Memories of the U.S. Legation in Budapest 1945-47.

• Author: Schoenfeld, Scott R.
• Position: Hungary

Title: Memories of the U.S. Legation in Budapest 1945-47

Text:

Editor's note: The author lived in Budapest in the immediate post-war period while his father, H.F. Arthur Schoenfeld, was U.S. Minister to Hungary 1945-47. As an eight-year-old, he experienced the pervasive Russian military presence in the heavily damaged city. The house the family lived in has been the residence of U.S. ambassadors ever since. These excerpts from his unpublished memoir of the early days of the U.S. Legation have been edited for length.

We arrived just days after hostilities ended in Hungary and less than three months after the Soviets' long winter siege of Budapest, which damaged or destroyed almost every building in the city. Surprisingly, the house did not seem in bad condition when we moved in. In my bedroom, the occupying Russian troops had lit a fire in the washbasin to warm themselves. This had heavily scorched the wall and blackened the ceiling. Some of the large classical paintings that hung in the downstairs rooms had been bayoneted. The Russians had driven hooks in the dining room walls to tether their horses, but that was pretty much the worst of it.

Outside was a different story. The house was situated near the route of the main Soviet military thrust into the city in the last days of the siege. Two German soldiers were buried in shallow graves on the hillside just a few yards behind the house. In the garden field below and in front of the house were the graves of twelve Russian soldiers killed in the fight. We were told that the bodies had been wrapped in the house curtains and stacked for two or three days in the lower entry hall of the house awaiting burial. Above the driveway was a large cave hollowed out of the steep hillside where civilians had taken refuge.

The Danube bridges were down when we first got to Budapest and the sight of bodies floating down the river was not unusual. The city itself was heavily damaged; the terrible smell of death permeated parts of the downtown area where blocks of buildings had been turned into rubble. Destroyed German tanks blocked some streets and, along the route to the Legation downtown, the tail of a German aircraft stuck precariously into the air straight out over the street while its nose remained fixed in the second or third floor window into which it had plunged.

My father went to the chancery in Pest each day. In the first months there was no bridge to drive across. Until a bridge could be rebuilt, he...