West Germany and West BerlinIN August 1961 John and Barbara took the family on a special holiday to celebrate Giori’s success and his leaving school. It was the first time that Giori and Helena had been back on the Continent since their escape nearly six years ago. There was no question of visiting Hungary although the tension had eased there. The Hungarian people lived a sullen, quiet life, pretending that the uprising had never taken place. It was a pretence that their rulers required of them, a pretence that they gladly accepted for their own peace of mind. The Durhams had no wish to go there. Anyway, they felt it would be unsafe. But in Berlin they would be less than two hundred miles from the border with Czechoslovakia, which was one of Hungary’s neighbours.
The whole family was amaz
