Foxnews reports that President Bush, on his European trip has paid tribute to those Hungarians who resisted Soviet tyranny in 1956.

"Bush's tribute to what he called the "unbelievable thirst for freedom" that was exhibited by Hungarians in 1956 officially got under way when he placed a wreath at a black marble Eternal Flame Memorial in honor of those who died in the revolt. The president and first lady Laura Bush bowed their heads briefly as they laid a bouquet of cut irises, lilies and other flowers at the memorial where a bugler played.
In an open-air speech in a Buda Castle courtyard, the president was urging other nations to celebrate the hard-won freedoms in such former Iron Curtain countries by helping to nurture new democracies in places like Iraq. Bush was to recall the difficulty of the transition to democracy in Hungary and other nations as a way of urging patience at home and abroad with the fits and starts of Baghdad's transition to democracy.
"All of us who have the blessings of freedom must remember the spirit that took place here and we must not take freedom for granted," Bush said as he toasted his hosts in a long, opulent hall where they had lunch.
Bush's commemoration of the 1956 uprising comes more than four months early.
The country that endured the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fascism, German occupation and then communism revolted on Oct. 23, 1956 when Hungarians encouraged by anti-Soviet protests in Poland began protesting the Kremlin.
Pro-Soviet forces fired on a crowd of 100,000 peaceful protesters and killed more than 500. The following month, armored Soviet divisions rolled into Budapest, brutally crushing the revolt and leaving thousands dead in the fighting.
The United States did not help the Hungarian protesters — a fact Bush was not expected to mention — and it would be more than 30 years before Soviet rule ended."

(An Okie Gardener again) I have been anticommunist for as long as I can remember, back to childhood. I must give credit to two books for confirming my thoughts and attitudes. One was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. The other was The Bridge at Andau by James Michener, his chronicle of the Hungarian uprising based on interviews with refugees. Michener allows the events to speak for themselves, conveying the horror and inhumanity of communism as practiced by the Soviets and their subjegated nations. As memories fade and as a new generation arises that only knows a fallen Wall, I think we should encourage people to read these books.