours of further un-rest in Poland and decided todemonstrate in support of thePoles. Word quickly spreadthrough the city, and people started coming out of theirshops, factories and houses to join the march.

Thus, to some extent, the 1956 Hungarian Revolutionbegan by accident – although tensions had been simmeringfor some time. The country had suffered considerable eco-nomic hardship and a succession of vicious purges during adecade of communist rule. Nikita Khruschev’s denuncia-tion of Stalin in February 1956 had sent ripples of expecta-tion across Central Europe, and one large demonstrationwith distinctly anti-communist overtones had alreadytaken place in Budapest itself a couple of weeks earlier.

As 23 October progressed, tens of thousands of peoplepoured on to the street – and the initial demonstration veryquickly turned into something else altogether: a full-scalerevolt against the regime and its Soviet masters.

Twelve days later, on 4 November, the Soviet tanksrolled into Budapest. The city endured days of heavyshelling and street battles, and Hungarians started to flee atthe rate of thousands a day to neighbouring Austria. By thetime the borders were fully sealed, some 180,000 Hungarianrefugees had made their way to Austria and 20,000 hadheaded south into Yugoslavia.

Within days of the exodus starting, an extraordinary op-eration sprang up in Austria, not only to care for the

refugees, but to move them outof the country almost as fast asthey arrived. In the end,180,000 were resettled fromAustria and Yugoslavia to a totalof 37 different countries – thefirst 100,000 of them in underten weeks. The performance ofthe Austrians, the aid agenciesand the resettlement countrieswas truly remarkable.

The 1956 uprising and its af-termath helped shape the wayhumanitarian organizations –not least UNHCR – were to dealwith refugee crises for decadesto come. The episode also left anindelible mark on internationalrefugee law and policy.

But the people it markedmost of all were, of course, theHungarians themselves – both

those who stayed and those wholeft. To commemorate the 50th an-

niversary of the 1956 Revolution, Refugees magazine hasinterviewed seven Hungarian refugees who subsequentlysettled in seven far-flung foreign lands.

They range from one of the biggest names in the globalcomputer industry to a retired garage mechanic. But theyhave all, in their own way, spent the last 50 years carvingout successful new lives which belie the notion thatrefugees are a “burden” on their host states.

As UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie re-marks later in this issue of the magazine, 50 years is “a blinkof the eye in human history.” In the world of refugees, ahuge amount has been achieved over the past half century –but as the response to the Hungarian crisis reminds us, acertain degree of spontaneity, altruism and pure generosityof spirit seems to have been lost along the way.

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The 50th Anniversary of the HUNGARIAN Uprising

The 50th Anniversary of the HUNGARIAN Uprising

THE FATEFUL PROTEST IN BUDAPEST’S BEM SQUAREON 23 OCTOBER 1956.

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EditorRupert Colville

French EditorCécile Pouilly

ContributorsAndrea Szobolits, Ariane Rummery, BryanDeschamp, Catherine-Lune Grayson, IvorJackson, Klára Szentirmay, Martine Pochon,Melita Sunjic, Rika Hakozaki, SylvanaWhyte, Tarek Abou Chabake, Terri Murphy,Tim Irwin, and UNHCR staff worldwide.

Editorial AssistantManuela Raffoni

Photo DepartmentSuzy Hopper, Anne Kellner

DesignVincent Winter Associés, Paris

ProductionFrançoise Jaccoud

DistributionJohn O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot

Photo EngravingAloha Scan, Geneva

Mapsunhcr Mapping Unit

Historical documentsUNHCR archives

REFUGEES is published by the Media Relationsand Public Information Service of the United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed by contribu-tors are not necessarily those of UNHCR. The designations and maps used do not implythe expression of any opinion or recognition onthe part of UNHCR concerning the legal statusof a territory or of its authorities.

REFUGEES reserves the right to edit all articlesbefore publication. Articles and photos notcovered by copyright © may be reprinted withoutprior permission. Please credit UNHCR and thephotographer. Requests for copyrightedphotographs should be directed to the agencycredited.

English and French editions printed in Italyby AMILCARE PIZZI S.p.A., Milan.

Circulation: 114,000 in English, French,Italian and Spanish.

ISSN 0252-791 X

Cover A Hungarian girl who lost her parentsduring the escape to Austria in Nov. 1956.© bettmann/corbis/aut•1956

Back cover Hungarian refugee children.clockwise from upper left:

iom/hat0085; unhcr photos 103, 102,92, 99, 80

UNHCRP.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.org

4The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and therefugees who flooded across the Iron Curtain,triggered an extraordinary response thatbenefited future generations of refugees.

Fifty years onOn the 50th anniversary of the revolution,seven former Hungarian refugees describehow they ended up in places as diverse asWellington, Tokyo, San Francisco and Bogota.

24S O L V I N G T H E G L O B A L R E F U G E E C R I S I S

Angelina Jolie argues we should avoidrepeating past mistakes by adopting morethoughtful policies, and investing moreresources in refugees’ home regions.

27J O I N U N H C R ’ S E M E R G E N C YR E S P O N S E T E A M

Angelina Jolie becomes the first supporter tojoin UNHCR’s new Emergency ResponseTeam initiative, and urges others to sign up too.

28 T H E L I B E R I A N D R E A M

It is not just Liberia’s ravaged infrastructurethat must be rebuilt from scratch, but societyitself needs reconstructing from thefoundations up.

C O V E R S T O R Y

4Seven formerHungarian refugeeslook back at the mother

of all modern refugee reliefoperations.

24After visitingrefugees in over 20countries, UNHCR’s

Goodwill Ambassadorpresents her views in aguest editorial.

28Despite dauntingobstacles, Liberiansare slowly grappling

their way towards a betterfuture.

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“A MatterB Y R U P E R T C O L V I L L E

By the evening of 23 October 1956 – the first day of the Hungarian Revolu-tion – the parliament building, the head-quarters of radio Budapest and variousother key buildings had all been sur-rounded or occupied, and shots had been

fired into the crowds, apparently by secret police agents.A couple of symbolic acts – the toppling of a huge statueof Stalin, and the appearance of Hungarian flags withholes where the hammer-and-sickle insignia had been– raised the stakes dramatically.

“The sight took my breath away,” writes AndrewGrove – a 1956 Hungarian refugee who subsequentlyco-founded the computer giant Intel (see interview onp.12) – in his autobiography. “Those flags were perma-nently altered. The act seemed unequivocal and des-tined to provoke a reaction of some sort… I felt we hadcrossed a line of no return.”

For a few days, from the point of view of manyHungarians, it all looked very promising: large sectionsof the Hungarian army either joined the rebellion orhanded over their arms; the hated secret police hadtheir backs to the wall (many agents were hunted downand lynched); and on 29 October came the astounding

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of the Heart” news that the Soviet military would be withdrawn fromHungary next day.

DISTRACTED BY WARHowever, also on 29 October, an enthralled

outside world was suddenly and dramatically distractedfrom what was going on in Hungary, when the newsbroke that the Israelis – in accordance with a secretagreement with the British and French signed five daysearlier in Sèvres – had invaded Sinai and were racingtowards the Suez Canal.

The Cold War had now sprouted two hot spots in thespace of a week. The United States was concerned the

war could spread and refused to back Britain, Franceand Israel. Perhaps encouraged by the tangle theWestern powers were getting themselves into in theMiddle East, the Soviet leadership quickly and quietlyreversed its decision to withdraw from Hungary.

THE SOVIETS RETURNThe Soviet tanks re-entered Budapest on

4 November, 12 days after the demonstration that hadturned into a revolution.

Hundreds of buildings were badly damaged or de-stroyed over the next week or so, as Hungarian fight-ers put up spirited but ultimately hopeless resistance.

HOW THE HUNGARIANCRISIS CHANGED THE WORLD OF REFUGEES

Far left : Two hugegeopolitical crises,plus a USpresidentialelection, competefor the world’sattention on 3November 1956. Thefollowing day, theSoviet army movedback into Budapest.

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The precise death tollis not known – per-haps more than theofficial figure of 2,500Hungarians killed.Thousands of oth-ers were arrested orsimply disappeared,

and several hundred were executed.As refugees started pouring across the border into

Austria, they had one thing in their favour: the out-side world, by and large, was extremely sympathetic totheir plight. It was the first major crisis to appear ontelevision as well as in newspapers and on cinema news-reels. And people were shocked to see the scenes fromBudapest, as well as the forlorn figures traipsing acrossthe bleak, snow-covered border.

And there was also, most probably, a feeling of guilt.The Hungarians had risen up. They had heard them-selves applauded and encouraged on western radio sta-tions such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of Americaand the BBC. Many believed the West had promised tocome to Hungary’s aid.

The aid did arrive, but only once they had becomerefugees.

ALL HANDS TO THE PUMPIt was as if a dam had broken . A trickle of

people had started crossing the border into Austria inthe last week of October. The following weekend (4-6November), 10,000 crossed. By 16 November, the totalhad risen to 36,000 and by the end of November, it hadsoared to 113,000. A further 50,000 in December tookthe total to 164,000 in just over nine weeks. By the spring,when to all intents and purposes the movement ceased,180,000 had entered Austria and another 20,000 hadsought asylum in Yugoslavia.

Entire classes – even entire schools – were crossingthe loosely guarded border. Students, teachers, doctors,famous athletes and footballers, farmers, architects andlabourers all started streaming into Austria – mostly inthe Burgenland region, around the city of Eisenstadt.A train driver is said to have set off from Budapest andjust kept going until he was the other side of the bor-der. Men, women and children crossed swamps, fordedcanals, walked through forests, and picked their wayacross snow-covered fields trying to avoid patrols andsearch-lights.

Robert Quinlan had arrived in Vienna some 20months earlier as a student. The 29-year old Americanpacked a lot in during his first year overseas: he met andmarried a British concert pianist, and he witnessed therebirth of Austria in May 1955 as a result of the signingof the State Treaty that gave it back its independenceafter ten years of occupation by the four victorious Al-lied powers. The treaty came into effect in July 1955 andthe last occupying troops were withdrawn that Octo-ber, only one year before the Hungarian Revolution.

Vienna was still recovering from World War II, withplenty of bombed-out buildings waiting to be repaired.And there was still a slight scent of the internationalintrigue that was later captured so evocatively in thecelebrated film “The Third Man.”

