Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
XXIII Appeal to the conscience of the nation! Christian Hungarian writers, artists, scientists in favour of equal rights May 6th, 1938 We, Hungarian writers, artists and scientific workers, advocating different views and different party affiliations, sons and members of different social strata, who work in a variety of professions and occupations, who have all inherited the duty of preserving and enriching our thousand-year-old Hungarian culture, we, who are all the children of Christian families, moved by the self-evident unity and strength of a human sense of honour and true Christianity, by both common sense and patriotism, raise our voices for the principle of equal civic rights, which would be deleted from the Hungarian Constitution if what is called the “bill for the more efficient safeguard of the equilibrium of society” comes into force. This bill undertakes to safeguard the equilibrium of society, but says nothing on improving the lot of the poorest, economically most downtrodden and forlorn strata. This bill is a grievous humiliation of the Jews, but is perhaps an even worse insult to the sons of the Christian middle class, for it assumes they are willing to ignore the sacred principle of equal civic rights and accept that their livelihood should depend on the deprivation of civic rights, humiliating patronage and compulsory employment. And the bill assumes them capable of the moral aberration of advancing in life and prospering as a result of certain of their fellow-citizens being stigmatized because of their faith, and dispossessed of some of their civic rights. And this bill is aimed above all at the poorest of the Jews, at those who are at the mercy of their employers, and even among these, it primarily affects the young, whom it punishes collectively because they were not of age to do military service during the war. We hold it incompatible with our consciences that secular authorities should discriminate between baptisms according to dates, while the Church bestows baptism without discrimination or reservation, in a spirit of equality before God and the Christian brotherhood, to all who come to its bosom. We are moved by our Christian faith, by our patriotic conviction, by our insistence on this country’s reputation as a European country and our national independence, never to abandon the principle of equal civic rights which was achieved in the most glorious period of our history by the greatest minds of European Hungarians. In the present critical moment in history, Hungary needs all her strength. The masters of the occupied territories produce statistical artifices to cut out from the Hungarian ethnic entity those Hungarians of Jewish faith who, with insignificant exceptions, firmly adhere to our Hungarian communal destiny even as a minority. Would it not be unforgivable to follow this example—however unintentionally—and ostracize 400,000 of our fellow-citizens from the Hungarian nation? Have we forgotten that these fellow-citizens were not simply participants but champions and creators of Hungarian culture, as is demonstrated by the incontestable evidence of cultural history? Should we deny the fact that they sealed this communal destiny with their blood in the War of Independence of 1848 and in the World War? We proclaim that these fellow-citizens are Hungarians and we will not admit that their position as a part of the Hungarian nation be put in doubt and not least because inflammatory trends are ap114
