Escapes from Behind the Iron Curtain

"When the last free voice is silenced, when you get fed nothing but lies and abominations, endlessly, day and night, there comes a time when you can't take it any longer. You would then do anything, leave everything and everyone corrupted behind, even risk barbed wire fences built into mine fields to regain your freedom... if only there was still a free nation left on this planet.

I was born into a communist system, in Hungary, during the Russian occupation that lasted almost half a century. The slogan of the communists "the greatest value is the human being" was nothing more than a slogan. I was jailed at age 17 because - after an unfortunate accident in the school laboratory that wasn't even my fault - being afraid of reprisal, I approached the Yugoslav border, trying to run away. The treatment in prison, the food without nutriton, made me lose many teeth and I barely made it out alive."

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The author was accused of sabotage on the 10th anniversary of the 1956 revolution. He was 17 years old. He tried to escape through the Hungarian-Yugoslav border with one of his classmates. Caught by border patrol, he was jailed and treated very badly. He barely survived the month-long ordeal. Stamped as an enemy of the state, he was taken to a labor camp at age 19: he had to do forced labor instead of regular military service. Against all odds, he was able to break free from the communist bloc at age 23. Of course, given the brainwashing his generation was subjected to, when he reached the Italian shore, swimming from Yugoslavia during a night in August of 1973, his quest for freedom was just beginning. After spending 6 months in Italy, he was admitted to the USA as a political refuge. In 1976, after the communist governments signed the Human Rights Declaration at the 1975 Helsinki Conference, he believed that the amnesty the Hungarian government issued was credible and returned to his homeland. How he managed to free himself again and survive the torture he had to endure when captured on the Yugoslav-Italian border in the fall of 1977 is also described in "Escapes from behind the Iron Curtain".

Author: Zoltan Bartok

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Publication Date: Sep 25, 2014

Number of Pages: 176 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 1500955914

ISBN-13: 9781500955915