 Ervin Kulcsar displays a medal commemorating his service as a Freedom
Fighter.
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Ervin Kulcsar is a happily retired man; he's married, has two grown daughters ~ Elizabeth Josephine and Susan Jaclyn - and enjoyed a successful career as general manager at Brampton-based Manutec Steel.
But, 50 years ago, Kulcsar gave up a budding soccer career with Ujpest, one of Budapest's top clubs, so he could fight in the Hungarian revolution. The scars on the right side of his belly are a reminder of battle.
Kulcsar is one of the nearly 38,000 Hungarians who found asylum in Canada after the revolt was crushed by the Russians in the autumn of 1956. And, though he's now a proud Canadian, as the head of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation, he represents the refugees who came to this country after picking up "guitars" (Hungarian slang for machine guns) and taking on the communists.
Kulcsar's flight to freedom is the stuff of spy novels, but the story is not dissimilar to the 200,000 Hungarians ~ fighters, sympathizers or those who simply feared for their lives ~ who ended up in the West.
During the revolution, he was known as "Curly." All freedom fighters were known only by nicknames, as a precaution against having their identities given away to the Russians. He was manning a gunpost near the Nyugati train station with a partner named "Clown" on Nov. 4, 1956, as the Russians were retaking Budapest.
A Russian tank fired on their position, and Kulcsar's war was over.
"We were shooting across the station, we were hiding behind the wall of a theatre," he recalls at his home near Dufferin and St. Clair. "We were shooting across the street with our guitars. Then, two tanks closed on our position. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life, the two tanks stopping maybe 100 metres from us. You cannot even start to move. You are frozen. Then you see the gun on the tank moving, then just a big bang. I felt like a cigar had been put out in my side, and I put my hand to it and it was covered in blood."
He was sewn up in the lobby of a hospital. During the Christmas season of 1956, as he recovered from his wounds at a friend of a friend's place, he got a message from his father: the secret police had come to the house looking for him and he should never come back home.
When he had healed enough to move, he made his bid for freedom. But, he was discovered by the Russians and was brought to a station for questioning.
His interrogator asked him why he was so close to the border with forged papers. Kulcsar, realizing he had nothing to lose, answered that he was going to visit "Mr. Eisenhower," and was beaten for it.
But, luckily for Kulcsar and a few other fellow dissidents, a sympathetic guard turned his back long enough for them to jump off the train that was taking them back to Budapest, where they were likely to be executed.
On his second attempt at escape, Kulcsar gave up all of his valuables to buy a guide's services. In 1956, guiding dissidents to the Austrian border was a huge black-market business.
On New Year's Eve, Kulcsar and some fellow freedom fighters found themselves crouching in the snow just yards from the border. After counting the 110 paces the guards took to go from one end of their section of fence to the other, they made a mad dash for the snow fence that separated free Austria from communist Hungary. They made it ~ even though Kulcsar reopened his wounds making the dive.
Kulcsar was allocated to Canada. He worked by day, studied by night to learn the language and get his engineering certification.
"There were so many Hungarians in Toronto at that time. I really appreciate the opportunity Canada gave to all of us. We all stuck together. But many of us were hoping to return to Hungary one day, that it would one day become a free country like Canada."
But that only happened in 1989, and Kulcsar now feels more Canadian than Hungarian. When he goes to Hungary, he says he gets homesick for Toronto.
Now, 50 years later, he is happy Canada is remembering the refugees. "A lot of us don't have much time left Sum But we have to make sure the memory of the Hungarian Revolution is passed on to younger generations."
In December, Kulcsar will be made part of Hungary's "Knighthood of Heroes." But, he turned down the chance to get his medal in Budapest. He chose to mark the 50th anniversary in Canada, instead.
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Events commemerating the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution
Oct. 22
Budapest Park, Toronto, 1:30 p.m.
Rededication and flag-raising ceremony at Budapest Park. Artillery salute is planned.
Oct. 29
Thank You Canada dinner, 6 p.m., Hungarian House (850 St. Clair Ave. W.)
A dinner to salute Canada for its welcoming of 38,000 Hungarian refugees 50 years ago.
