Earlier
, I saw that the commemoration of the Hungarian Revolution of 56 (Excellent Wikipedia entry) turned into violent clashes with the riot police (BBC news). Even an old (Russian) tank made an appearance (briefly?) as you can tell from that photo at BBC’s. Excellent commentary (pictures/video/sound) at The Internationalist (for future reference, here be a permalink to the October archive)1.
Which reminds me that I should mention that both the Czech (1953) and Hungarian revolts (1956) made it into the Dutch history lessons for 12 year-old kids2. If I remember correctly, this was exclusively done because many Eastern Europeans who fled the violence ended up in West Europe, and indeed, a portion of them ended up in The Netherlands (link to UNHCR).
Update 10/24: Nu.nl carries a Dutch story about how the Hungarian revolution turned the tide for Dutch Communists (who were previously respected for the crucial role they played during the German occupation)
1 I just became aware that Blogger doesn’t support ‘daily archives’: hence the link to the complete October archive at The Internationalist.
2 I’m not sure if this still applies today: after all, back in the days, the Cold War played a bigger part in our lives.
Thanks muchly for the links. If anyone wants to hear me getting shot at (sort of), here is the link: (link to soundfile)
ed. text url converted to link.
It sounds uh, (for a lack of a better word) surreal (I expected the plane to drop bombs too..)