"At about 8:00 we had our last meal in the country. We wanted to have a good breakfast, and we had two hot chocolates and some candy, which lasted us all day. Then we started. It was cold and raining, and we just watched for signs saying 'Vienna' to see whether we were going in the right direction. We could have been caught, but we were sure of ourselves. One hundred yards from the border we saw a Hungarian peasant's house, and he invited us in. He wouldn't accept any money, and was shocked that we would offer it.

"We waited in the house two hours, then we ran the 100 yards to the border. There was a police barracks 50 yards away from where we were, but they didn't notice us. In September, as a sign of good will to Austria the Hungarian government had removed the barbed wire, the mines, and the dogs from the border--it had been impossible to get through before. The border zig-zags, and we got into Austria and back into Hungary several times, but finally we crossed it. It wasn't a joyous thing at all; just crossing that no-man's-land. It was rather sad-leaving behind everything."

Once across and into Austria, Fenyvesi and the other new refugees found helpful villagers who led them to the big camps that were forming to take care of the large influx. "A half hour after we crossed we started to court nice Austrian girls," Fenyvesi recalls, "and we felt like human beings again." a chance to read certain books I other-wise couldn't read, and it gave me a hope that I could live in this country. Besides, I felt that a middle-class boy should learn English."

The Austrian camps were an unfortunate introduction to the refugees' new life. One large one, at Eisenstadt, had been a Russian soldiers' barracks, and there were Russian signs all around the walls. "The first day there we erased them," Fenyvesi says. The camps were over-crowded, the food consisted of black coffee, American cheese, beans, and meat every day. The refugees did nothing at all for four days--"it was very depressing."

Those who were encamped at Eisenstadt were moved after a while to a pleasanter camp in Salzburg, where college students were given rooms in a separate, and fairly comfortable building. Other refugees, however, had the "depressing feeling that their whole future would be in a camp," Julius recounts. At Salzburg they were given showers and shaving lotion,--"a great thing; we felt like new-born babies."

While in the camps they made their decisions of what they would no next. Fenyvesi and George Heimler, also a sophomore in Kirkland House, wanted to go to the United States because it offered the most opportunities for scholarships and college education.

ARRIVAL

They arrived here by plane and boat, on dark nights and on cold foggy mornings. "I always arrived everywhere at night," Fenyvesi remarks, while Heimler laments that "we coudn't even see the Statue of Liberty." Many of them were met by journalists and photographers. "My first impression of American," one refugee student relates, "was of American photographers and reporters. Their first act was to sit on the table or put their feet up. I thought this was a common American social custom."

When these interviews were finished, they were taken to Camp Kilmer, a large former army barracks in New Jersey that had been outfitted to provide the most pleasant interlude possible before the Hungarians were settled in their new homes. Kilmer was a great improvement over the Austrian camps, both because of its better facilities and because the refugees there knew that it would be only a matter of days before they would be permanently settled.

Kilmer was outfitted with recreation halls, movies, good food, and comfortable barracks, which were "pleasant and warm," Fenyvesi recalls. "Everybody said 'That's America.'" he added. He was assigned to "a typical American family" in Washington: "a husband, a wife, two kids, one cocker spaniel, and a turtle." Others were assigned to similar places, or stayed with relatives.

After their arrival in the United States, the Hungarians started looking for work and college schalarships. Fenyvesi found employment in a printing office in Washington, which was doing work for Senator McClellan's labor investigating committee. In delivering reports, he met many of the the late Senator McCarthy. Heimler the late Senator McCarthy. Heinler worked in a shoe factory for a while, and then went to the University of Illinois for an English course, where he stayed in a fraternity house. He found the students there quiet, friendly, and had several dates with local sorority belles.

DISHWASHING

Julius washed dishes in a Boston hotel, and became active in the Association of Hungarian Students in the United States. He attended the organization's summer conference in Chicago, where he was told by friendly natives, "Please don't walk alone at night."

The students saw or were seen by the World University Service, which served as the liaison between them and universities which were becoming interested in offering scholarships to Hungarian students. Heimler and Fenyvesi were offered scholarships by Kirkland House, which raised $1200 for Heimler, and received an anonymous scholarships, which it gave to Charles.

Why did they choose Harvard? "A degree at Harvard would really be a great thing," Julius says, while Fenyvesi became convinced of the University's excellence after he visited Cambridge last spring. After he was here one day, he "learned to like Harvard and hate Yale, to like the CRIMSON and hate the Lampoon." He felt at first that Harvard might be too far away--"every Hungarian has the feeling that to go too far away is not good. We are a little country," he explains.