Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |
Budapest Under Fire
[37]
PETER SCHMID
Crowds of housewives were lined up at the food stores, and they did
not limit their purchases to immediate needs. Women who had scraped up
enough money were struggling home from the market with a goose in each
hand, against the uncertain days ahead.
An even longer line had formed in front of the municipal pawnshop. In impoverished
Hungary one pawned one's winter wardrobe in the summer and one's summer
things in the winter; now people flocked by the hundreds and thousands
to redeem their winter clothes. "In 1944 the Russians looted all the
pawnshops," someone in the queue told me. "So we're taking our
things out now before it's too late." Women coming out of the shop
staggered under the bundles of clothes and the valises they had to carry
home. Fortunately the buses were running again. Things were getting back
to normal. [27]
[November 3]
[37]Peter Schmid,
from "Budapest Under Fire," Commentary, XXIII (January,
1957), 27.
Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |