Zsuzsanna Gyenes (Csiky Csikász Lászlóné) was born in 1929 in a middle class family of civil servants. She fled to the Bishops’ Palace in Győr with her grandmother before the advancing Soviet forces in 1945 where she was eyewitness of Bishop Vilmos Apor’s martyrdom. After WWII his father was the vice-governor of Pest county. Since he rejected to collaborate with the communists, he was carried off by the communist political police, the lands and properties of the family were confiscated. Her parents moved to the vineyard of the family near the city of Pécs, they got a job by the State Insurance Company there. Zsuzsanna Gyenes first studied at Sacré Coeur in Budapest, later she continued her studies at a college in Zsámbék maintained by a Swiss religious order. It was there where she put her final exams and then qualified as an elementary school teacher in 1948. She taught in different villages, in Baksa, later in Kisdér, before returning to Budapest to the elementary school in Mester street. She continued to be employed as an elementary school teacher although she graduated in Hungarian literature and history at the university. She got married some time before the 1956 revolution, but she couldn’t live together with her husband, the leather engineer László Csiky Csikász, because he was enforced to work in the countryside. During the revolution his father was elected to the national committee of the city of Pécs, and his brother-in-law Pál Maléter was nominated minister of defence in Imre Nagy’s government. During the reprisals both of them were arrested, his father sentenced to imprisonment, his brother-in-law condemned to death. During the Hungarian revolution Zsuzsanna Gyenes walked in Budapest with her sister and friends, among others she was present at the attack against the Radio building. After the suppression of the upheaval she found that life was hopeless in Hungary. She was desperated because of her close relatives’ arrest as well as for the lack of possibilities for those who had come from the middle class. She decided to leave for the West. Her mother-in-law knew about a smuggler who could see her and her husband to the Yugoslav border, but they refused it. In November, however, she left finally with her cousin to Győr, but having heard about the raid of the political police she gave up and fled back to the capital. In December of the same year she left again for Győr, but this time with her husband and friend of theirs. From the city of Győr they continued on foot in the direction of the border across the marshy Hanság. They tried to cross the border near to Sopron and Ágfalva as they were told by the head of a state farm. They unfortunately lost their way and they got to a small border station. The Hungarian border officers arrested them, they were interrogated and brought back to Budapest as refugees who „had gotten disgusted of bad capitalism of their free will”. Because of her attempt to leave Hungary she was employed only as a supplying teacher for half a year. Later she was moved to the elementary school in Lenhossék street where she taught a lot of children in state care and a lot of gipsies. She had two sons. She retired in 1989. After it she had a small business which put on different school canteens for a few years.

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