Fónay Jenő
Born 5 September 1926, Kaposvár. Before the Revolution he worked as an engineer. He was a member of the Széna Square armed group. He was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to death. He spent some 130 days on death row. The Presidential Council pardoned him and reduced his sentence to life imprisonment. He was released in 1963.
The warden asked me: "Tell me, Fónay, do you know anything about plumbing?" I said "Yes, I can fix things, but I have to check the machines first." I checked out the machines and I knew instantly that
you could break out of the jail through the drainpipe. No doubt, the water in it has to run out somewhere.
You simply have to crawl all the way through it on your stomach. My friends went out, but only one of them came back as we had agreed earlier. That one said that he had returned from the Rákos railway* switchyard. They pushed up a sewer cover and they came up among the railway wagons. "Oh God, the whole jail will run away!" I said with enthusiasm. "Wow, guys, this is great! And what about the other two fellas? Where are they?" "They'll be right back." It was three o'clock in the afternoon and still no sight of them. So, I said to Pista Szirmai, "Please, quickly go down into the pipes and holler, for the pipe carries the sound, yell and call them back because we have to go back to our cells from work at four. If they are not back by then, it's over. We are finished." Well, they did not come back. They had left in the morning and probably started to have some fun. Suddenly, the sirens went off in the prison, and all the bells started ringing. We were locked into our cells. I climbed up on the upper bed – there were two bunk beds there, one above the other – and looked out through the window. In a couple of minutes the firemen came, the police came, everybody came and sooner than I realized they were already taking me. But how could they find out that I was the one who had the idea. That it was my doing. I can’t imagine! So, we were racing into the Gyorskocsi street** from the Transit***. Speeding, sirens screaming, lights flashing all the way. I was taken to János Halascsák, the Chief of Security of the Department of the Interior. We entered, I looked up, oh my God! His secretary sitting in the waiting room was a former colleague of mine. We just stared at each other with our mouths wide open. So, in I went to see her boss. "Sit down!" he commanded. He took his jacket off and started to roll up one of his sleeves. "This guy's gonna rough me up real bad, I'm sure he's gonna beat the living daylights out of me now" I thought. While he was rolling up his other sleeve my eyes wandered to the bookshelf, and I was staring at the books in astonishment: "It's the Pattantyús series!" Black books with gold letters on them, announcing: Géza Ábrahám Pattantyús. One of them was the "Thermology", the other "Dynamics", and so on. Seven or eight volumes next to each other in one row. And I said to him: "I am not afraid of you anymore." "What do you mean you are not afraid of me anymore, you this and that?" he asked. I just looked at him and said:
"Sir, why would I be afraid of someone who has the Pattantyús collection?" So he sat down in the chair facing me and we started talking.
He asked me: "Who knew about it?" "About what?" "About the jailbreak." "I didn’t." I said. "I did not ask if you knew about it or not. I asked who knew about it? Listen! Don't go around in circles by trying to lie to me about it because I swear to you you're going to be hanged. You can take my word for it! Tell me everything as it really happened..." Can you believe all that baloney? Well, I got away with it. I didn’t even get punched in the face.
* : Rákosrendező is a railway station for freight in Budapest.
** : The Investigations Department of the Budapest Chief Constabulary was located on Gyorskocsi Street.
*** : Gyűjtő was the name of a feared jail in Budapest.