Camp2
1970
You will see a picture of me somewhere on my list of pictures with a fishing rod in my hand and lots of bags that are. I was off to Europe on my second trip to Hungary in camp on Lake Balaton. They already knew love me from the year before. It was apparently a big luxury for Hungarian kid to go to such a camp. But I think we're spoiled little rich kids, who needed to be shown, but life is not all a big bowl of cherries. Total matter how much we thought it and we never really conformed, we still came away having a better understanding of how life was for Hungarians behind the Iron Curtain.
When this picture was taken we have escaped 14 times in the span of 6 weeks and it was very pleasurable to figure out new ways to do so.
For example story one - one of the kids in our groups farther was a Marine, and he wrote home to his parents that we need a boat, and the father sent to military self inflating black rubber boat, 12 or 14 adults. It was one of the coolest things that never seen.
This is one of the easiest escapes we ever did, however, always coming back seem to be a problem, and we were caught almost every single time but only after coming back in.
With respect to the boat we told nobody about it until the night we wanted to escape. It was time to go into town a local town and have some fun. We all got dressed up very quietly we snuck out of the camp under no time was after after we were supposed to be in bed 10 o'clock silly old around 11 we all woke each other up and fortunately for us a lot of Hungarian did not "squeal" (tell on us) however there were one or two that really did and we had to take them with us so they wouldn't say anything to the counselors. We didn't realize the risk we were taking unto ourselves and on to the others. We just wanted to have fun.
As you can tell by the picture there were several several of us, but some were too young and we did not take responsibility for them coming with us. So I will tell you who went with us.
There were seven of us all the time who hung out together. And I have lots of stories to tell you about some of them, many I forgot this is one of the reasons why I am doing this. But there are some horrific stories. What I mean by that is terrifically entertaining and funny.
Let's get to the group. I'm sorry to say I do not remember anyone's name, but I remember them. After being in the sun your aim can't, raking leaves, cleaning the washroom for punishment, cutting grass, and basic all kinds of slave child labor, which we did not agree with, it was really not much to do with this camp. We will go up every morning at 6 a.m., to the Hungarian national anthem, like soldiers. Perhaps it was a pre-training cramp for soldiers. whatever it was, we didn't like it, and we needed to be organized, and I organized us. Into a unit. Of course I had no idea what I was doing, but everyone seemed to want to follow me. Because I want to escape more than anything, and once they heard that word freedom they wanted to come to.
You never hear of kids wanting to leave camp and going to all links of doing so because most camps in Canada for instance are a lot of fun. They have hiking and fishing in sailing and all kinds of cool stuff. The only thing I remember that was any good at time hearing camp is when the girls came from a girls camp
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me 1 2 3 4 5 6
Now let us get back to the story about the raft. So around 11 o'clock, we all dressed up, about 500 m north, because on one of our excursions, by this place and it was booming with music and we wanted to go back and have some of this. So we did. On this big box that guy number two got from his dad there was a court that said pull here to inflate. So we did, I thought it would wake the whole camp up, it inflated in about five seconds or 10 seconds in and do it was very fast, and we had the coolest boat with or is it an all kinds of cool stuff. It even had a fishing kit a flashlight with batteries and everything. So, we jumped in the boat, we paddled around the fence that went into the water on her know maybe 20 or 30 meters, and paddled around the fence until we found a good piece of beach, where we could hide the boat.
Then we went to party I mean we were partying until at least 4 a.m., then we are getting tired so we went back to the boat, and the boat was gone. "Holy shit Batman"
What do we do? The only easy solution was to knock on the front door. it was a last resort thing, because we all got into shit. and the Day was no other Day. was we got all kinds of stamps and the chocolate at all kinds of things that were not allowed to eat it at all let us buy it because they're pricks. So I got in trouble but it was worth it.
I remember, that that punishment, was probably the worst when we ever got. They made us clean the toilets for almost a week and a half. It was supposed to be two weeks, but they let us off because because so much problems in the camp it was worth just let us get away with it. But we fought tooth and nail to get it. The thing that really drove the counselors wild, was, one day, when we just finished doing the bathrooms, we all felt like shit, we were tired, we didn't know what to do with ourselves, and we found ourselves at the door of the chef. Who was always very nice to us. And no matter what punishment we got, but it always show up at the door and she would always give us treats. She was the nicest person in the whole camp.
