Iconic Photos

Photojournalism’s most memorable images were crafted by the right men at the right moment. John Sadovy was one of those men. The LIFE magazine photographer was one of only a handful of photojournalists who infiltrated Hungary during its tumultuous revolution in 1956. A Czechoslovakian by birth, Sadovy got past the Communist border guards by disguising himself as an ice-cream salesman. His astonishing, violent and graphic photographs of the uprising, featured in many international newspapers, became testaments to atrocities committed by the both sides in that doomed and tragic uprising, and won Sadovy the Robert Capa Award.

The Hungarian Uprising began as a student movement in the cafes, little noticed by the Communist authorities. Viewing the movement not as an ideological struggle, but as an economic and social one, the authorities both in Budapest and Moscow discounted the movement, and installed Imre Nagy, the sole remaining Hungarian politician respected by both communists and students, as the head of interim government. Meanwhile, John Sadovy found himself amongst a group of freedom fighters, who were attacking the headquarters of AVH, the Hungarian Secret Police. They waited for the secret police to exit the building, and once the secret police walked out they were shot dead at point blank range.

In his most celebrated series of photographs, Sadovy captured fury, revenge and terror — eloquent outbursts of an emotive revolution. In the LIFE magazine, he wrote an editorial which ran alongside his pictures: “I could see the impact of bullets on a man’s clothes.” The man who served as company photographer with the British Army during the Second World War recalled that these were the quickest killings he had ever seen, and there was ”nothing to compare with the horror of this…. the tears kept running down my face and I had to keep wiping them away.”

As the photos suggested, covering the revolution was extremely dangerous. Sadovy was wounded on the hand, and Jean-Pierre Pedrazinni of Paris Match — who along with Sadovy was one of the first Western journalists to arrive in Budapest — got a machine gun burst in his stomach and leg before he could get many pictures and died. What began as a peaceful student revolt slowly got out of hand and was usurped by radical elements. Finally, Nagy’s wish to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact was the last straw for the Soviet Union; its invasion proved that the Soviets still wished to maintain its Stalinist sphere of influence even after Uncle Joe was gone. Sadovy’s photos of AVH executions became the primary evidence against Imre Nagy and other members of his cabinet who were sentenced to death. The AVH’s response was equally swift and uncompromising; its revenge: deportation thousands of students, intellectuals and workers to the icy gulags of Siberia.

More photos here.