The Russian advance was accompanied by a mass exodus of the civilian population. Nobody wanted to live with the Russians as occupiers. There were terrible rumours of mass shootings and rapes. Countless people began to flee their homes and long lines of refugees clogged the streets. Sometimes dramatic scenes took place. For example, I had to watch as the bridge over the Tisza near Szentes was blown up because a Russian crossing was imminent. It could not be cleared in time and was overcrowded with fleeing people. The bridge was blown up anyway and most of the refugees on the bridge probably perished. […]
Once we went to a tanya, an outlying farm, and asked for food. The farmer’s wife cooked something for us and also gave us something in reserve. In the Hatvan area, we forced the Russians out of a village. The inhabitants told us about the Russians and how they had treated them: Provisions plundered and women violated. The more alcohol they had at their disposal, the worse they raged. The locals offered us their wine because they preferred us to drink it rather than the Russians. […]
We learnt about the conditions on the other side from Russians who had been taken prisoner and with whom we were able to communicate to some extent. The Russian leadership had sent illiterates from remote provinces to the front, who didn’t even know why they were now deployed in Hungary and why they had to shoot our people to death here. […]
Resistance in the form of partisan activity against the Wehrmacht but also the Hungarian army made itself felt among the local population. The population no longer wanted to support the war and wanted to avoid an encirclement battle in the urban area. Some of us were repeatedly shot at from flats and injured in the process. I received an order to take five men in my vehicle to a certain street for a raid. I was forced to take everyone with me at once and with six men on the sidecar it was an exciting ride. Our men actually found a few older men, they were taken away and handed over to the company command. I can’t say what happened to them.
On Christmas Eve 1944, I really wanted to visit my parents. That evening I set off on my motorbike and when I passed the Johannes Hospital – there was an avenue of trees – a soldier from the German combat group warned me not to go any further. He held his bazooka ready to fire. The Russians had obviously already advanced as far as the Budagyöngye (tram depot), about 300 metres ahead of us. I stopped and at the same moment the Russians had already noticed the sound of my engine and aimed a gun at me. The shell hit a tree above me and a few branches came crashing down on me. I weaved my way back through the avenue at lightning speed. If I had hesitated even for a moment, it would have been certain death. The collision with the Russians at the tram depot brought certainty: we were surrounded! I drove back to my comrades as fast as I could and passed on the news that the city was surrounded. Such a rapid advance by the Russian forces from the west came as a complete surprise to us and probably to many of our superiors and caused a great deal of confusion.(Michael Kretz: Die Belagerung von Budapest)
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