A look back at Camp Kilmer, the Army base outside New Brunswick that processed 32,000 Hungarian refugees in 1956-57
Depending on how the war turns out, there could be a huge Ukrainian diaspora.
The gateway to Camp Kilmer when it was used as the reception center for Hungarian refugees in late 1956 and 1957 “We had no choice in anything. We were living under Russian rule. You couldn’t say anything against the communists,” said Paul Szabo, who was 21 at the time and a student at an agricultural college in Hungary when the rebellion started. Szabo joined in and helped spread the word of revolution by distributing flyers on a motorbike.
The blanket was a gift sent by her uncle, who had left Hungary for America a few years earlier and settled in Wharton in Morris County. Szabo also had to dodge the guards at the border with Austria. But he didn’t have a baby to smooth his passage. Szabo says he wrapped himself in a thick overcoat and he and a friend climbed over two strands of barbed wire. They didn’t get shot and made it into Austria.
Voorhees was a Rutgers graduate, a member of the Class of 1911. He was a colonel who had risen high in the Department of Defense, serving as Under Secretary of the Army under President Truman. Almost all of the refugees in America were to be processed at Kilmer, and Voorhees didn’t have much time to get it right.
“This was a massive operation that the government wanted to run efficiently,” said Dr. James Niessen, a historian at Rutgers who specializes in Hungary. “They also didn’t have much time to process the refugees. The public attitude, while initially welcoming, could turn at any moment.” Szabo was among the first refugees at Kilmer, arriving on November 21, 1956. He only stayed a few days after a local lawyer, Alex Eger, stepped in to sponsor him, setting him up with a job at General Cable Company in Perth Amboy and an apartment.
Voorhees went to great lengths to convince the public that things were working out as well. Early on, the New York Times had written an editorial that was highly critical of the Kilmer operation, so Voorhees went to automaker Henry Ford, who sent his best PR man, Leo Beebe, to Kilmer. Military police were instructed not to wear guns. A sign in the recreation center said “Say What You Want Worship as You Wish”—the American ideal.
The annual Hungarian festival will be held on June 4 and is expected to draw upwards of 15,000 people, she said.
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