Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1992. július-december (46. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)
1992-12-10 / 47. szám
Thursday, Dec. 10. 1992. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 17. My lovely homeland I did leave, Hungary, oh beloved land, 1 looked back from halfway off My eyes in tears, tears in my heart. Hungarian folksong Translated by Patricia Austin They came singing, and crying, from the foothills of the majestic Carpathians, . from the counties of Abauj, Borsod, Heyes, Nógrád, Zemplén, Ung, 'Bereg, and Mara- maros. They came from the boundless plains of Petbfi's native region, the acacia- laden villages of the Great Plains, where "twilight hours perform a magic," and from the areas of Pilis, Szolnok, Csongra'd, Hajdú, Szabolcs, and Szatmár. They said farewell to the gentle hills of Transdanubia, where every stone speaks history. They left the counties of Somogy, Zala, Veszprém, Fejér, and Baranya. They emerged from the shores of the beloved rivers, the untamed Tisza, the wild Koros, the leisurely flowing Szamos and Maros. They left the forest-bedecked hills and mountains of legendary Transylvania, the Mezoség,and the fabled counties of Kiikiillo, Udvarhely, Kolozs, and Háromszék. They came from the cities and the towns, driven by hunger, anger and poverty, and a tender wisp of hope that in faraway America, where work is abundant, pay is high and opportunity unlimited, they would eventually earn enough to return to satisfy their hunger for land and live happily ever after. Between 1882 and 1914, close to one and a half million men and women emigrated to the United States from Hungary. The Statue of Liberty beckoned, and they dreamt of a better future. Arriving in America they first settled on the Eastern seacoast in New York and in the neighboring metropolitan areas, in New Jersey and Connecticut. Many of them were invited or enticed to work in the mines of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, from where very few returned alive and whole. Still others wound their way into the industrial centers of the American heartland to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. The exceptionally able or lucky ones among them soon began to leave their mark on America. Pulitzer built a newspaper empire, Zukor and Fox established a new industry with a boundless future - movie making. Many talented Hungarian scientists contributed to the development of American technology. In the field of music, the names of Ormándy, Bartók, Szigeti, Szell, Solti, Dorati became household words. But the majority of the Hungarian immigrants became part and parcel of the great mass of the American working people. They built their schools and established their cultural and religious institutions, their fraternal organizations, their newspapers. And some of them felt the gentle glow of that "noble flame" in their hearts that Petőfi referred to - that urge to do something for their fellow men while engaged in sustaining themselves and their families. It was such people who, early in this century - in 1902 - established a Hunga- rian-language newspaper, dedicated to the ideals of a more just and humane society and to the task of organizing workers in trade unions to protect their economic and social interests. This is how our newspaper was born. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE STATEMENT ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE HUNGARIAN MINORITIES During the Association's seventh quadrennial conference in Esztergon, Hungary - August 12-16, 1992 - the participating delegates, representing many dozens of Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin and in countries of several continents, assessed reports and documents concerning the Hungarian minorities in Czecho-Slovakia, in Carpatho-Ukraina, in Rumania and in Serbia. The conference's delegates have concluded, with grave concern, that the internationally codified universal human rights of these Hungarian minorities are being continually violated and that these human rights violations amount to systematic ethnocide, in some instances: genocide. All institutions of these Hungarian national minority communities are endangered.- economically, because they are lacking the essential financial resources;- culturally* because - in some countries discriminative, chauvinistic policies and practices cripple their efforts to maintain, to re-establish or to open their Hungarian schools, universities, libraries, publishing houses, newspapers, perodicals, theatres, cultural and religious organizations and associations;- politically, because "rule by the majority" is frequently applied in some areas as a discriminative weapon against the parties and organizations representing the rightful demands and expectations of the Hungarian national minorities. In Serbia, the state forces the Hungarian minority population to participate in the civil war between the various Southern Slav groups. As a result, the large number of Hungarian casualties have heavily surpassed their demographic ratio. Massive numbers of refugees are forced to flee their homes in mortal fear and without the hope to return due to the "ethnic cleansing" practices in many regions. The conference's delegates acknowledge with hope all those international programs which address the human rights of minority populations, such as the CSCE,the European Parliament and conferences, negotiations and policy planning processes of the European Council. They regarded the July, 1992. UNESCO Human Rights and Languages Conference's proposals especially useful and important. The Paris conference's closing statement proposes a Universal Charter of Basic Human Language Rights, including the right for minorities to learn, teach and use their own native languages. According to the proposal these fundamental language rights are preconditions to being able to freely utilize voting rights and the freedoms of speech and information. The delegates of the International Association of Hungarian Language and Culture's 1992 conference affirmed that- the fundamental human rights - including the right to their own language, culture- should be constitutionally guaranteed for all Hungarian minorities, and that- the actual policies and practices guaranteeing or denying these fundamental human rights for Hungarian minority collectives or individuals should be one of the preconditional subjects of intergovernmental and other international negotiations and agreements, and that- the process of the international legal codification of the human rights of minorities should be accelerated. Karoly Nagy For almost fifty years I have been planning to thank the Verhovay, the present William Penn Association for sponsoring my football team in 1934-35 in Dayton, Ohio. Here is a print of that team. I am No. 36, second from the coach in the left of the photo. For a time we were shown in the Football Hall of Fame at Massilon, Ohio. Not for being great but as an example of the evolution of pro-football. We were semi- pro. Instead of big salaries, during the half time, we passed a bucket through the crowd. No admission charge. One I got $4.35 for my share of a game. In showing this photo over the years to friends, I would say: "You can take a Hungarian boy out of football, but you'll never take him out of the Hungarian spirit." John Gojack former Ohio district organizer, United Electric Workers of America