“It was an era when good Scotch could still makethings happen,” Quinlan recalls, mentioning a Sovietofficer whose help was sometimes sought and earnedusing this method.

Quinlan was offered a job with an American NGOcalled the National Catholic Welfare Conference(NCWC), which later changed its name to Catholic Re-lief Services. NCWC was working with the UN refugeeagency – itself only five years old – helping integratesome of the refugees left over from World War II. Theagency was also working on resettling refugees

Clockwise from top: Thedecapitation ofStalin’s statue, on the first day ofthe uprising; A 16-year-old youthis interrogated inBudapest afterbeing caught trying to escapeinto Austria; Refugees are hauled across a canal separatingHungary fromAustria.

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abroad – the tail end of a massive post-war pro-gramme that had seen more than one million refugeesresettled between 1947 and the end of 1951.

When the Hungarian Revolution broke out, Quin-lan was stationed in Salzburg, charged with processing150 ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia – some of the mil-lions of Volksdeutsche who had been forced to fleetheir homes in Central Europe at the end of the war.His deadline to finish dealing with the 150 cases wasthe end of the year. Resettlement is often a slow andpainstaking business. But it doesn’t have to be, as Quin-lan was about to discover.

As the tanks entered Budapest on 4 November, theoutside world reacted with great speed, despite the com-peting Suez Crisis. They were not prepared to inter-vene inside Hungary, but they were – it transpired –prepared to do a great deal for the Hungarians whogot out.

One of the principal movers and shakers was theAustrian Interior Minister, Oskar Helmer. On 4 Novem-ber, Helmer sent an urgent cable to the headquartersof UNHCR and of the Intergovernmental Committeefor European Migration (ICEM) asking for help, bothin the form of financial assistance and in assur-ances that most of the refugees would bequickly moved on out of Austria.

ORGANIZING THE RESPONSEIn Vienna, a committee was immediately

set up comprised of Helmer and his staff, UNHCR,ICEM, and the League of Red Cross Societies(LRCS), as well as a number of local and inter-national NGOs. The LRCS would be the primemover on the assistance front, and would also

assist ICEM with registration, documentation and trans-port of refugees out of Austria. UNHCR would dealwith the over-arching legal and protection issues, aswell as integration of those who remained in Austria.

Helmer also wanted UNHCR to be the overall co-ordinator – or “lead agency” – a role that was subse-quently confirmed by the General Assembly, whichpassed a number of important resolutions over the nextfew days and weeks. (The Security Council, by contrast,was paralysed on both the Hungarian and Suez frontsby the competing interests of its veto holders).

On the face of it, UNHCR was not in the best posi-tion to handle such a task. For one thing, it was only atemporary organization with a mandate that was dueto expire in 1958. Secondly, it was without a HighCommissioner – in July the first occupant of the post,Gerritt van Heuven Goedhart, had died of a heart at-tack while playing tennis, and his replacement, Au-guste Lindt, was not elected until December. Fortu-nately the Deputy High Commissioner, James Read,and the agency’s other senior staff proved more thancapable of handling the challenge.

It was the first modern relief effort, and, after an un-

Austrian borderguards, villagers andvolunteers helpedtens of thousands ofHungarians crossinto Austria. As time went on,border controlstightened andsmugglers played an increasinglyprominent role inenabling people toescape.

It was the FIRST majorrefugee relief operation of its

kind, and the rule book wasonly PARTLY written.

It was the FIRST majorrefugee relief operation of its

kind, and the rule book wasonly PARTLY written.

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Top: The first shipcarrying Hungarianrefugees to the USarrives in Brooklyn,New York in January1957. Right: A refugeewaves goodbye tofriends leavingAustria for theirnew country.UNHCR urgedresettlementcountries not toignore the sick anddisabled refugees.

derstandably chaotic start, it proceeded remarkablysmoothly. In the eyes of the donors, and virtually all thehistorians, the three coordinating agencies and manyof the NGOs that worked with them put up an excep-tional performance.

Refugees arriving at the border were cared for by local villagers or by the Austrian authorities. They werethen quickly transported to centres where they wereregistered and then moved on again, to camps, hotelsor private accommodation. NGOs, including the Aus-trian branches of the Red Cross and Caritas, were thereto help them along the way.

Agencies rushed in staff from all over the world, andmany others were hired locally. According to Quin-lan, who was himself quickly relocated by NCWC fromSalzburg to Vienna, there were a number of factorswhich the Austrians and the aid agencies were able toexploit: there were plenty of suitable facilities – all thecamps and barracks that had been recently vacated bythe American, British, French and Soviet occupyingforces; there was also an abundance of qualif ied

personnel available locally – including many Hungar-ian speakers; and there were existing networks of aidagencies that had already been working on resettle-ment and integration issues.

So the core of the relief effort was in place. Nevertheless, it was still the first major refugee re-

lief operation of its kind, and the rule book was onlypartly written.

For one thing were these people refugees, and did UNHCR have a mandate to deal with them? Yes,

said the Austrians. UNHCR agreed,and so – without much argument –did the states. Article 6B of UNHCR’s Statute seemed clearly tocover the situation. But, accordingto the definition in the 1951 UNRefugee Convention, weren’trefugees only the product of eventsthat took place prior to 1951? Anddidn’t refugees have to be assessedindividually?

During the first NINE WEEKS, a phenomenal 92,950 people

were resettled from AUSTRIAby boat, bus, train and plane.

During the first NINE WEEKS, a phenomenal 92,950 people

were resettled from AUSTRIAby boat, bus, train and plane.

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Top: Hungarianrefugees on board a train waiting toleave Osijek, informer Yugoslavia,in 1957; meanwhile(above) anothergroup, bound forSwitzerland, boardtheir bus in Vienna.

BREAKING NEW GROUNDUNHCR’s c h i ef l egal advisor , Paul Weis

– described by High Commissioner Lindt as “surelythe best expert on refugee law in the world” – drew upan argument that satisfied the legal criteria relating tothe cut-off date in the Convention definition. In addi-tion, UNHCR’s Statute was used as the basis for decid-ing that a group arriving en masse, such as the Hun-garians, could be recognized ‘prima facie’ – an extremelyimportant development in international refugee lawand practice. And one which has benefited tens of mil-lions of refugees since then.

In the meantime, instead of agonizing over the man-date and issues surrounding the definition, in Austria– and, a bit later on, in Yugoslavia – everyone simply goton with the job of assisting and resettling the Hungar-ian refugees as best they could.

The historian Louise Holborn describes the begin-ning of the massive emergency resettlement operation– a mere three days after the Soviet army stormed intoBudapest: “On 7 November, the French Red Cross

flew a plane to Vienna loaded with medical supplies andbrought refugees back to France. Some British privategroups, and later commercial aircraft companies, ontheir own initiative and at their own expense, shut-tled their planes between Britain and Austria for theBritish Red Cross, bringing 7,500 refugees to the UKby 14 December. On 8 November the first specialtrain, from Switzerland, moved more than 400 refugees.And in the following days, buses from Sweden and trainsfrom Belgium and the Netherlands returned withrefugees to those countries.” Money and relief itemswere also coming in quickly.

By 28 November, a total of nine European coun-tries had already taken 21,669 refugees. By 31 Decem-ber, a phenomenal 92,950 people had already been trans-ported out of Austria. By the end of the operation, a total of around 180,000 out of the 200,000 refugees inAustria and Yugoslavia had been transferred on boats,buses, trains and planes to 37 different countries.

Many states were reacting with tremendous prag-matism – tearing up their own immigration rules, orfinding ways round them, in order to take as many peo-ple as fast as possible. Canada, for example, acceptedsome 38,000 people with minimal screening, and re-laxed its ban on resettling people in the winter months.

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It also took an entire university forestry departmentof some 500 students and teachers and set them up inBritish Colombia. The United States passed a speciallaw which allowed it to take people on temporary visas,rather than go through the usual full, formal (andvery time-consuming) process up front.

Australia raised its restrictions on taking elderlypeople, and Sweden actively looked for tuberculosis(TB) cases. Later, the other Scandinavian countries, aswell as some other European states, also helped take thepeople who were suffering from TB or other similardisabilities (a group known as the “hard core,” who innormal times were extremely difficult to resettle). Help-ing the hardcore was one of Auguste Lindt’s prioritiesonce he started as High Commissioner.

Sometimes the momentum wavered. Both Helmerand Lindt at various times gave states an extra pushwhen they felt the sense of urgency starting to dip. Pro-viding asylum, said Helmer at one such moment,wasn’t just a duty – it was “a matter of the heart.”

CLOSING THE CAMPSLindt, for his part, was determined that

the Hungarians should not end up like the tens of thou-sands of hard-to-settle refugees left over from WorldWar II who were still rotting in camps across Europe.

In an unpublished UNHCR interview in 1998, two yearsbefore his death, Lindt said that one of the things thathad frustrated him most was “the horrible camps of the‘old’ refugees. I knew that they existed, but to see as manyas three generations of refugees [who] were still livingin camps – that was terrible. To think of adults and chil-dren who had never lived a normal life.” Later, he an-nounced to states “We must clear those camps!”

One of his proudest accomplishments was, indeed,that by the early 1960s none of the Hungarians werestill in camps. They had either been resettled (180,000),integrated in Austria (some 7,900) or in Yugoslavia (675),or had repatriated voluntarily (11,273).

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAINAnd he had gone to great lengths to ensure

that the repatriation was indeed voluntary in eachand every case. In the process, he had befriended Tito– who had taken the very courageous step, for a com-munist leader, of accepting Hungarians fleeing a So-viet intervention – when they had a secret meeting ona Yugoslav island some time in 1957.

The conditions in the camps in Yugoslavia were farworse than in Austria – Lindt was particularly shockedby one of the camps Tito sent him to see. “Most of therefugees on the Adriatic [coast] were living quite com-

Principal source: UNHCR Progress Reportto General Assembly, 14 Sept. 1959.* March 1958 figures from LouiseHolborn, “Refugees: A Problem of OurTime,” p. 414-5.† Elsewhere, a final figure of 38,000 isascribed to Canada and 15,000 toAustralia. Thousands of refugees movedon to a second resettlement country –in particular from European countries toNorth America.

