The Bridge at Andau - James Michener

   1957; 224 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Non-Fiction; Historical Fiction; Hungarian History.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    On October 23, 1956, something completely unexpected occurred in Budapest, Hungary.  What started out as a student demonstration for greater freedoms under the Russian occupation quickly turned violent.

    Oh, such things had happened before in post-WW2 Eastern Europe, once in Poland, once in East Germany.  But this time, something unprecedented happened.  The Russian troops took their tanks and retreated from the city.  For five days, Hungarians celebrated a new country, a new freedom, and a surge of national pride.  Then the Russian army returned.  In force.  With a vengeance.  And for many citizens of Hungary, it was time to leave the country.

    The best place to flee to was neighboring Austria, and one popular border crossing was near an inconsequential footbridge known as the Bridge at Andau.

    The already well-known American author (The Bridges at Toko-Ri), James Michener, was living in Austria at the time, and took part in the volunteer effort to find, meet, and aid Hungarian refugees as they crossed the border.  Firsthand news about the Hungarian revolution was impossible due to international politics, so Michener interviewed dozens of refugees and wrote down their stories.

    And from those interviews came the book The Bridge at Andau.

What’s To Like...

    The Bridge at Andau can be divided into four parts:

        Chapters 1-5 : The Revolution,

        Chapter 6 : the Ultimate Bad Guy,

        Chapters 7-9 : Fleeing to Freedom, and

        Chapters 10-11 : the author vents.

    I was somewhat familiar with the 1956 Hungarian uprising, but the wealth of details in the first section were quite enlightening.  I wasn’t aware of the magnitude of the mass exodus thereafter, so the third section was eye-opening as well.  Chapter 6, titled “The AVO Man” is a study in depravity, and the final two chapters, although merely political diatribe, offer insight into the mindset of 1950’s America, which is slightly before my time.

    James Michener takes time to also give a synopsis of the ancient history of the Hungarian people (“the Magyars”), as well as how the cities of Buda and Pest, situated on opposite sides of the Danube River, evolved into the single metropolis of Budapest.  As a history buff, I ate these sections up.  I was familiar with Imre Nagy, but Sandor Petofi was new to me.  And although I’m not a fan of opera, I enjoyed accompanying Michener and a guest to a “new version” of Carmen one night.

    I chuckled at the comparison of Hungarian versus American wages on page 31, where a typical American worker, getting time-and-a-half for overtime, earns $700 in a month when he works 331 hours.  That’s a heckuva lot of hours for a heckuva small amount of money, and the point of this paragraph was to show how much worse the Hungarian worker was.

   The titular “Bridge at Andau” is first mentioned on page 148.  There’s a map on page 166 which helps greatly in understanding why a small footbridge, in the middle of swampland and which doesn’t even connect to Austria, was so important to Hungarian refugees.

    Not surprisingly, Michener developed a huge sympathy for the plight of the Hungarians caught in this crisis.  In chapter 10, he deplores the lack of proper action by all sorts of parties.  He blames the Russians for the atrocities, of course.  He castigates the US for not coming to the aid of Hungary, particularly since Radio Free Europe was constantly broadcasting encouragement for everyone behind the Iron Curtain to rise up.  He also decries America for its xenophobic immigration policy, something that hasn’t changed much in the 60+ years since.  He scolds England and France for invading Egypt and occupying the Suez Canal at about the same time, thus distracting from the events in Budapest.  And he even chides the refugees themselves for  fleeing Hungary, implying that they wouldn’t be welcomed back whenever Hungary was freed from the Russian yoke, because they hadn’t “toughed it out”.

    The Bridge at Andau was first published in 1957, which means Michener wrote this in an incredibly short amount of time.  My version (and it was a challenge to find an image of it) was published in 1983.  I mention this only because it seems Michener received some flak about the first edition, some of which he addresses in the book’s foreword and the final chapter.

 Kewlest New Word. . .

Redounded (v.) : contributed greatly (to someone’s credit or honor).

Others : Declaim (v.).

Excerpts...

    I cannot guess by what twists of history Hungary will regain her freedom.  I cannot see clearly by what means the Russian yoke will be lifted from the necks of the Hungarian people, but I am convinced that in that happy day Hungarians from their new homes all over the world will send their money – their francs, their dollars, their pounds Australian, and their pesos – to erect at Andau a memorial bridge.

    It need not be much, as bridges go: not wide enough for a car nor sturdy enough to bear a motorcycle.  It need only be firm enough to recall the love with which Austrians helped so many Hungarians across the old bridge to freedom, only wide enough to permit the soul of a free nation to pass.  (pg. 198)

    When our ridiculous policies had caused much bitterness in Austria, an official of our government held a press conference in which he pointed out, “We may have been tardy in accepting refugees, but we have given every Hungarian who crossed the border a warm blanket.”  This so outraged one listener that he asked, “How many refugees have there been so far?”

    “Ninety-six thousand.”

    “How many has America taken?”

    “Five hundred.”

    “How many has Switzerland taken?”

    “Four thousand.”

    There were no more questions.  (pg. 210)

“I should like to ask one question.  Under what right are Russian troops stationed in our country?”  (pg. 134 )

    The Bridge at Andau is certainly a fascinating look into 1956 Hungary, but there are some weaknesses.  First and most importantly: some of the characters (in particular the AVO man, Tibor Donath), aren’t real; they’re “composites” of several people mentioned by various refugees Michener interviewed.  Others have their names changed, ostensibly to protect their families that were still back in Hungary from government reprisals.  Chops to Michener for acknowledging this in the foreword, but that means the AVO man is a work of fiction, and the veracity of the refugees’ stories can’t be cross-checked.

    Second, Michener’s writing is hardly objective.  Russian atrocities are given in length and in lurid detail, and the perpetrators described with adjectives such as “monstrous”.  OTOH, atrocities committed by the revolutionary Hungarians are acknowledged cursorily and described with adjectives such as “unfortunate”.

    But it is important to remember that in 1956, America was in the middle of a major Red scare (“McCarthyism”), living in mortal fear of Communists invading any and every nation, including the US itself.  You proved your loyalty by uttering phrases like “Better dead than Red” and “My country right or wrong”.  Michener can be excused for writing with a slant that could not be seen as "left-leaning".

    The biases in the book means it hasn't aged well over time, but let’s be clear: the actions by the Russians/AVO in Hungary before the uprising were brutal and repressive, and the actions by the Russian army in quashing the rebellion were equally so.  The Bridge at Andau serves as a timely memorial of those events, and the risks and costs any rebellion entails.  My problem is with labeling the book as “Non-Fiction”.

    6½ Stars.  Michener makes some daring predictions in chapter 10, a bit of which is given in the first excerpt above.  His timeline may be off a bit (no biggie), but he lived long enough (he died in 1997) to see the demise of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall, both of which essentially validated his predictions.  Also, although the original bridge at Andau was destroyed by the Russians in late 1956, it was rebuilt in 1996 as a symbol of tolerance and helpfulness.   I have no doubt he those events warmed the cockles of his heart.