Antal Becsky

Antal Becsky was born on 23 June 1911 in Budapest, his parents were penniless. He began his military service in 1929, and in 1940 he was transferred to active service after several training exercises. After the siege of Budapest, he became commander of the 201st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Squadron. He did not take part in any serious fighting during the siege. On 2 January he was posted to the house at 22 Teleki Pál Street (star) in the V. district, where he also fed the inhabitants of the house. He prepared the transfer of his unit, but was arrested by the Arrow Cross on 16 January 1945. Fortunately for him, the incriminating evidence was not too serious, so he was able to explain himself out. His unit consisted of 150 soldiers and 8 officers, and he took virtually no part in the fighting of the siege, nor did he submit any escape petitions. On 6 February 1945, he moved his combat post to 12 Marvány Street and waited for the Soviet army to arrive. On 9 February, he and 12 of his men prevented a German unit from firing a bazooka into the basement of the building, where some Soviet soldiers had then entered, as this action would have endangered the civilians who were crowded in. He was captured on 11 February and returned home on 1 October 1947. He was subsequently dismissed from the civil service, despite the fact that he was able to produce a number of statements that gave credible evidence of his democratic credentials, including the fact that in 1944, despite his half-Jewish background, he employed one of his subordinates as a head of service and personally certified another, whom he knew to be a Christian, as a Christian. He did not join any party or mass organisation. He managed to find work as an accountant. "My circle of friends is mainly made up of my colleagues in the factory, as we spend almost all day together. As a young married woman, I have no social life at the moment." - he wrote cautiously in his autobiography of 1950. The last sentence of this was, in hindsight, a little enigmatic, although the reader at the time may have been satisfied with what he wrote: 'I see the difference between the capitalist imperialist system and the socialist economic order very clearly, all the more so because the years I spent in the Soviet Union did not pass without a trace.'