Peter Csato still has a scar on his forearm where the bullet from a Russian machine gun tore through his skin during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Peter was only 12 at the time, although he was a breaststroke swimmer and large for his age. The uprising of young Hungarian students against their Communist government and occupying Soviet forces had begun a couple of days earlier, on October 23. ‘It was a slow process,’ says Csato, who owns Le Studio hair salon on Via de la Paz. ‘When you’re under Russian occupation, it’s not easy to organize something of that caliber.’ Imre Nagy, a Communist reformer, led the nation for most of the 10 days of the revolution, during which Soviet troops retreated. But the Red Army returned in huge numbers on November 4, killing more than 2,000 Hungarians. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Hungary’s fight for freedom. ‘It was an exciting 10 days because we actually thought Hungary would be free,’ recalls Csato, who was living with his family in Eger, northeast of Budapest. ‘We were sure that the Americans were going to come and help us because the Hungarian people were so pro-American.’ But the Americans did not come. And Hungary remained under Soviet control until 1989. ‘It was a really depressed society,’ Csato says about Communist Hungary in the 1950s. ‘Being a sportsman, I had a pretty good life. Sport was everything for the Communist regime because that was showing the world that we could do anything.’ The day the revolution broke out, Csato remembers that officials closed schools. ‘I woke up in the morning and the news on the radio was that the revolution broke out in Budapest,’ he says. ‘I could hear on the radio the machine guns going off and the tanks out on the streets.’ During the next few days, Csato and his friends joined other young men in the streets armed with Molotov cocktails, crude incendiary weapons that consisted of a glass bottle filled with flammable liquid such as gasoline and a gasoline-soaked rag that was lit on fire. Csato was throwing Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks the day he was hit by machine-gun fire from one of the tanks. ‘I didn’t even feel I was hit,’ says Csato, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that hid the wound. ‘Then I saw blood running down my fingers and almost fainted from that. I went to the hospital and they sewed me up to stop the bleeding.’ At the time, Csato’s father was mayor of Eger, working, unwillingly, under a Communist government. ‘There was a lot of hassling at his work,’ Csato says. ‘He was hassled by our neighbor, a guy who was an anti-Communist and called [my father] a traitor.’ Csato worried about his father’s safety, especially after witnessing the deaths of people on both sides’Hungarian revolutionaries, members of AVO (the Soviet-backed secret police) and Russian soldiers. ‘It was sad because, later, we talked to the Russians’they were really nice young guys,’ Csato says. ‘They said, ‘You know, we’re here because our government sent us here. We understand that the Hungarian people want to be free, and we agree with you.’ You find yourself relating to the guys you were trying to kill. It was a weird feeling.’ Csato remembers that when the Russian troops started pulling out, his father drove him on the back of a motorcycle to watch the caravan of tanks going back to Russia on the main road. ‘It was a happy moment because we thought we were going to be free,’ he says. But when the Americans didn’t come, ‘we were disenchanted for quite a few years. We just hated Eisenhower. Not America, just the president.’ Some 200,000 Hungarians fled to the West, but others, like Csato’s family, remained in their homeland. ‘By the time my family realized the Americans were not coming, it was too late to leave,’ Csato says. ‘[The Russians] secured the border. People could leave but it was a lot more dangerous.’ Csato left Hungary eight years later in 1964, when he was 20. ‘I left with the Hungarian water polo team,’ he says. ‘I went to the ’64 Olympics [in Tokyo] and I ‘forgot’ to go back. I defected.’ The Hungarians won the gold medal that year but Csato wasn’t interested in returning home to celebrate. The government sentenced him to seven years in jail for defecting. Csato lived in Vienna for three years before moving to the United States. It wasn’t until 1970 that he was able to arrange a visit to see his mother in Vienna, where he introduced her to his wife, Alexia, a Frenchwoman he had met and married in California. His parents later visited them twice in the U.S. Csato and Alexia, both hairstylists, opened Peter Csato Coiffeurs in Santa Monica Canyon in 1969, and were there for 2-1/2 years before moving up to the Palisades, where they lived for many years. Their daughter, Celeste, is a singer/songwriter who teaches vocal lessons here. Hungary was still under Communist rule when Csato returned for the first time in 1972. Not yet an American citizen, he worried that he would not be able to leave his home country once officials knew he was there. ‘It was a horrible experience going through the border,’ he remembers. ‘I said to myself, ‘Why am I going back to the cage?’ Because who knows, they could just keep me.’ At the border, officials recognized his name, took his papers to a separate room ‘for what felt like an eternity’ and then waved him through the gate. ‘I thought for sure they were following me,’ he says. ‘I really wanted to know that I could leave again with the papers, legally. I had nightmares for days; it was really uncomfortable. It’s amazing what your mind can do.’ Csato crossed back over the border to Austria after just one week in his home and discovered, much to his relief, that leaving was a simple process. ‘There were several gates’those heavy, metal gates, and no-man’s land, just minefields,’ he says. ‘When we passed the last gate into Austria, I said, ‘I’m free again.” Csato’s parents have since passed away, but his sister still lives in Eger, where they own a house together and a winery. ‘It’s like the West now,’ he says, ‘it’s like going to Vienna or Paris. Most of the buildings are restored. It’s such a good feeling to go back.’ The 50-year anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution caused Csato to reflect on the power of ‘this little country rising up against a huge country like the Soviet Union.’ ‘It was unbelievable,’ he says, ‘what the desperation to be free does to people.’
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