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Austria 410Belgium 5,850Brazil 1,660Canada 27,280 †

Chile 270Colombia 220Costa Rica 30Cuba 5*Cyprus 2*Denmark 1,380Dominican Rep. 580Ecuador 1*Fed. of Rhodesia and Nyasaland 60France 12,690Germany 15,470Iceland 50Ireland 540Israel 2,060Italy 4,090Luxembourg 240Netherlands 3,650New Zealand 1,090Nicaragua 4*Norway 1,590Paraguay 7*Portugal 4*Spain 19*Sweden 7,290Switzerland 12,870Turkey 510Uruguay 37*Venezuela 780Union of South Africa 1,330United Kingdom 20,990United States 40,650

fortably in former hotels. But Gerovo was different. Itwas located in the mountains, in an old camp once usedby the Germans – completely isolated…” The refugeeswere very frustrated and complained to Lindt that theywere being treated like prisoners. “It really was a terri-ble camp,” he recalled, adding that he managed to getthe rules relaxed at least to the extent that they couldgo for a walk outside the camp perimeter.

But on the resettlement front progress was rapid,and UNHCR was able to pronounce the Hungarianrefugee problem in Yugoslavia completely “solved” byJanuary 1958.

Lindt visited Gerovo one more time: “I was invitedby the government to witness the departure of thelast Hungarian refugees. It was extraordinary. Every-body was singing, the menwere whistling, the womenfor the first time in monthshad curled their hair. It wasa fantastic experience, in-credibly joyous.”

Lindt also quite quicklywon round the new Hun-garian regime, whichagreed to most of the repa-triation conditions he pro-

posed. In 1963, the Hungarian government issued anamnesty that allowed many refugees to come home andvisit relatives they had not seen for at least sevenyears.

UNHCR, and the international refugee protectionsystem it is supposed to uphold, came out of the Hun-garian refugee crisis greatly strengthened. The ‘primafacie’ notion was used again almost immediately for thebenefit of some 200,000 Algerians who were fleeing intoTunisia and Morocco, and then became the basis of nu-merous operations elsewhere in the world over the fol-lowing decades. The Hungarian operation also set a num-ber of new operational standards that are still followedtoday – not least in the vital area of coordination.

“It was amazing,” says Robert Quinlan – who playedno small part himself, running a team of 44 peoplefrantically processing overseas cases in the ballroom ofa Viennese palace. “It was one of the great examples ofburden-sharing. The secret of the Hungarian operationwas this solidarity and cooperation.”

Auguste Lindt was particularly pleased with theway the crisis helped open up the rest of the world tothe refugee protection system, instead of confining itjust to Europe. “I found it would be good for the UN,”he said in 1998, at the age of 93, “and [Secretary-Gen-eral Dag] Hammarskjöld agreed with me, that we stepout of Europe – and the refugees can exist every-where, and the High Commissioner will deal with allof this… It was a big step.” �

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Could this be thehoped-for visa? A photogenicrefugee familyawaits news of theirresettlement in thesummer of 1958.

The international refugee PROTECTION SYSTEM

emerged from the Hungarian refugee crisis greatlySTRENGTHENED.

The international refugee PROTECTION SYSTEM

emerged from the Hungarian refugee crisis greatlySTRENGTHENED.

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Andrew Grove was born András Gróf

in Budapest in 1936, the only child of a Jewishcouple who ran a dairy business.

In 1942, as World War II intensified all across Europe,Grove’s father was drafted into the army and sent tothe Russian front. The following year, he was reportedmissing. After Germany invaded Hungary in 1944, Groveand his mother Maria went into hiding in the country-side, using false Serbian names to help them survive.

After the war, and Hungary’s “liberation” by the So-viet Union, life remained difficult. Jews still faced dis-crimination. In addition, his father, who returnedemaciated but alive from the labour camps at the endof the war, was suspected of being a little too bourgeoisby the communists.

On 23 October 1956, Grove – by then a 20-year-oldchemistry student – joined his fellow students demon-strating in support of the Poles. In his autobiography“Swimming Across,” he describes his feelings: “After allthe years of sullen, silent May Day marches, there wassomething magical about a large spontaneous demon-stration. I kept looking round, soaking it all in, feelingthat I was in a dream.”

Grove’s initial enthusiasm turned to apprehensionand then downright fear when the Soviet army re-tookBudapest by force in November. “It was quite danger-ous to be a species on which there was open season inBudapest after the revolution,” he told Refugees. “Hor-

Huge refugee crises – especially ones that happened along time ago – tend to be described with a broad brush:200,000 Hungarian refugees, 180,000 resettled to 37 countries.A dash of politics, some descriptive ‘colour’ to liven it up a bit.

But who were these people exactly, and where are theynow? The story doesn’t stop once the resettled person stepsoff a ship and becomes a statistic.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the HungarianRevolution, REFUGEES magazine decided to find some of theHungarians who were resettled all over the world half acentury ago and ask them about their experiences at the timeand – in many ways more importantly – what has happened tothem since.

Even though one of them insisted “Hungarians don’t like totravel,” we found Hungarians all over the planet.

Did they find the much-touted ‘durable solution?’ Theanswer (in these seven cases at least) was a resounding yes. All

seven – in their very different ways – have made a success oftheir lives: whether it has been by pioneering organic farmingin Canada, or mending cars in Colombia; writing novels inSwitzerland, or editing newspapers in Austria; working withcomputers in Wellington – or making computers work inSilicon Valley.

And perhaps the most striking thing about their experiencesfleeing Hungary in 1956 is… how many of them are stilloccurring today: people paying smugglers to get them out,families being split, the loss of identity documents; childrenalternatively frightened and excited by new experiences(several interviewees mentioned how they had never seen abanana until they arrived in Austria); the physical hardships, thesense of loss – and the enormous difficulties involved instarting a new life, in a new language, in a new country.

AGED 70 – CO-FOUNDER OF INTEL COMPUTER COMPANY,

SAN FRANCISCO, US

ANDREWGROVEANDREWGROVE

San FranciscoQuebec Neuchâtel Vienna

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UNHCR / SATELLITE IMAGEMAP © 1996-2004 PLANETARY VISIONS

rible things werehappening for 10years and the ideaof being taken awayin a truck was omi-nous. It became clearI needed to leave.”

As people every-where were roundedup, he and a friendheaded to the Aus-trian border by train,dodging policecheckpoints, andbuying directionsfrom a smuggler. “Iwas petrif ied as Iwalked throughdark fields never toreturn,” Grove says.He made it to theAustrian border

with two layers of clothes to protect him from the cold,his school briefcase and the equivalent of about $20.

From Austria, Grove was taken by train to Germanybefore setting out for the United States under thesponsorship of the International Rescue Committee,one of the big American NGOs working on resettle-ment alongside UNHCR, the Red Cross and the Inter-governmental Committee on European Migration. “Itwas the place to go, the place of the future.”

In his autobiography, he recounts how the true enor-mity of what he had done hit him as the old troop-carrier on which he was travelling sailed past the fa-mous White Cliffs of Dover: “The momentousness ofeverything suddenly hit me: leaving Hungary for thefirst time, seeing England. Each event by itself wouldhave been unthinkable just a couple of weeks ago. Nowthey were happening in quick succession. I was over-whelmed.”

After a rough journey through mid-winter Atlantic storms, Grove arrived in New York in Jan-uary 1957, and was initially placed in an old prisoner-of-war camp in New Jersey, before moving out to staywith some relatives.

Despite the inevitable difficulties, with language oneof the largest obstacles, Grovefelt accepted in his new coun-try from the start. “I was not be-grudged because of my nation-ality which was refreshing.”

Even though he has neverbeen back to Hungary, Grovestill remembers the things hemissed most after he fled: “theimmediate micro environment,”the city, his college and operafriends, the street cafés, Hun-garian espresso.

But worst of all, he had also left his parents behind.One of the driving forces during his first years in theUS was his desire to find the money and means tobring his parents to the US. In 1962, a year before he received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from theUniversity of California at Berkeley, he managed to get them out of Hungary. His father got a job as a clerk,and his mother as a cashier/wrapper in a Californian department store.

After Berkeley, Grove joined Fairchild Semicon-ductor – pioneers of the integrated circuit. Then, in 1968,Grove and two other ex-Fairchild em-ployees established their own company,Intel, which has subsequently becomeone of the most successful and influen-tial companies of the computer age.Beginning as its operations manager,Grove has since served as the micro-processor giant’s president, CEO, chair-man – and most recently as “SeniorAdvisor.” He has also written a numberof books and become one of America’sleading theorists and teachers of busi-ness management.

“I didn’t get smarter crossing the border,” he says, but believes if he hadremained in Hungary, it would havebeen next to impossible to achieve thesuccess he has enjoyed in the UnitedStates. At best, he says, he might havebecome a productive chemist. “I am fortunate I got outand have been able to live in a country that acceptedme and gave me the opportunity to achieve, and to build a first class technology company.”

Looking back 50 years after the Hungarian revolu-tion, Grove told Refugees he is disheartened by the“generations and generations going through the samestruggles.” He finds it deeply depressing to witness thesuccessive waves of refugees and displaced people in theworld as if they were “the multitudes of Hungarians re-played and repeated.”

Nevertheless, the life-story of one of those Hungar-ians, András Gróf, can act as an inspiration to refugeesand immigrants everywhere. It is also a powerful anti-dote to the common view that refugees are a burden ontheir host society. – Lilli Tnaib

13R E F U G E E S

Left: Andrew Grovewith his parents in Hungary, in 1955, a year before therevolution.Below: Groverecently retiredfrom beingChairman of IntelCorporation.

Grove finds it DEPRESSINGto see the plight of the

Hungarians “REPLAYED ANDREPEATED”in subsequent

waves of refugees elsewhere.

Grove finds it DEPRESSINGto see the plight of the

Hungarians “REPLAYED ANDREPEATED”in subsequent

waves of refugees elsewhere.

Grove finds it DEPRESSINGto see the plight of the

Hungarians “REPLAYED ANDREPEATED”in subsequent

waves of refugees elsewhere.

