I’ve known, since I was a kid, that I was born on the exact day that the Hungarian Revolution started. That has always intrigued me.

I just finished James Michener’s 1957 account of the Hungarian Revolution, “The Bridge at Andau,” published when I was one year old. It’s not a great book, by Michener standards. It feels like it was rushed into print. He writes with much personal outrage at what Hungarians endured during ten years of Soviet enslavement. A proud nation had been turned into a brutal, repressive, horrible prison state. Refugees told him numerous stories of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the secret police, stories that turn your stomach. As Michener notes, the Soviets imposed the same cruel oppression on all of its satellite states–East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and others.

The book begins by stating my birthday: “On Tuesday evening, October 23,1956–a day which the world will be slow to forget–a boy of 18…” and we’re off and running. A student demonstration attracts a crowd. Shortly, stones will be thrown, gunfire exchanged, buildings stormed, Russian tanks destroyed by kids. The people won their freedom, and for a couple weeks, made plans for a new Hungary. But Russia couldn’t let that happen.

The Russians invaded in force in November 4. The people put up a heroic resistance, destroying hundreds of Russian tanks with makeshift weapons. But defeat was inevitable. Thousands were killed, and thousands more were packed into cattle cars and shipped to Siberia. Darkness once again descended.

Over 200,000 Hungarians fled the country, most crossing the border into Austria. Thousands emerged from swamps to cross a footbridge near an Austrian town called Andau. Michener was there in late 1956 as a young reporter. He risked his life to help hundreds of Hungarian refugees evade Russian soldiers and secret police and cross that border. And he recorded their stories for the world to hear.