?This is Radio Free Europe at the short wavelength of 16, 19, 25, 31, 41 and 49 metres,? was how Radio Free Europe would start its broadcast for more than four decades, and there were hardly any people in Hungary who did not know these numbers signifying free press by heart, said deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén at the event. On behalf of the Hungarian government he greeted the guests, including many former workers of Radio Free Europe, some of whom have since moved away from the Bavarian capital and even from Germany.
Semjén quoted the writer Sándor Márai who described Radio Free Europe as a spiritual air-lift, similar to the Western air-lift organised during the blockade of Berlin. He added that Hungarians used to think of Bavaria, which became a home to tens of thousands of refugees after the 1956 revolution, as a symbol of the free world.
Historians and political scientists will certainly study for many more years the role that Radio Free Europe played in ?softening up the system and laying the foundations of its change? in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Werner Weidenfeld, professor of political science at Munich?s LMU, said Radio Free Europe reflected all the characteristics of the cold war. the conflict between East and West and the opposites of freedom and captivity, democracy and dictatorship, market economy and planned economy, and national sovereignty and the rigidity of the block system.
Some of those attending the memorial event in Munich were members of the editorial office right from the start and they shared their memories with the radio?s former listeners, as well as with younger guests. Members of this latter group are lucky enough to know about the era when listeners of Radio Free Europe were threatened by prison in the Soviet bloc only through stories.
One of the longest standing members of the radio station was Géza Ekecs, alias László Cseke. He was only 20 years old when the radio invited him from Paris to join the staff ?just for a few years? until Communism falls in Hungary and everyone can return home. But in the end it lasted for more than four decades. Listeners of his programme entitled Teenager Party grew old together with the radio and many of them are pensioners today.
The memorial event in Munich ended with the screening of a film shot in October 1956. The archive recordings were made during the revolution and they were supposed to be shown in early November but the premiere was prevented by the arrival of Russian tanks.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