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Klára Schédawas 19 years old when she crossedinto Austria with her fiancé Paul Szentirmay onChristmas Eve, 1956. She is now 69 years old,

lives with her second husband in Wellington, NewZealand, and speaks English with a strongHungarian accent.

She still vividly remembers the day their shipfinally arrived in the harbour at Wellington. Itwas a Sunday. She was four months pregnant andthey had had a rough five-week voyage from Hol-land. The Suez Canal was still closed because ofthe crisis in the Middle East, so they had beenforced to take the much longer route via thePanama Canal.

“In New Zealand, nothing happened on a Sun-day. Absolutely nothing.” Including disembark-

ing refugees from boats. “So we sat out in the harbour,and just looked at Wellington for one and a half days. It

was a beautiful day. It looked like a pic-ture postcard. So just to be here waslike being in a story book.”

It was both the happy conclusion ofKlára’s first phase as a refugee, and thebeginning of a difficult new one as sheand Paul struggled to establish them-selves in a land that was about as farfrom Hungary as it is possible to be.

They had met three years earlier inVác, a town around 35 kilometres northof Budapest. When the uprising started,Paul Szentirmay played an active partin organizing gatherings. “We also hadlots of Stalin statues around Vác, whichwe pulled down and destroyed. And so,when they squashed the Revolutionon 4 November, Paul was put on the

black list.”They set off for the border just before Christmas.

“By that time, they were closing down the borders again.So we were just dressed as if we were going for a walk. Ihad my favourite handkerchief, my favourite poem anda handbag. And that was all.”

They hired a smuggler. “Paul paid all the money wehad on us – plus his camera – and for that he guided usacross the border. Although we heard the dogs and theshooting, we actually managed to cross the line.”

In Austria, they were placed in a student hostel inGraz, where Klára was told that since they were not mar-ried they would have to live in separate hostels.

“Then I said ‘I’m engaged to Paul.’ They said ‘Well, wedon’t recognize engagements.’ And so they were reallynice – because they could see that I was not just bluffing.So they actually bought us the rings and I had a wed-ding in Graz. They even gave us a two-week honeymoonin a beautiful hotel.”

They wanted to go to America, where a distant rela-tive lived, but biology – and US resettlement policy – in-tervened. “I was young and naïve, so I became pregnantwhile we were in Graz. And America didn’t want any-body who was married and pregnant. So we stayedthere until about April, because nobody wanted us.And then there was South Africa, Australia and NewZealand.

“In South Africa, they told us, Paul will have to su-pervise the black people with guns; butPaul will have the gun and the blackpeople will work – and that didn’t ap-peal to Paul all that much. Then Aus-tralia: they said it was full of snakes andthings. That didn’t appeal to me!

“New Zealand, they said, was ev-erlasting spring and a beautiful coun-try, and we believed it and we came toNew Zealand.” They lied about theweather? “Absolutely! Absolutely!Some places may have everlastingspring, but not Wellington!”

14 R E F U G E E S

It was terrible to be PREGNANTand have your first child in hospital, without having any

knowledge of the LANGUAGE… I was so SCARED.

It was terrible to be PREGNANTand have your first child in hospital, without having any

knowledge of the LANGUAGE… I was so SCARED.

KLARASCHÉDA

KLARASCHÉDA

AGED 69RETIRED COUNSELLOR,

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

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Indeed, shortly after their arrival, it started to rain. “Itrained for nine weeks. I’m not kidding. I was so depressed,I cried. I hated it.”

Initially Paul got a job in a beer factory. And Kláraworked in a button factory until shortly before givingbirth to her daughter (also called Klára) “nine monthsand ten days after getting married in Graz.”

“It was terrible to be pregnant and have your first childin hospital, without having any knowledge of the lan-guage or your mother to hold your hand. I was so scared.”

Although Klára is deeply grateful to New Zealand fortaking her in, the initial reception by the general popu-lation was not very promising: “They didn’t like for-eigners. The first English sentence I learned was “Bloodyforeigner!” Honest. And I didn’t know what I was say-ing. I had to look it up in the dictionary. They absolutelyhated us.”

Klára’s second daughter was born in 1959. Partly be-cause of her domestic situation, she lagged a long waybehind Paul on learning English. “I was 21 years old, withtwo babies, not speaking the language. That was terri-ble – it really was.” The first years were hard, but grad-ually things began to improve as they moved out of theirhostel and into a large six-bedroom house, where theyrented out rooms with full board to fellow Hungarians.“I washed and cooked for them, and ironed for them, andcleaned for them. I don’t want any pity – but I had no wash-ing machine, with two small children and nappies. Andwe had no hot water!”

She finally learnt English from a Russian woman,who spoke seven languages (but not Hungarian). Theyremain great friends to this day. Another stimulus wasthe fact that she loved reading and had exhausted thelocal stock of Hungarian books.

Paul became a librarian. Klára worked for a marketresearch company for seven years, ending up as theirComputer Input Manager (in the days when few peoplehad ever seen a computer). She then spent nine yearswith IBM, until she was in her mid-forties when “I de-cided I’d had enough of figures and machines.” After ashort break, she started a new career as a counsellor toalcoholics and drug addicts.

She and Paul split up in the late 1970s, but remainedgood friends until he died. He became Hungary’s firstpost-communist Consul, and was succeeded by theirdaughter Klára, who – as the current Honorary Consul– is very involved with the 50th anniversary of the Rev-olution that led to her being conceived in a student hos-tel in Graz. The younger Klára also runs a bilingual Hun-garian/English newspaper.

“I do the cooking column in it,” says her mother. She lives in a house that she and Paul Szentirmay built

after buying a plot of land (or ‘section’) with the help ofthe state. “It is in the old part of Wellington, and we havea little creek at the bottom of the section, and – oh, it’s adream! I have been living here since 1962, and I’m sureI’ll only leave it in a box. I just love it here. I really do!”

– Rupert Colville

15R E F U G E E S

Ferencz Gábor was 21 when he arrived in theColombian capital, Bogota, in December 1957– the last stop on a year-long odyssey that had

earlier taken him from his native Hungary to Italy viaAustria. He knew nothing then of the country that wouldbecome his home for the rest of his life.

“Before I arrived here, I had never heard of Colom-bia,” he remembers today in his small house in the southof Bogota. “When they asked me if I wanted to live inEcuador, Venezuela, Brazil or Colombia, I liked the soundof the name Colombia and I thought it would be hot here.They also said I could go to Canada, but I didn’t like theidea because of the cold. The winters in Hungary werevery, very cold.”

The youngest of three brothers, Ferencz Gábor hadlived with his family in the small town of Gyor, not farfrom the Austrian border. When the Hungarian Up-rising began in October 1956, Gábor – who was a mem-ber of the local Youth Movement – took part in theprotests against the Communist regime and demon-strated in front of the secret police headquarters in Gyor.

By the beginning of November, the revolution hadspread all over Hungary. To this day, Gábor remem-bers the subsequent scenes of violence against theprotesters as the most terrible moments he has ever hadto live through.

“The soldiers opened fire. Then they came after uswith sticks,” he says. “There was blood everywhereand many wounded people – including girls and preg-nant women. I helped those whom I could. After that,

FERENCZGABORFERENCZGABOR

AGED 69GARAGE MECHANIC, BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

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Far left: Klára and Paul Szentirmayduring their voyageto New Zealand. A Dutch couple onthe ship had lentthem swimmingcostumes.Far left, below:Klára feeds the birds in hergarden inWellington.

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Left: Ferencz Gábor,a demonstratorduring the 1956uprising, at his homein Bogota.

they came after me. I hid with a friend and left town atthree in the morning because I knew they were look-ing for me.”

Initially, Gábor took refuge in a small village on theAustrian side of the border where he stayed with otherHungarians in a makeshift camp. A few weeks later, hemoved on to Vienna before heading south to Italy, wherehe spent a year in Rome. He has fond memories of histime in Italy, the proudest of which is of the day whenhe and other Hungarian refugees were received by PopePius XII.

“He gave us his blessing and thanked us for ourcourage,” he remembers.

In all, ten mainland Latin American countries re-ceived Hungarian refugees – ranging from more thana thousand in both Brazil and Argentina to the singleperson who went to Ecuador.

Gábor remembers being offered a place in Australiaand Canada, but deciding instead to become one of the220 Hungarians who ended up in Colombia, where he

arrived in December 1957. He can still remember hisfirst day in Bogota.

“We were ten families and two other single men fromHungary,” he says. “The bus left us at the corner of 8thand 9th Streets. I was surprised that Bogota was not ashot as I had imagined. However, it wasn’t as cold as Hun-gary. The first thing I did was look for work. It was noteasy because I spoke no Spanish – but I did speak Ital-ian, more or less. They understood what I was sayingbut I did not understand them.”

A trained mechanic, he found work in garages andfactories and even tried run-ning his own car-repair shopfor a while. Life in Colombiahas not always been easy, hesays, and there were manytimes when the moneystretched no further than onemeal a day. Two years ago,UNHCR – which still assistsseveral elderly Hungariansin Colombia – gave Gábor’swife a sewing-machine withwhich she is now makingclothes for sale.

But economic hardshiphas not been the worst aspectof his life in exile. Fifty yearslater, the emotional anguishof losing all ties with countryand family still reverber-ates.

“My mother almost diedof pain when I left,” Gáborsays. “I was her youngestchild. She died ten years after I arrived in Colombia

and my brothers blamed me for it – they said I had broken her heart. But what could I have done? I couldnot have gone back. One of my companions went backa few years after the revolution, and they killed him. A few years later my father died, and then in 1982 myeldest brother died in a Communist jail.”

Ferencz Gábor has not been back to Hungary sincehe left half a century ago, and has never seen his family again. Married to a Colombian woman,

Rosalba Silva, he has a daughter who lives in Cali and two grand-children who are now the centre ofhis life.

“I miss my country a lot,” he says.“But to go back? Maybe for a visit –I would like that one day. But tolive there? No. I am an old man now,almost seventy. They welcomed mehere, thank God, and this is myhome.”

– Gustavo Valdivieso & Marie-Hélène Verney

16 R E F U G E E S

My mother died ten years after I arrived in COLOMBIA

and my brothers BLAMED me for it _ they said I had

BROKEN HER HEART.

My mother died ten years after I arrived in COLOMBIA

and my brothers BLAMED me for it _ they said I had

BROKEN HER HEART.

