Hungary

Only seven when World War II came to Budapest, Helen Szablya remembers that December night in 1944 when she woke to the sound of bombs. The Soviet air raid was just the beginning of a siege that lasted more than a year and led to a Soviet occupation that culminated in a bloody attempt at a revolution in 1956. 

At one point during the siege, all 22 members of Szablya’s household took shelter in a little room that was normally used for ironing. It was on a lower floor and the safest place in the house. The family and their workers stretched their supplies, eating … » More …