1956 and the University

 Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni

The intellectuals of the University and the city began taking action in the summer and early autumn of 1956. The local section of the Petőfi Circle was founded with the participation of several teachers of the University, such as Károly Vas and Elemér Soltra. The revolutionary events were triggered in Pécs by the student parliament held on 22 October.

The resolutions of the elated crowd of nearly 2000 (including several hundred students) demanding the renewal of the political system and reforms in higher education were summarised in 21 points and the students established their own local group of the Alliance of Hungarian University and College Students (AHUCS). The resolutions were spread in the city on leaflets which were delivered even to military barracks and the mining quarters.

Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni 

The students organised a large-scale joint demonstration with the delegates of factories and mines on October 25. The crowd of 15–20 thousand people were waving flags with a hole in them and removed the Communist symbols from public buildings. By the evening the demonstrators took the city hall, the main post office and the printing press. Although the special police arrested most of them during the night, they were released in the morning. The next day a nationwide strike began and the protests also continued.

The worker’s councils of the factories, plants and companies in and around Pécs set up the Baranya County Committee of the Worker’s Councils on 27 October, and on 28 October, the local governing body of the revolution, the National Council of the Workers of Baranya County was also formed which appointed Kálmán Csikor, the head of the joint department of military affairs of the universities and colleges of Pécs as head of the Military Council. Csikor’s reputation among students intensified the relations between the students and the county and city leaders of the revolution. The Council decided on setting up a national guard and two university battalions.

 Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni

Csikor asked Ferenc Méder, the lieutenant of the department to lead the National Guard battalion made up of PCP and law students, while the medical student battalion was commanded by medical student István Rozsos. They managed to get the weapons and other tactical equipments of the military department operating at Ifjúság Street.

Some of the intellectuals in Pécs also took action: The Revolutionary Council of the Intellectuals of Pécs and Baranya County was formed on 31 October, headed by professor János Szentágothati of the Medical University, including members such as Lajos Esztergár, the mayor of Pécs before the Second World War and Gyula Abay, a professor of economics who was forced into retirement in 1948.

 Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni 

When the Soviet tanks appeared on 3 November, Csikor withdrew the university battalions from the designated defence lines in order to avoid the loss of lives. About 150 students of the two institutions set out to the Mecsek Hills during the night but seeing that their situation was hopeless, most of them returned the next afternoon. By that time the medical students rounded up by the Soviet troops in the hostel in 48-as Square had also surrendered. The Alliance of Hungarian University and College Students did not dissolve itself and continued to make pamphlets even in December.

The teachers and students who had participated in the revolution had to suffer serious retaliation: seven of them were sentence to imprisonment and one of them to suspended imprisonment. Several teachers and staff members were dismissed from the institutions. On the basis of the disciplinary actions taken against the students, eighteen of them were expelled from all the institutions of higher education in the country and the others were banished from their institution either for a fixed period of time or for good, or they were severely reprimanded. All the people affected by the retaliations were rehabilitated after the political transition in 1989.

Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni 

Recollections by Ferenc Méder, lieutenant of the department of military affairs at UP and the commander of the national guard battalion made up of the students of the Pedagogical College of Pécs and the Faculty of Law

“We summoned the students on the courtyard of the College and announced the foundation of the battalion. The atmosphere was great, everybody, including girls agreed and wanted to do something immediately. [...] We were more than five hundred, so the battalion was not of a standard size. Sections, platoons and companies were formed, the platoons being led by the best students of each class. We wore armbands with the national colours. [...] The headquarters of the battalion were in the lecture hall used for Marxist lectures. We spent nearly all the 12 days there. We were in touch with Csikor via telephone and some physics majors managed to establish radio contact with the radio amateurs staying in the tower of the building on the Rákóczi Street campus. [...[ The students were brave, bold and enthusiastic. We even had to hold them back a bit.”

Photo: Dr. László Debreczeni 

Recollections by Dr Gyula Gál, at that time working as an assistant professor at UP

“On Monday [i.e. on 5 November 1956] I go to the University. There are three T-54 tanks on 48-as Square, one of them pointing its gun at the gate of the State Security Authorities barracks, another one pointing its gun at the gate of Mór Hostel and the third one aiming at us. We are in a ground floor office nearly facing them in the eyes. Petőfi’s bronze figure is turning its back on us. Both of his hands are tied up with a lot of telephone wires. The poet is standing between us as a grotesque power pole. I dare not take a photo of this incomparably symbolic structure with the tank and the tied up Petőfi.”

Remembrance event of the Medical School »