This is a guest blog post by the author of A Tear in the Curtain, John Symons

“In late October(1956) there were some outbreaks of violence in Hungary, but the situation seemed generally peaceful.
The Soviet Army of occupation was even reported to have withdrawn….
There were four days of calm..
On Sunday night, the fourth of November, everything changed.
The Soviet Union launched an air raid on Budapest…
Nearly three thousand Hungarians were killed in the Uprising …
many of them lay in unmarked graves.
Over half of those killed were in their twenties or younger…

These words are from my book A Tear in the Curtain.”

I also wrote: Now the truth can be told, but will people be interested for long?
So quickly they become bored and forget.

I hope that the anniversary will remind us of the heroism of the Hungarian people in those and other days, and warn us all of the threat that now seems as great as it ever was in Soviet days, especially with such weakness and divisions in the United States.

A Tear in the Curtain

This is the story of three families, brought together and kept apart by terrible events. A Russian boy and Hungarian brother and sister spend an idyllic seaside holiday with an English family in August 1956, just before the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising intensify the Cold War and cut them off from each other.

Click the cover image to read more or order a copy.

Visit John Symons’ author page here.