Sámuel Silye ( 1932-1959)
Silye was born into a farming family in Jászkisér, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County. His father was placed on the kulak list in 1946, until the state eventually accepted the land offered to it. Silye completed secondary school but failed to gain a university place. He then trained as an iron turner. In the autumn of 1953, Silye was conscripted into the army and served in a Budapest unit, where he was a radio section leader during the 1956 revolution. On October 30, 1956, he was elected to the revolutionary military council revolutionary council formed by his unit, which received orders to occupy an emplacement in Kőbánya during the Soviet advance on November 4. Silye's anti-aircraft battery was in Csajkovszkij park (10th District), but several officers and men deserted. The commander of the battery gave out arms and ammunition to the civilians prepared to fight. Silye and some ten or twelve other enlisted men joined them, taking six pieces of ordnance with them. During the afternoon of November 4, they fired on some approaching Soviet tanks and hit them all. Three caught fire but managed to retreat and the fourth was destroyed. On the following day, one of the guns kept the attacking Soviet forces under fire for an hour. The detachment received supplies of ammunition on November 6 and took up positions on vacant land by the Kőbánya brewery, from where they fired on a Soviet helicopter and a Soviet tank. On November 8, when they came under Soviet artillery fire designed to prepare for a general attack, Silye and his comrades ceased fighting. After two days in the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Hospital, Silye went home to his family on November 10. He was arrested on June 6, 1959. The court of first instance convicted him of conspiracy and murder on September 21, 1959 and sentenced him to death. This was confirmed on November 18, 1959 by the Special Council of the Military College of the Supreme Court and carried out on November 21.
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