Resettled refugees in New Zealandlisten to a fellowHungarian playingthe violin in aWellington club inthe late 1950s

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Agota Kristof was 21 when the Hungarian up-rising started. She lived in Këszeg, a small townnear the Austrian border. Her husband, who

was a history teacher, went to Budapest to join in thedemonstrations. His wife had no choice but to stay athome and take care of their four-month-old daughter.

“It was quite violent – especially against the Soviets. We were chanting ‘Go home!’” Kristof recalls.After the Soviet army re-entered Hungary, the situa-tion deteriorated. “There were tanks at every corner… nobody dared go out.”

Her husband was summoned to the Communistparty headquarters, together with two of his colleagues,and ordered to help calm down the situation. They re-fused and were arrested. However, because the prisonswere overcrowded, they were soon released.

One of her husband’s colleagues subsequently com-mitted suicide by throwing himself under a train.The other was sentenced to two years in jail. At the endof November, her husband decided they would haveto leave the country.

Their smuggler – a man called József – was a child-hood friend. They handed over all their savings, as didthe ten other people in their group. “People who wereabout to leave Hungary gave him all the money theyhad, since it was worth nothing in Austria,” explainsKristof.

After walking through a forest for two hours, theyreached Austria. Kristof believes that the authorities

were “satisf ied that we wereleaving. To them, we were thescum of the earth. The Sovietguards couldn’t care less – thesmuggler knew them quiet welland got them drunk.”

They were found by an Aus-trian border guard and taken to asmall village which was alreadypacked with Hungarian refugees.Then they were transported bybus to Vienna, where they werehoused in a military barracksand slept on “straw mattresses onthe floor… around twenty peoplein a single room.”

It was the first time she hadtravelled abroad and they were ut-terly destitute, as they had beenunable to bring any belongingsapart from diapers for the baby andsome dictionaries. They were to-

tally dependent on external assistance. Like everyoneelse, they needed to move on from Austria, and so herhusband started looking desperately for a new countrythat would take them.

On 8 December 1956, they arrived in Switzerlandwith other Hungarian refugees aboard a special train.Initially they were lodged in more military-style barracks, but bit by bit they began to get their life inorder.

Those who were willing to study were first of all sentto Zurich, and then parcelled out to various other Swisscities. Agota Kristof began her new existence in Neuchâ-tel, near the border with France. But, for the secondtime in her life, she had missed an opportunity to study.

On the first occasion it was the Soviet tanks, and herhusband’s fear of ending up in a jail, that had preventedher from taking a degree in literature at the Universityof Budapest. The second time, her husband had againstood in her way. “I missed going to university becauseof him,” she says. He spoke both French and German,and handled all the family’s official business. He wasmuch older than her, and more available, since shehad to look after their baby. Their exile was accentu-ating the unbalanced nature of their relationship.

He signed up to study biology, while she took a jobin a watch-making factory to feed the family. Despitethe hard work, she smiles at the memory of her formercolleagues: “They were really, really welcoming. I hadmany girlfriends.”

Kristof, who already knew some French, obtaineda grant from the city of Neuchâtel to take some lan-guage courses. At the factory, she took up writing againand jotted down notes which she copied out neatly athome in the evening.

She divorced her first husband, and then in 1963married a Swiss photographer, with whom she had twomore children. Although she enjoyed looking after her

17R E F U G E E S

AGOTAKRISTOF

AGOTAKRISTOF

AGED 71 – NOVELIST,NEUCHÂTEL, SWITZERLAND

Left: Agota Kristofin Këszeg, Hungary,in the late 1940s.

Below: In her fifties,Kristof became asuccessful novelist.

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family, her new life – in the countryside – did not bringher happiness. She had no means of transport, and as aresult felt deeply isolated. It also meant she had littleopportunity to carve out a career.

She began writing more and more. “I used to writea lot before, but by that time I had started to write inthe evening, when the children were asleep… to beginwith, in Hungarian. Then, gradually, I began writingin French.”

In 1968, she returned to Hungary for the first time.The situation was tense because of the recent Soviet in-vasion of Czechoslovakia. “I was happy to see my rela-tives… but I had no wish to stay any more,” she says. Oneexperience in particular came as a shock to her: “I didnot recognize my younger brother.”

She divorced her second husband as well, but herartistic career was taking off. She wrote plays for thetheatre and for radio. More importantly, she was alsowriting novels, including a trilogy – Le Grand Cahier,La Preuve and Le Troisième Mensonge – which was published between 1986 and 1991 to international acclaim.

Her exile has shaped her writing in a number of ways.Firstly, it complicated her development: “I lost about15 years of writing,” she says. But the distance from herhomeland also deeply influenced the themes and styleof her work.

The darkness of her prose, the violent and harshscenes depicted in some of her texts, are “to a signifi-cant degree, inspired by real events.” But they are also,she admits, part of her character and not just productsof her experience. “Even when I wrote in Hungarian,I was pretty dark… it was in me already. Crossing theborder just made everything worse.”

In the early years, suicides were common among theHungarian refugees. After the excitement of the up-rising, the exiles were faced with the collapse of theirdreams, and the monotony of daily life: “There was areally deep feeling of loneliness. And the language, andthe work we were offered… it was really hard,” ex-plains Kristof. She sums up those feelings in a sentencetypical of her simple, direct prose-style: “If it was forthis, then it was not worth it… I will always regret it. Iwould have preferred to stay.”

Despite her success, and the awards that have comewith it – including the 1987 Prix du Livre Européen, AgotaKristof still feels bitter about the way her career de-veloped: “It came too late… I was 50 when I publishedmy first book in French.” More than three decades hadpassed since she first took up writing in Hungary, at theage of 13. It all took too long.

– Cécile PouillyFrank Andrasi left his childhood home in

Baja – a small town about 35 kilometres from Hungary’s border with Yugoslavia – just after

Christmas, 1956. He was eight years old.

Even when I wrote in HUNGARIAN, I was

pretty DARK. Crossing the border just made everything WORSE.

Even when I wrote in HUNGARIAN, I was

pretty DARK. Crossing the border just made everything WORSE.

FRANKANDRASIFRANK

ANDRASIAGED 58 – ORGANIC FARMER

AND ENTREPRENEUR, QUEBEC, CANADA

While neither of An-drasi’s parents was a politi-cal activist, there were stillreasons to fear targeted re-tribution as well as the ca-sual depredations of the ad-vancing troops. “My motherwas quite a rabble-rouser. Iheard that she threatened toslash her wrists if they madeher carry the red flag on MayDay. There was alwayssomebody’s uncle or some-body’s cousin who bad-mouthed the regime as I wasgrowing up, and they weredisappeared.”

Andrasi has vivid mem-ories of the night theycrossed the border. “I waswoken up in the middle ofthe night, and with a tractorthey drove our two big suit-cases and ourselves sittingon the wagon and left us inthe middle of nowhere. Myfather was quite white in theface. I was told to be quiet.The moon had come out andthe fields were covered withsnow. Subsequently I foundout that we had walkedthrough a minefield sepa-rating Hungary from Yu-goslavia.”

His father had been in the army detachment thathad laid down the minesthree years earlier. “It wasdifficult for him to orienthimself with the snow, andwith trees that used to bethere – that were no longerthere. I realized later thattaking his family into the

minefield was a very, very stressful event for him.”The family spent a year in Yu-

goslavia, moved by the authorities fromplace to place in trains, sometimes evencrammed into cattle trucks. Theynever quite knew why they were mov-ing or where they would end up next.

“Sometimes the places where westayed – in retrospect – were beauti-ful, like fairyland hunting castles,” herecalls. “Of course with no plumbing,no heating. Sometimes we were housedin military-style barracks or in un-heated, flimsy buildings on the shores

of beautiful, beautiful, little lakes where you could skipa stone half a kilometre. As a little kid, I had a grandold time! ”

His parents did not.“The food was really, really difficult. I realize that

my mother – even though she was pregnant – and myfather would share theirs with me because I was alwayshungry. They were having the hardest of times. Thespace between the floor and the door in these beauti-ful little cottages was enough sometimes to allow a catto come in, so the winds blowing off the hills caused usa great deal of distress. I remember guards shooting awolf that walked into thecorridors of one of thebuilding complexes.”

His mother suffered anervous breakdown aroundthe time his younger sis-ter was born in November1957. “We were confidentshe was going to be born inAustralia, because that wasthe word that was on myparents’ lips: ‘Australia,Australia.’” Instead, she wasborn somewhere – neitherhe, nor she, knows precisely where – on the banks ofthe Danube, the great trans-European river that alsoflowed close to Andrasi’s home in Baja.

As far as Andrasi can remember all their dealingswere with the Yugoslav authorities, never with aid agen-cies. “The biggest frustration was that we could neverspeak to the United Nations personnel who were ac-cepting refugees.” By the time they were able to discussdestinations, “Australia was booked solid. So Canadabecame our new destination.”

In December 1957, almost a year after they first ar-rived in Yugoslavia, they went by train to Italy “wherewe waited for our papers to be completed before wegot on the steam ship.” Despite the difficulties, nine-year-old Andrasi was having the time of his life.

Things got even better once they boarded the cruiseship Vulcania: “Wow! The food! The banquet hall – Ihad never seen such luxury in my life. I could order icecream, or anything. I just loved it! My parents of coursewere seasick, throwing up all over the place. Ten days

19R E F U G E E S

The MOON had come out and the fields were covered with

SNOW. Subsequently I found out we had walked through a

MINEFIELD.

The MOON had come out and the fields were covered with

SNOW. Subsequently I found out we had walked through a

MINEFIELD.

Left: Frank Andrasi,aged seven and ahalf, on the day ofhis First Communion.Below: With his wifeMaria in Quebec.

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in the winter time in the North Atlantic… I’m sure thereare better times to take that voyage, but I was absolutelyenthralled.”

Most of the passengers on the Vulcania were emi-grating Italians. “My wife, whom I met almost ten yearslater, actually came across on the same ship, except aboutsix months before. She was an Italian immigrant.”

