The Communist Classroom

One day last week, in a wooden shack on the edge of an Austrian D.P. camp in Salzburg, a wide-eyed little boy ate chocolate cake and drank coffee with whipped cream for the first time in his life. With his father, mother and two younger sisters, he had just escaped from Hungary. Casually, without taking his attention from the food, the skinny seven-year-old answered a few questions. There was no need for him to concentrate; in his one year at the People's Democratic School in Budapest he had been trained well. The answers came easily and quickly.

Q. What is your name? A. Sandor.

Q. What did you learn about in school? A. Everything. The cat, the cow, the dog and the beasts.

Q. What people did your teacher mention? A. Uncle Rakosi.*

Q. What did she say about him? A. Uncle Rakosi is a very fine man. He delivered the workers from slavery, and he is the leader of the working people.

Q. Who set Hungary free? A. The Soviet soldiers and the party.

Q. What kind of party? A. The greatest party: the "Workers' Party."

Q. Did you hear anything about the Communist Party? A. No, I did not.

Q. Do you know who Stalin is? A. Stalin is the great leader of the Soviet people . . . He likes the Hungarian people . . . and he sent his soldiers to fight.

Q. Against whom? A. Against the Americans and the British.

Q. Why did he do so? A. Because the Americans bombed out the Hungarian working people.

Q. What did you hear about Korea? A. We learned that the American soldiers bomb and fight there against the Soviets and the Koreans. The Koreans worked on their rice fields peacefully, but now they are very poor.

Q. Who will win? A. The Soviet people. They are stronger than the Americans, and Stalin leads them.

Q. Do you know who God is? A. I do not know yet.

* Hungary's Communist boss, Deputy Premier Matyas Rakosi.

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