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Contents

FOREWORD
CAVEAT TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
INTRODUCTION

PART 1: GROWING UP IN HUNGARY
The Beginning
Tokaj: a Poem of Nature, a Land of the Hungarians
Eger
The Uplands, Sub-Carpathia and Transylvania
A little summer labor camp
Budapest, 1944
Peace and war
Small country, big war
Reconnaissance and action
The last offensive
Border by the river Morva
Rest and contemplation

PART 2: IN THE SOVIET GULAG
Dawn alarm
The world of barbed wire: the Zwetl cholera camp
Prisoner transport
Distribution camp
Collection camp at Constanza
Travel on the Black Sea
Life and death in Jackal camp No. 6.
Death camp No. 44.
Hospital camp No. 4.
Journey of hope

PART 3: GEOLOGY, THE LIFESAVING SCIENCE
University life in Budapest
The practice of geology in Hungary, 1952-1956
Geologic study of the Recsk ore body
The ore at Recsk and Neo-Europe
October 23, 1956 (by Eva B. Kisvarsányi)

PART 4: IN AMERICA
Abel in the wilderness
Ore exploration the American way
The discovery of the Viburnum Trend
The economic foundations of exploration
Three decades in American higher education

EPILOGUE

SELECTED POEMS BY GÉZA KISVARSÁNYI
Ship of Death (2006)
In the Gulag of Russia (2000)

SELECTED LITERATURE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Foreword

I am eighty-five years old, the last messenger of times long gone. I recount what I've seen and heard for my descendants, for my contemporaries, and for historians.

I never wrote a diary and cannot give a detailed account of every day, but perhaps my perspective is all the more interesting and important. I remember what's significant and interesting. My view is personal but rooted in reality. I don't cover up anything, and I don't alter events. Events and thoughts go together like an old man and his cane.

Why do I write then? I write because I am a witness of 20th century history, a player in this huge human tragedy. I write because the 20th century is the greatest tragedy of the culture of the white man and of the great European civilization. This century is the greatest and most fateful graveyard of this world-conquering culture. Multitudes planned imperial futures, conquests, wrote directives and reordered the fate of the world. Many wrote history and explained their report cards. In the end, everybody wanted to do good, and everyone considered himself innocent. The writings of great men have all been published. I just wrote down what it meant for me when, at the age of 13, World War II broke out and robbed me of the best years of my youth.

If I had been writing a diary, it would have been lost long ago in one of the Russian prison camps. The purpose of frequent night alarms and searches was to confiscate all pencils and papers. The circumstances were the most severe because we were building a strategic road through the Caucasus Mountains for the Soviet army. Afterwards, in Hungary, during the years of communist rule, it was not advisable to remember, or keep such documents at home. Later, after the 1956 anti-communist revolution, we were on the run without any documents, paper, or pencil. Possessing written documents meant severe imprisonment everywhere. Those who wrote diaries could find themselves in trouble. Paper and pencil were always great enemies of dictatorships and the information revolution was instrumental in their overthrow. All my life, even in the worst circumstances, I concentrated on excluding from my brain everything bad, to concentrate on the future and to forget and exclude every bad experience from my life. This is the philosophy of the American Marine Corps: don't worry about what you don't have but concentrate on what you have. Quite by accident, my worldview is similar to that of the Marines. The completion of high school and university studies with excellent results, the attainment of an American Ph. D., the search and discovery of useful ore, were all built on this philosophy. Geologic discoveries in America and Hungary and finding art in science gave me spiritual rejuvenation and mental concentration. That is how I lived through the greatest ordeals of my life physically, psychologically, and spiritually. I survived the bombings, seven months of service in the war, World War II itself, being dragged away as a prisoner of war, and the death camps in the Gulag, the most extensive mechanized massacre in world history, the outright lies, famines, prisons and torture chambers operated by the political dictatorships.

Sarasota 2011

Geza Kisvarsányi
Professor Emeritus

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