After disembarking in Halifax, they briefly lodgedwith a family before moving to an isolated village by abig steel mill. Later, they moved again, to Montreal inthe province of Quebec, as Frank’s father looked forwork. The family was only just getting by: “One of mymemories is that my father walked to work for a monthso that he could buy me this red school bag that caughtmy fancy. He saved the money for the bus fare andwalked three miles both ways. I was very touched.”

When he was only 19, Andrasi married the 18-year-old Maria di Genova. “I graduated in psychology,worked in Montreal as a social worker – and then I wentnuts and bought a farm with my wife and some friends,and we became pioneers in growing organic food.”

When he first moved on to the farm in Acton Vale,100 km east of Montreal, the neighbours looked askanceat the young urban Hungarian refugee with his Ital-ian immigrant wife, practising funny organic farm-ing habits that in those days were still very much as-sociated with hippies and radical vegetarians. “Thelocals were scratching their heads for a long time, un-til they started to see vans coming and loading up at thefarm. And then when I got a better car than they did,

they started to think ‘Oh, maybe organics are not sucha bad thing.’”

Since then, organic farming has moved on a longway. Andrasi and the other pioneers – including hisbusiness partner, a fellow Hungarian refugee calledJohn Herr – were to some extent making up the rulesas they went along. “The first organic certification sys-tem was born in my living room. We sat down, about adozen of us. We were all defining and laying down thestandards for the next generation.”

As well as spending many years working on organiccertification issues, Andrasi has branched out inother areas: he set up one of the first distributing com-panies for organic meats in Canada. Part of the farm isnow given over to the cultivation of medicinal herbs,and recently there was a brief flirtation with “Kosherorganic poultry.”

He believes that the dramatic mental shifts he andhis wife were forced to make as a result of changingcountries, cultures and languages “have perhaps madeus more sophisticated – we had to try harder than thelocals in order to blend in.”

“Ironically, we regularly hire the latest wave of im-migrants – mostly from Central and South America…and when I tell them that ‘Me too, I’m an immigrant!’they say ‘Nooo!’ And I say ‘Look at your children. Inten years, in 20 years, your children are going to havefarms like this and they’re going to hire immigrants…and they still don’t believe me!’”

– Rupert Colville____________

AGED 58 NEWSPAPER EDITOR,

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Actually we wanted to stay in Hungary, untilmy father somehow found out that my brotherwas quite likely to be arrested. So we decided to

flee, together with a neighbour who knew the borderfairly well. We set off on 30 December 1956. We droveto a village near the frontier with Austria, and crossedthe border on foot after dark on New Year’s Eve.

“Unfortunately we got lost and walked around forhours in the snow and the cold. Then we could see spot-lights, and heard dogs barking – all the adventures achild could wish for. I found it all very enjoyable – myparents probably less so.

“I stepped on a trip-wire that set off an alarm in somedistant guard-house. Luckily we weren’t caught. Even-tually, as we were lost, we lay down next to a silo andfell asleep. As dawn was breaking, someone shone aflash light in our eyes, blinding us. Fortunately it wasa member of an Austrian border patrol: we had, ittranspired, already crossed over into Austria.

“At that time, being a refugee meant being wel-come in Austria. Without reservations.

“When someone first arrived, he got somethingwarm to eat, was then taken to the authorities and tothe village school. He was fed, his personal details were

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registered and then he was transported to one of therefugee camps – whichever had room.

“After a short while, once the official formalities hadbeen completed, you got this blue passport, the NansenPassport – in accordance with the UN Refugee Con-vention – and you were a recognized refugee. In somecases, it only took three or four days. For others, maybea few weeks.

“The four of us, plus the neighbour – so, the five ofus – had only two suitcases and a big backpack. Thatwas all we managed to bring.

“The grown-ups were able to do some sort of workduring the final period in the refugee camp. We received

assistance, including an apartment through the jointefforts of a US relief organization and Caritas Austria.We also received some initial financial aid – a smallamount – and after that you just had to work.

“Shortly after the following Christmas – at the be-ginning of January 1958 – they said ‘He should go toschool, that is where he’ll learn the fastest.’

“I didn’t get a report card at the end of thefirst semester. But at the end of the year, Igot a normal report card – with the exceptionof German, which was blank. That was inthird grade. In fourth grade, I was just like anyother pupil – by then I could already speakGerman quite well.

“During the early years, there was hardlyany contact with home. Gradually, during theearly Sixties, everything began to relax. In1963, an amnesty was passed for all people

whose only ‘crime’ had been to flee, and who – in theopinion of the Hungarian state – hadn’t committedany other wrongdoing.

“Emotionally, it was a very different matter. I hadthought I’d go back there and look at everything witha certain amount of anger. Instead, I became very nos-talgic and broke into tears three or four times. I wentto see the house we had lived in, and found everythinghad advanced at least three generations. In 1956, thiswas a Stalinist country, well developed in heavy in-dustry, but otherwise totally backward. Austria was aparadise by comparison. And now in 1971, Austria wasof course more developed. Nevertheless, the changes

that had taken place in Hungary greatly exceeded myexpectations.

“Most Austrians welcomed us in an open and friendlymanner. The more other nationalities started comingto Vienna, the more I got the impression that the Hun-garians received preferential treatment – were greetedwith particular friendliness. As a native Hungarian,

21R E F U G E E S

Learning thelanguage – like these youngHungarians inAustria in 1958 – is key to refugees’swift and successfulintegration in theirasylum country.

At that time, being a REFUGEEmeant beingWELCOMEin Austria.

Without RESERVATIONS.

At that time, being a REFUGEEmeant beingWELCOMEin Austria.

Without RESERVATIONS.

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Peter Franklwas three years old when the Hun-garian uprising took place – and he was one ofthose who did not leave immediately. In fact, he

did not become a refugee until a further 23 years hadgone by.

“My father and mother were thinking about going,”he says, “but finally they didn’t have enough courageto do it – also they had two small children. My uncle didleave in 1956 with his family and ended up in Englandas a dentist. His son was 18 years old and participatedin the revolution, so there was some danger he mightbe persecuted.”

As Hungarian Jews, Frankl’s family had already suf-fered a great deal prior to 1956. “My mother was one ofthe few survivors of Auschwitz,” he says. “Her par-ents and her sister all died there.”

Frankl’s father was director of a large hospital. How-ever, at around the time Frankl was born, he wasstripped of his post and forced to spend a few monthsin the army, after it was reported that he had insultedone of the Communist party leaders. He was later re-habilitated, but in a lesser post as head of the derma-tology department.

At the age of six, Frankl started to learn German aswell as Hungarian, beginning a life-long fascination –and facility – with languages. At school, Russian wason the agenda, and by his mid-twenties he spokeHungarian, German, French, English, Russian “andpretty good Swedish and Polish.”

The Swedish happened more or less by accident: “I was 17 or so. In Hungary you had the impression Sweden is somehow the freest country in the world.And there were all those beautiful, blonde Swedishgirls. It was almost kind of a joke: I was speaking witha friend. I told him I wanted to learn Spanish – and hesaid why don’t you study Swedish?”

But the languages were merely a hobby. Frankl’sfield of study was mathematics, and in 1975, at the ageof 22, he received a scholarship to go to Paris, wherehe stayed for seven months. The experience both broad-ened his horizons and left him feeling trapped. In or-der to go anywhere other than France – to the UK tosee his exiled uncle, or to visit Italy on his way back to

R E F U G E E S

I was treated very well in Austria. Something thatcannot always be said of people of other backgrounds.

“Thus, if a theoretical study existed as to why peo-ple sometimes accept foreigners and sometimes do not…I think if you are doing badly yourself, you are willingto take in a foreigner more readily than if you think youhave a lot to lose. In other words, prosperity acts as abrake on asylum policy.

“I don’t know how I should describe myself. Vari-ous labels are valid. I am someone who was born a

Hungarian – and became an Austrian. I’m a Hungar-ian Viennese. But I’m not a Hungarian living in Vienna.And I am also not a former Hungarian, who is now anAustrian.

“I am both. Thus, I haven’t so much assimilated, asintegrated myself.”

– Interviewed by Roland Schoenbauer

Peter Martos is now a senior editor at the Austrian daily newspaper “Die Presse.”

____________

PETERFRANKLPETER

FRANKLAGED 53 – MATHEMATICIAN

AND JUGGLER, TOKYO, JAPAN

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Hungary – he had to have a letter from the Hungar-ian Embassy, which they refused to give him.

While in Paris, some fellow mathematicianswho were impressed by his work offered to helphim stay on, but he feared that if he failed to returnto Hungary, his father would lose his job again.

Three years later, with his father now retired,another opportunity arose when Frankl was allowedout of Hungary to attend a conference in Montreal.With the help of some friends from his Paris days,he travelled on to France where they had found hima position with the Centre National de la RechercheScientifique (CNRS).

After arriving in France on a tourist visa in 1979,Frankl went to a police station and requested asylum.He was then directed to the UNHCR office in Paris.After three months in limbo – “the three most diffi-cult months in my life” – he was granted refugee status. Even though he had a job with one of themost prestigious government research institutes, un-til he was recognized as a refugee he could not get awork permit or receive his salary.

Once recognized, Frankl’s life changed dramati-cally for the better. “The best thing was that I wasfree. You could go wherever you wanted. The only thingimportant for [the CNRS] was that you should do yourresearch and publish some papers.”

Frankl started to pick up invitations to travel touniversities and institutes all across the world. Eng-land, Germany, Canada, Stockholm – where he was ableto practise his Swedish – and the US. With his refugeepassport, travelling to Western Europe or North Amer-ica was relatively straightforward. But elsewhere, visaswere much more problematic. “For India, I had to waitthree months. For Japan, each time I came I had tohave a special invitation letter.” It wasn’t until he acquired French citizenship seven years later that thevisa problem was finally solved.

The languages were still stacking up. A three-monthstint at the University of Tokyo in 1982, was to sow theseeds of another momentous change in Frankl’s peri-patetic existence. He took to Japan. “I liked this coun-try, because I decided this was the place where thepeople were friendliest to me. At the time there werevery few westerners living in Japan, so I was a kind ofcuriosity.”

He finally settled there in 1988. In 1992 – by nowfluent in Japanese – Frankl published the story of hislife so far. “Notes of a Wandering Math-ematician” sold around 50,000 copies. Inits wake, Frankl appeared on numer-ous TV programmes, and became some-thing of a celebrity.

