As a graduate student, I had a professor who was from the Ukraine. He was a teen during the Soviet then German then Soviet occupations. During our discussions, he mentioned the “steps on the porch” and how everyone would stop breathing if, during the evening, steps were heard. Why? Because most likely, those steps were from the Soviet secret police (NKVD) or the Nazis, either SS, Field Police, or collaborators. A “visit” from any of those forces seldom turned out well as someone was either taken away for questioning which meant torture, or it was a raid for hidden food, or simply an exhibit of power, meant to keep that household or the village living in fear. In the least, one had to learn how to answer questions that played to the mind set of the occupier.
At the end of WWII, over seven percent of the Hungarian population was held in Soviet controlled camps, either in Hungary or in the Soviet Union. Throughout the Soviet era, estimates as high as thirty per cent of Hungarians were at some point arrested, deported, tortured, or seriously questioned by the secret police. A true example of the “workers’ paradise”!
