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In James Michener's book, 'Bridge At Andau' he writes, "By common consent, the popular hero of the evacuation was a railroad engineer who pulled a stunt which had all of Central Europe laughing for weeks."
The 'evacuation' he is referring to occurred during the failed 1957 Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet Union. The 'popular hero' he is referring to is Mike Kovacs. This twenty-one year old railroad engineer, along with a handful of Hungarian resistance fighters, put their own lives in jeopardy while attempting to keep more than fifteen hundred Jews, Catholics and scholars, churchmen, intellectuals, teachers and children from sure death in a Siberian concentration camp. Mike and his accomplices dared the impossible; to hijack a train filled with political prisoners and take it back across the entire country to the Austrian border, all right under the noses of the Russian army. They knew their decision would cost them dearly. They knew they would never see their families again, families that would have to pay the price for their actions.
In truth, they should not have succeeded. But they did and the Soviet Government never forgot them. And until the fall of the Soviet Union in the mid 1990's, Mike Kovacs remained one of the Communist regime's most wanted fugitives.
Written By Peter Liapis
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