Another important element in theunusual persona that he was carving outfor himself in Japan, was a skill he hadpicked up when he was still a youth inHungary – the ability to juggle.

He started to juggle in the street, and

also campaigned on behalf of other Japanese street en-tertainers. He even made juggling part of his univer-sity lecture routine. “If I see the people are a littletired, I just take out some objects and juggle for aboutfive minutes.”

His mathematical, linguistic and juggling skillscemented their relationship in the form of an educa-tional TV programme, called “Mathematica,” thatFrankl presented between 1998 and 2004.

“It was for school children, so there was some juggling and some funny things incorporated in theprogramme. Maths is not very visual, but somehow wemade it quite popular.”

Since the programme ended, he has not been idle:“I give lectures all around the country, about all sortsof subjects: how to study maths, how to study languages,about human rights.”

Frankl has added Spanish, Chinese and Korean tohis collection. Eleven languages in all. And he is the au-thor of 25 books.

Peter Frankl, Hungarian refugee and French eco-nomic migrant in Japan, remains a little restless: “I’mstill travelling a lot – recently I went to Gabon, Myan-mar, Cambodia, Laos...” – Rupert Colville

Far left: Peter Franklwith his mother,two years beforethe HungarianRevolution.Above: Frankl, laterin life, performingon the streets ofJapan.

Peter Frankl, HUNGARIANrefugee and French ECONOMICMIGRANTin Japan, remains

a little RESTLESS.

Peter Frankl, HUNGARIANrefugee and French ECONOMICMIGRANTin Japan, remains

a little RESTLESS.

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B Y A N G E L I N A J O L I E

Only half a century ago –

a blink of the eye in humanhistory – there were at least40 million refugees anddisplaced people in Europe:

the product of Hitler’s Germany, Franco’sSpain, Mussolini’s Italy, and, later of thecolonels’ regime in Greece, and the Sovietsubjugation of Central Europe, includingHungary.

These countries are all now memberstates of the European Union, and it is al-most inconceivable they would producerefugees today. So inconceivable, that theircitizens have the luxury of forgetting whatit was like to be governed by a tyrannicalregime, or to be tortured for your politicalbeliefs.

In America, Martin Luther King had tobe assassinated before racial equality be-came anything like a reality.

Earlier this year, Refugees magazine(No. 142) carried a photograph that seemsto me in many ways to sum up this amne-sia about a thousand years of warfare,tyranny and repression. It shows a couple,in bikini and swimming trunks, sitting contentedly on their towels under an um-brella on the beach. There is only one otherperson visible on the beach. He is black andhe is dead – an immigrant or a refugee,sprawled across the sand at the high-watermark. We’ll never know who he was or whyhe ended up there, and the couple on thebeach apparently couldn’t care less.

It is a pretty sad picture. Sad for theanonymous man whose corpse washed up,like so many others, on a Mediterraneancoast a few years ago. Sad for the couple, sit-ting under the umbrella with their picnicbox and suntan oil, that they can’t see thestark reality lying a few yards further upthe beach. Someone’s son, someone’sbrother, or someone’s loved one. In fact you,or me, if we had been born at anothertime, or in another place.

THE MEANS TO ACTThe UN refugee agency, UNHCR, for which I act as a goodwill ambassador,

has an annual budget of around US$ 1.2 bil-lion. That sounds like a lot of money, butthere are dozens of companies that makeprofits many times that amount each year.UNHCR has a constant struggle to get itsUS$1.2 billion, which it uses to help and protect some 20 million people.

As the year progresses, UNHCR in-variably has to cut more and more projects

affecting the world’s most disadvantagedpeople. It tries to avoid cutting the projectsfor the most vulnerable – the refugeewomen projects, the education projects, andthe HIV/AIDS projects in refugee camps.But sometimes even these are affected di-rectly – and they are almost always affectedindirectly: not enough staff, not enough sec-ondary education and even not enough food

Solving the Global

Angelina Jolietravelling with agroup of newlyarrived Congoleserefugees in Tanzania.

25R E F U G E E S

in some refugee camps, especially in Africa.It is a scandal, really, in such a rich world,that we are not even finding a way to helpfeed these families properly.

We are then scandalized when theyshow the audacity to try to enter our ter-ritory – to travel in search of a future. In theprocess, they mingle with economic mi-grants who are also on the move. They

fall into the hands of smugglers, whopush them into overcrowded boats or hidethem in the backs of containers, or tell themto walk across minefields or scale barbed-wire fences in the middle of the night. Lotsof them die and are buried anonymously,like that man on the beach in the Mediter-ranean.

There have been more than 7,000

catalogued deaths of people trying to getinto Europe over the past decade or soand that is probably far short of the real to-tal. Many have also died trying to get to theUS and Australia. But we don’t notice. Weare simply affronted by their audacity. Howdare they try to eat at our table? How darethey come to build our roads, clean our hos-pitals and office blocks, wash the dishesin our restaurants and make the beds inour hotels?

Refugee Crisis

The UN High Commissioner forRefugees António Guterres put it very suc-cinctly recently. He said that the specialstatus of refugees – people fleeing perse-cution or war – is being jeopardized bythe battle over whether or not we want eco-nomic migrants.

HOW WE ARE FAILINGThose of us who are still well-

disposedtowards refugees, and are shockedto see them turned into hate figures in order to win elections or sell newspapers,are failing. We don’t want uncontrolledmovements of people across our borders,but we are not prepared to invest finan-cially or politically – or even emotionally– in finding solutions in the regions theycome from. We will put band aids over themost gaping wounds, because they look a bit ugly. But we won’t pay for a fullcure, and we won’t invest much effort inprevention either.

Of course, solutions are not easy.

“It is a scandal,in such a richworld, that weare not even finding a way tohelp feed refugee familiesproperly.”

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This article first appeared in Global Agenda, the

However, the transformation of Europefrom being the fulcrum of the two most de-structive wars the planet has ever seen intoa 25-member club whose members cannoteven conceive of going to war with each

other should give us some clues as to whatwould alleviate the world’s refugee and mi-gration problems.

MORE MARSHALL PLANS PLEASERefugees are the visible

symptom of our failure to pro-duce more Marshall Plans – butthey are relatively easy to deal with.What’s needed are: more resourcesinvested in the regions the refugeesfirst move to, so they don’t feel theyhave to move on unless they reallywant to; and more resources forcountries where peace has been es-tablished. The first years are in-credibly fragile, and returningrefugees need help to get them-

selves back on their feet. They don’t needmuch, just enough to allow them to helpthemselves.

Agencies like UNHCR should really nothave to struggle to scrape a few tens ofmillions of dollars together to help re-build shattered nations – like Angola, SierraLeone, Liberia and South Sudan. A quickand efficient rebuilding of a war-torn na-tion helps anchor the peace in firmer soiland brings amazing dividends in terms ofregional stability and economic prosperitythat are to everyone’s advantage.

Ignoring simmering conflicts is equallydamaging and hugely expensive. ThinkBosnia, think Rwanda, think Afghanistan,where more investment and more thought-ful international politics in the 1980s andU

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“Individually or collectively we do in fact have thepower and means to make a difference.”

Ingushetia, 2003.

This autumn, Angelina Jolie is launching UNHCR’s new Emergency Response Teaminitiative. She has also become the firstsigned-up supporter of the ERTeam – as it isknown for short – and urged others to joinup as well.

“I have had the privilege to meet andwork alongside UNHCR staff in some of themost remote and inhospitable areas of theworld,” said Ms. Jolie, who has visited morethan 20 countries, from Sri Lanka to SierraLeone, in support of her role as UNHCR’sGoodwill Ambassador. “The dedication andcommitment of these colleagues day in and day out to helprefugees is an inspiration.”

When people have fled their homes, and are destitute, hungryand vulnerable, they need help rapidly. UNHCR’s EmergencyResponse Teams are on stand-by round the clock to respond toany major refugee crisis, anywhere in the world. Within hours,planes are loaded with vital supplies, and highly trained membersof the ERTeam jump aboard, armed with expertise that can savecountless lives. They are often one of the first on the scene – for

example during the tsunami and the Pakistanearthquake, as well as in huge refugee crisessuch as Rwanda and Afghanistan.

IT’S VITAL TO BE PREPAREDEmergency Response Team members have tohit the ground running, often in extremelystressful and chaotic situations. That is why,when they volunteer to go on standby for theERTeam, these already experienced staff haveto undergo nine days of intensive training inpractical skills such as camp design andmanagement, telecommunications, off-road

driving and first aid. They are also trained how to handle a widerange of security issues, including dealing with armed militias, andhow to react if you are held up at gunpoint or even kidnapped ortaken hostage.

The course, which takes around 40 people from across theworld, is held three times a year. By the time they have com-pleted it they are physically and mentally prepared to face someof the toughest and most challenging situations in the world.

Over the past two years alone, teams have been deployed in

And invites you to join too.

Angelina Jolie joins UNHCR’s

27R E F U G E E S

magazine of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.

the early 1990s might havechanged the course of history forall of us. Osama Bin Ladenthrived on our neglect ofAfghanistan. Things are lookingbetter in all these countriesnow, but at what a cost, and howmany millions of refugees toshow us where we went wrong?Not to mention more than twomillion dead in those three coun-tries alone.

I have been to some of thesecountries, or to their neighbours,where most of the refugees re-main. It is a truly humbling ex-perience, a shocking eye-opener.It has made me realize that we are all –myself included – behaving like the couplesitting under their umbrella on thebeach, gazing studiously out to sea.

Yet individually or collectively we do infact have the power and the means to make

a difference. I believe we are all lookingfor the same thing – a stable world, a sta-ble economy and the ability to progress aspeople and as nations. We want a better fu-ture. We do not want to continue to repeatthe mistakes of the past.

Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning actress and has been a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador since August 2001.

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Pakistan, 2005.

more than 20 situations, including Darfur and Chad, SriLanka, Pakistan, East Timor, the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo, and Indonesia’s Aceh province after it had beendevastated by the tsunami. Most recently, UNHCRERTeams have been deployed to help hundreds ofthousands of displaced Lebanese, both inside their homecountry and across the border in Syria.

Would you like to stand alongside UNHCR’s staff, tomake sure they have the training, equipment and suppliesthey need?

