Two months after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956, Agnes Gibboney's parents decided to leave. None of their brothers, sisters or parents knew. They took a train to the last station before the border with their two children and another couple, and walked the rest of the way carrying a suitcase filled with cigarettes they meant to sell abroad for food money. Then the two-year-old woke up in the middle of nowhere and started crying. Soldiers surrounded all six of them, took the suitcases and everything in them, and let them go.
In this segment of The Jenny Beth Show's Surviving Communism series, Gibboney tells Jenny Beth Martin what her parents did next. In January they tried again. A friend of her mother's who worked in a pharmacy made something to keep the child asleep for the journey. It was the last day the border into Yugoslavia was open; Austria's was already closed. The adults jumped a deep, wide ditch, one of the men with her brother and her father with her, and reached a house on the other side, then a refugee camp where the family would spend ten months.
Her mother was pregnant when they crossed. The baby, born in the camp, died in her arms as the hospital admitted him. Gibboney then walks through the rest of what her parents lost: a brother born nine weeks premature in 1951 who lived, a sister, Martha, who died of rickets in Hungary before Agnes was born, and a sister, Clara, who died of meningitis in Brazil. In 1977 her mother told her to visit "your sister" at the cemetery, and Agnes learned about Martha for the first time. She rebuilt the grave and insisted on paying for it herself, with money she earned babysitting.
In this segment:
• Two months after the Soviet invasion: the decision nobody in the family was told about
• A train to the last station, then on foot with a suitcase of cigarettes
• A crying two-year-old, six people surrounded, everything taken, nobody arrested
• January 1957: a pharmacist's concoction and the last day the border was open
• The jump over the ditch into Yugoslavia
• Ten months in a refugee camp, and a baby brother lost
• Martha and Clara, and the grave she rebuilt in 1977
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00:00 — Two months after the Soviet invasion: who left, and who was not told
00:44 — A train to the last station, then on foot; a crying two-year-old, soldiers, everything taken
01:20 — January 1957: a pharmacist friend's concoction
01:31 — The last day the border into Yugoslavia was open
01:54 — A house across the border, then the refugee camp
02:22 — Jenny Beth Martin: "what we would see in a movie"
02:47 — Her mother was pregnant; a baby brother born in the camp
03:23 — A brother born nine weeks premature in 1951, who fit in a shoebox
03:38 — Martha: rickets, and a grave she did not know existed
04:15 — Rebuilding the grave in 1977, and paying for it herself
05:07 — Clara, in Brazil: "a very, very difficult life"
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