| About the Book
A glimpse
into the efforts of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives
under extraordinary circumstances.
He started to recite a patriotic poem by
Petöfi titled Song of Our Nation (Nemzeti Dal), a
call to arms during the 1848 revolution and likely to stir
nationalistic sentiments just as strong a century later—
Arise Magyars. Your Homeland is calling.
The time is now. Now, or never.
We can be slaves, or we can be free.
That is the question. Make your choices.
The crowd listened, then joined in, repeating the well-known refrain
after each stanza—"We swear by the God of the Magyars that we won't be
slaves any more!"—each raising their right arm, hand in a fist with
the index and middle fingers pointing to the sky, just as their
ancestors did little more than a century earlier.
I looked up and noticed the statue's right
arm raised in exactly the same position . . .
Something significant was happening and I was a participant as well as
a witness to these events.
Jumping for her life from a moving train to
escape Communist repression following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
Julie takes a journey to freedom. From her birth in the late 1930s in
Budapest, Hungary, through the portrayal of her family’s fight for
survival, Julie must endure persecution by the Nazis, the ravaging
effects of the Second World War, and discrimination under a repressive
Communist dictatorship. The revolution unfolds and reaches its
inevitable, and tragic, conclusion.
Against this setting, young Julie hopes, dreams, fights for existence,
and struggles for autonomy. Her astonishing life, like so many others,
was uniquely shaped by 20th century history. With the
fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution rapidly
approaching, this poignant tale is timely reading—lest we forget.
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