Angelina Jolie has been quick to lend her support tothis important Emergency Response Team operation as itsfirst supporting member behind the frontline. You too cansign up online at www.erteam.unhcr.org, thereby helpingto bring swift and vital aid to refugees whose communitieshave been devastated by war, persecution and disaster.

Emergency Response Team

“Join me today in standingalongside the EmergencyResponse Team” – Angelina Jolie

Chad, 2004.

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BY ANNETTE REHRL

When, in 2002,armed rebels fromthe Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy

(LURD) group swept down from northernLofa County like a hurricane, leaving intheir wake a trail of death, violence and

massive destruction, the citizens of Boiwen decided enough was enough.

Initially the men in this village in south-western Bomi County had elected to hidein the bush until the rampaging torrentof drugged, savage youth had passedthrough the village, burning, looting and raping every female in their path

in their usual way. However, the villagers soon changed

their minds, realizing they had no effec-tive way of staving off the pending socialcataclysm that was approaching their com-munity.

Instead, they decided to send the old people, women and children on ahead to

28 R E F U G E E S

Liberians hope the dreadfulmemories of the recentconflict, anarchy andatrocities will be – if notforgotten – at leastconsigned firmly to the past.

The Liberian

Wilson Corner camp. Most of the menfollowed soon afterwards, leaving behindonly a handful of very brave people totake care of their huts and fields in andaround Boiwen.

Tens of thousands of other equally – andjustifiably – scared Liberians fled towardsMonrovia between 1999 and 2003, to seek

refuge in one of the 35 camps and sponta-neous settlements for internally displacedpeople (IDPs) that had sprung up in andaround the capital.

Those living near a border often choseto save their lives by heading through thejungle to Sierra Leone, Guinea or Côted’Ivoire – countries which, one after the

other, experienced their own domestic up-heavals related, at least in part, to the com-plex regional dynamics caused by the col-lapse of civilization in Liberia.

Others – many of them fed up with theconstant toing and froing they experiencedduring a decade of civil wars – grabbed theirbelongings and headed further afield tomore stable countries like Ghana orNigeria.

BLESSED SOIL, TORRID HISTORYA journey through Liberia today

confronts the visitor with conflicting images and raises more questions than itprovides answers. Deep green forests, a soilknown for its riches – diamonds, gold, timber, rubber in abundance. A nature sogenerous that all you have to do is drop aseed and watch it grow.

“This country is so blessed,” says a UNpeacekeeper from Pakistan. “They have

29R E F U G E E S

Left: Returnees rebuilding their house inLofa County – one of the most destroyedareas in Liberia. Above: Maimu IDP campnear Monrovia. The last of the camps wasclosed down in March 2006.

Dream

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SIERRA LEONE Lofa County

Bomi County

Boiwen

MONROVIA

UNHCR / SATELLITE IMAGEMAP © 1996-2004 PLANETARY VISIONS

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Almost every building that was still standinghad been looted, mosques had been burnt to ashes,schools swallowed up by the jungle.

rains and fertile soils. They never need tobe hungry. Nature is so generous here, incomparison to the dry region in Pakistanwhere I come from. Our farmers have towork so hard to survive.”

Yes, say Liberians – without muchconviction. Our country is blessed. Andyet… They list tribal differences, and citethe envy and insatiable greed for powerand wealth which have blighted their coun-try for much of the 150 years since it wasfounded by returning American slaves in1822. The country’s deep-seated problemsculminated in 14 terrible years of evolvingcivil wars between 1989-2003 – three in all,dubbed World Wars One, Two and Threeby the local population.

Lofa County, in the far north, on the bor-der with Guinea and Sierra Leone, was oncethe bread-basket of Liberia. But in early2005, despite two years of peace, it stilllooked like an open wound. Every village

was destroyed. Almost every building thatwas still standing had been looted, mosqueshad been burnt to ashes, schools swallowedup by the jungle.

Further south, a similar picture in Gbar-polu, Bong, Bomi and Grand Cape Mountcounties: abandoned wells, gutted markethalls, and a third of Liberia’s mainly ruralpopulation packed into IDP camps, occu-pying empty public buildings in downtownMonrovia, or living rough along thebeaches and in the outskirts of the capital,waiting for better times.

GRADUAL RECOVERYNow, three years after the August

2003 Peace Agreement was signed in Accra, and half a year after Ellen JohnsonSirleaf took office as the first ever demo-cratically elected female President inAfrica, Liberia is showing signs of gradualrecovery.

Over the last year, Lofa County receivednearly 45,000 returning refugees and over120,000 former IDPs. In all, 74,000 re-turnees decided to come back to Liberiawith UNHCR’s help between the start ofthe repatriation operation in October 2004and July 2006. A further 200,000 or morespontaneous returnees have gone backhome on their own since 2003.

The return of Liberia’s population isconsidered by the new government, as wellas by donors and the UN and other agen-cies, as a clear sign of confidence in the fu-ture – despite all the gaps and immensehurdles that must now be confronted. Anew chapter seems finally to have opened.“What we need now, is jobs, jobs, jobs,” Pres-ident Ellen Johnson Sirleaf keeps on re-minding the international community.

But the task is truly daunting. And thesocial scars will not heal fully until someof Liberia’s remaining demons have been

UNHCR staff discussprotection issues witha Liberian judge at arural courthouse. The country’s justicesystem was shatteredby 14 years of civil war.

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Today, there seems to be a new sense of confidence in the air despite the many immensechallenges still facing this war-ravaged society. confronted head on – that, at least, is onepoint everyone agrees upon.

Reconstruction efforts will need tostretch far beyond rehabilitating damagedroads and public buildings. Society itself hasto be reconstructed from its foundations up-wards. People who have experienced somuch mayhem and suffering, and witnessedso many atrocities, have to find a way toreconcile and forgive and begin to forge anew common national identity.

DAUNTING TASK AHEADSome 85 per cent of the population

need jobs. This figure includes thousandsof former fighters, many of whom wantto be accepted back into society, and intotheir families, although they are still –understandably – the object of intense pub-lic mistrust.

As the experience of many other dev-astated countries has shown, a number ofcrucial issues have to be addressed simul-taneously, if a positive momentum is to becreated and maintained.

President Johnson Sirleaf has been tour-ing the world to raise funds and lobby forLiberia, while taking a tough line on cor-ruption and trying to fulfil her electionpromise to restore electricity to key areasof Monrovia after 17 long years of darkness.

Meanwhile, the recently establishedTruth and Reconciliation Commissionaims to cast another kind of light on theatrocities committed during the wars, invit-ing Liberians to testify and share theirgrievances.

THE CAMPS CLOSEOn 31 March 2006, an important

landmark was reached when all the IDPcamps were officially closed after 321,745people had been assisted by UNHCR togo back to their communities of origin.

Today, even Boiwen’s citizens are backhome. They fled together and they left Wil-son Corner camp together. In accordancewith the villagers’ own list of priorities,UNHCR has reconstructed their ‘palaver’hut (a type of communal centre), installeda well and encouraged them to take partin an agricultural project.

The children of Boiwen are goingback to school, and though the war woundsare still visible, life seems to be graduallyreturning to normal. The boundaries ofthat normality are explored by a group ofchildren staging a play on their graduationday: they decide to use the opportunity toaddress one of the community’s currentpressing concerns – the sad fact thatwhile some villagers are engaged infarming cassava, other people sneak alongat night to steal their crops.

So, how exactly should one deal with acassava thief in a country where mob jus-tice is still considered acceptable, becausetrust in the police, the court system and allforms of authority was shattered long agoand has not yet been restored?

The drama group came up with aground-breaking solution: instead of be-ing lynched on the spot, their thief wasbrought before the town chief, who thenconsulted with the elders and the variousinvolved parties. In the end, he was orderedto reimburse the family and sentenced toperform communal work.

This enlightened proposal would ap-pear to bode well for the future. However,Boiwen, like thousands of other villages inLiberia, does not yet have a functioning lo-cal police force. Nor is there a clinic any-where close. The Superintendent – thehighest local authority of Bomi County –recently complained that dozens of schoolsneed to be built or rebuilt, and that chil-dren are at risk of sexual violence and abusewhen they have to get up at 4:30 a.m. andwalk for two hours to reach the nearestschool.

STEP BY STEPEven though Liberia’s rural popu-

lation is very willing to play a part in re-constructing the country, their long-termeconomic prospects are far from clear. Atthe moment there are hardly any incomepossibilities with the exception of smallbusinesses, mostly consisting of womenwho walk for hours, day after day, to sellwhatever merchandise they can lay theirhands on.

However, most Liberians appear to have

decided to stand firm against anyone whowould like to spoil the new spirit of optimism that is gradually taking over Monrovia and the rural areas. The inhab-itants of the capital – even those still livingrough along the edge of the beaches – makeevery effort to appreciate the achievementsof the new government and to exercise patience.

“We’re trying, small, small,” saysThomas Kamara, a former refugee inGuinea. In this part of West Africa, “small,small” implies things could be better –but could also definitely be worse.

“It will take a long time to rebuild thiscountry. We cannot expect too much toosoon,” he adds, emphasizing that despitethe individual hardships almost everyoneis still facing, Liberians are tired of war.“I’ve been a refugee for 13 years. The bestdecision I made last year was to come backhome. We want to live our life in peace.”

Back in Lofa County and other returnareas, farmers have started harvesting andlocal communities are banding together toreconstruct schools and houses, whilewomen’s groups focus on small businesses.Communities are assisting each other withtheir daily needs and look ahead, ratherthan back at their painful past.

And today, in general, there seems to bea new sense of confidence in the air despitethe many immense challenges still facingthis war-ravaged society.

It is the confidence of the people ofLiberia that one day they will be more pros-perous than they are now. That they willhave clean, safe drinking water, and lightin their houses. That they will have jobsand their children will go to a nearby school.That when they are sick, they will betreated by doctors in clinics.

It is the belief that they can once againlive side by side and at peace with theirneighbours, and the dreadful memories ofthe recent conflict, anarchy and atrocitieswill be – if not forgotten, because it is im-possible to forget such things – at least con-signed firmly to the past.

It may still sound like a dream. But thereis now at least a fighting chance that thedream will come true. �