Sopronpuszta, 19th August, 1989.
Lt. Col. Arpad Bella, acting commander of the Hungarian border guard on duty that day, said that he didn't want to be a mass murderer, that he would do the right thing and order his guards to stand aside and let the people pass.
"What I saw on the other side was amazing. There were people who in their panic kept running even further, even though they were on Austrian land. There were people who just sat down on the other side of the border and just either cried... or laughed".
The Pan-Europen Picnic had been organised by members of the growing ant-communist opposition in Hungary as a peaceful event in a field next to the Austrian border near the town of Sopron, to demonstrate an increasing sense of freedom under Glasnost, and to put to the test Gorbachov's affirmation that he 'would not intervene militarily' to prevent cross-border movements of people. It had been agreed that part of the border would be opened for 3 hours to allow 'an ordinary exchange of greetings' between Austrians and Hungarians. What happened, in fact, was that hundreds of East Germans arrived and about 600 of them crossed the border that afternoon.
"What happened attracted enormous attention and set in motion the process which saw the wall fall in Berlin on November 9th ... for the appearance of a hole in the Iron Curtain meant that the curtain in it's entirety became worthless. It was like gigantic dam which suddenly had developed a little hole somewhere. And it was at Sopron where everything really began to crack in all seriousness".
Carl Bildt - Swedish Foreign Minister.