One day we are at the door and one of the kids did number three, had some chocolate but he was eating, hahahahah heheheheehe Now this is a good one. We knew it is Ex-Lax, but when the chef fastest if we had any more of this chocolate, we look at number three and asked him, and he said he had all pile of it. So, we went back with him to get a whole bunch of it, and we gave it to the chef, who said to us that this will make the chocolate pudding tonight taste much better. We couldn't have planned it better if we wanted to. Come suppertime we can hardly wait. And when the chocolate pudding came out, because we are still being punished from something else that we were not allowed to have desserts for one week, the chocolate pudding came out and leave didn't get any. First time we were very happy not to get any. but then some counselors said we know the chocolate pudding is your favorite and we're going to allow you to have chocolate pudding tonight.
But we didn't touch it. now if we were so smart, we would have pretended we were eating at and made sure that it covered our faces very well. but we didn't touch it, in fact what we did was we told the counselors that we deserve their punishment and some of us gave the putting back. This was excellent, because one of the counselors, the one who gave us most of the punishments had four helpings of the stuff. So, we all went outside and we sat near the infirmary, and waited and waited and waited and then one kid ran across the compound to the bathrooms and in five seconds later another kid ran across the compound, and then another 10 minutes 5000 people were running in 5000 different directions. It was so entertaining I can't even tell you. If the movie was ever made about this bed would be funny like you can't even imagine.
The problem is that we were not so smart, because we should've ran around too, and they would not have known it was us. We were just too busy laughing. So they found another punishment for us, and we found another way to rebel. Something I'm already very good at. Something I've always been good at.
Another story
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I sat everybody down at meetings and wanted to find out what all our fathers did so that we could harness the ability to escape even more. The one kid had a dad who was in the Navy, and other kid had a dad who was a politician, and the best thing of all is one of the kids his dad was the brother of a very famous communist who apparently was the one who started all of those camps for foreigners. We decided to write a letter to this uncle of his, of the punishments that we used to get because we wanted to go out and they wouldn't let us out. I remember how hungry were most of the time because the food wasn't enough.
We have no idea who this guy was. Or how important he really was. Lerinca Lios
The very first political communists I ever met. We hated the communists, we hated what they did to Hungary. this guy does all kinds of favors. And when he came , so did the TV and the news and everybody. There was a zoo with the camp cleaning up. Before these people came. And a lot of heads rolled after we went out with a meeting with him. When he took us out for lunch, we were so hungry we could've eaten paper. He was really astonished, and the next day half the counselors were gone and already replaced. From that day forward the camp was a much better place and when we wanted to go out they actually took us up and we could see the sights around the lake. This was after a unified the camps because the word got around to the other camps that we were being treated really well, and one of the stipulations was that we were the other camps and find out how the other kids were doing. Lerina Lios apointed us ambassadors, it was kind of cool. We visited 23 camps around Lake balton in one day it was tiring but it was a lot of fun. and from what I heard, the other camps got all kinds of extra goodies too.
One time when we wanted to go out, they didn't let us, but I already had a contingency plan. When we made that list way back when on it, was my dad, who was an engineer. You see my dad wanted me to go into engineering and always tried to get me interested in angles and materials and mathematics and anything. As part of this new camp structure they brought in extracurricular activities for us to do. Like woodworking, painting, and other such distractions. When we realized that we could build things out of wood, I suggested to the guys that we build the latter that we could escape and use the latter over and over. But we had to design this ladder, so I rolled my dad, and asked him the following. My mom kept the letter and a photocopied it and I'll put it up here as soon as I find it again.
If I had 15 two by fours, and I needed to span offense 10 feet high, and it had to support the weight of a person ( the heaviest guy in the camp I think was 100 pounds or hundred and 50) weighing 150 pounds, what kind of an A-frame can be built so that the person weighing 150 pounds and climb over the fence and come down the other side safely. Well you have no idea how happy my dad was to receive such a question.
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