Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1987. január-június (41. évfolyam, 1-25. szám)
1987-04-30 / 17. szám
Thursday, Apr. 30. 1987. » / AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO iK 21. WALLENBERG The last person to see Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest was the now elderly László Hertelendy, and the government daily Magyar Hirlap carries an interview with him made by Pál Bokor. Wallenberg, a secretary at the Swedish Embassy here in the Second World War, saved the lives of several thousand Hungarian Jews in 1944 and 1945. The only authentic document that has come to light so far shows that he died in prison in the Soviet Union in 1947, a victim of the period of the cult of personality. "Wallenberg could establish a rapport with people with exceptional ease," Hertelendy said, "and come to an understanding with people in minutes. He spoke several languages, including Hungarian. At that time he was in touch with the highest circles in Hungary." According to Hertelendy, Wallenberg's mission began much earlier than is generally believed: not in 1944 but in 1941. In 1942 he had a personal meeting with the Hungarian Chief ( of Staff to try and save the life of Zoltán Schónherz, a communist who had been condemned to death. "In 1941 we once went together to the Schwartzer sanatorium in Kékgolyó utca, a private mental hospital, where the patients were extremely rich," Hertelendy recalls. "Among them were some who had nothing wrong with them at all. They just thought it would be better to disappear for a while because of the anti-Jewish law... "In the following year we went to see the Chief of Staff, Col Gen, Szombathelyi about Schonherz's case. He would have been the man with the authority to handle Schonherz's appeal for clemency. Schönherz had been tried by courtmartial in July as a traitor, and the death sentence had already been passed when his younger sister turned to (opposition MP) Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky for help... "There were undoubtedly others who tried to do their duty at that time. But irrespective of that, I recognized Wallenberg as a special, brave man... I knew him and worked with him, and he deserves to have his memory preserved." In Hungary, with a population of 10.6 million last year, social insurance payments amounted to 143,000 million forints. Old- age pensions for the 2.3 million pensioners in this country accounted for two thirds of this sum. Last year 126,000 people went into retirement. Maternity and child-care allowances were paid to more mothers than a year earlier. Maternity allowance, which was extended by four weeks, was granted to 47,000 mothers, 8,000 more than in 1985. UNITED FOOD & COMMERCIAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION (AFL-CIO) LOCAL ] FLM-FJC ÜDVÖZLI AZ AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZOT f es JAMES LUSTIG kiváló szakszervezeti vezetőt a lap 85. fennállása alkalmából CONFESSION From the moment that art ceases to be the fruit that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talent to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people today can no longer expect to receive consolation or exaltation from art. The "refined" the rich, the professional "do-nothings", the "distillers of quintessence" desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in todays art. And I, myself, since the advent of cubism, fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied those critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my head. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these .farces, I became celebrated and very rapidly. For a painter celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown, a mountbank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem, but it, at least, and at last, does have the merit of being honest. Interview with Picasso by Giovanni Pa- pini, author of "Libro Nero". The above cited from review of book in French publication "La Croix" - 1952. First series of articles to same effect; San Francisco Examiner - 1939, by John Garth. TO THE EDITOR The 1987 World Cup Shooting Meet was held in Havana, Cuba during the week of March 23rd, and the U.S. team won first place, second was France and third, West Germany. Tragically, during the meet, two members of the U.S. team were involved in a rented-car accident, in which one died and the other was seriously injured. After several days of intensive care, the injured team member was flown back to the U.S. in an ambulance plane. When departing, he expressed admiration and gratitude for the excellent treatment and care that he had received. This news was reported in the foreign press, but it seems to have escaped the attention of the Washington Post, one of the major newspapers in the Eastern U.S. Yet I recall the Post reporting on^.an International Tiddly Winks competition that took place, I believe, in Hyattsville, MD. I wonder, therefore whether we are faced with suppression of news from Cuba or by a reporter's fear of going there because of the Reagan Administration's restriction of travel to Cuba? This travel ban neither applies to reporters nor to approximately 500,000 Cuban-Americans living in the U.S., many of whom travel there regularly, thereby contributing large sums of hard currency to the Cuban Treasury. Unless of course,. the information about Cuba emanating from Elliot Abrams, the State Department's current "expert" on Latin America, has brain-washed the Post into Dr BARD’S ADY TRANLSLATIONS It gives us great pleasure to inform the readers of our paper that Dr. Eugene Bard before his retirement a leading figure of New York intellectual circles and a devoted reader of our newspaper, an admirer of Ady's poetry, had his translations of the great Hungarian poet published in East Germany by the University of Munich. We consider Dr. Bard's translations by far the finest of all existing Ady translations in the English language and warmly recommend its acquisition to our readers. The Editor We publish below the authors fine introduction to the work. It is an old witticism that Hungary has produced more poets per acre than any other country. That may or may not be true. But it is a patent fact that Hungarian authors are hardly known outside their native habitat and that goes even for as towering a literary figure as Endre Ady. A good test of interest is to look up Ady in the encyclopedias. The Brittanica - 1942 edition - allows a total of 11 lines to "Ady, Andre". The Americana, with 19 lines, does a bit better in its 1965 edition. t Ady was born in the village of Erdmind- szent in Transylvania, now Rumania, on November 22, 1877. His was a titled family, the so-called middle nobility, or "bocsko- ros nemes" in Hungarian. In the course of time, members of this class have descended to the economic and even social levels of village peasantry. Ady's father, Lorincz, being a bit more prosperous than his neighbors, sent his two sons to the Gymnasium to be educated in Latin and Greek, hoping that they might achieve white-collar jobs, perhaps becoming "szolgabiró", or country judges. Endre was a disappointment. Soon after graduating from the Gymnasium he got a job on the staff of a provincial newspaper. For the rest of his life he made his living, such as it was, as a newspaperman, editor, foreign correspondent, etc. He never earned enough, either in these capacities, or as a poet and writer, to be free of debt and financial troubles. Fame, finally, came to him but fortune, never. Ady's published output includes over a thousand poems. Most of them were written and published over a 15-year period. A posthumous volume was published after his death. A number of volumes of prose also exist, including assorted articles, short stories, endless polemics about matters, events, personalities long buried in the fog of time. This literary total constitutes, in effect, a huge autobiography, full of Ady's concern with life, with death, with the ultimate mysteries, with God. This selection contains about 10 percent of the total. It has been for the most part a labor of love, l'art pour l'art, and an experiment on what could be done with Ady in colloquial American English. My intention was to be as literal as possible, to transmit not only the meaning - wherever that could be found - of the poems, but also their form, rhythm, music, rhyme structure, that undefinable something that makes a poem undisputedly an Ady poem. believing that no World-Class American athlete could possibly agree to compete in a "miserable country" such as Cuba. Sincerely yours
