Hungarian Church Press, 1950 (2. évfolyam, 4-13. szám)

1950-04-01 / 6. szám

4-Hungarian Church Press

of those in high pla#os, for the very reason that it eould be

used to divert men's attention from greater dangers and deeper issues. Thig feinting action was apt to tempt even those in whom the consciousness of corporate responsibility was awakening. I confess that all my services, in this respect, were inspired, beyond my love towards the persecuted Jews, by my trembling anticipation of that profound dishonour and infamy into which Nazism, by this wholesale persecution, would plunge the whole Hungarian nation.

Yet the inexorable trend of events shattered all our efforts. It was quite late, in the first months of 1944, that I realized that the fight must be carried on for the survival of the entire people, for the whole Hungarian nation, and the church must directly enter the ranks ef that underground resistance which had come into being during this time of cruel oppression and persecution. I had never had anything to do with politics and had no idea of taking active part in political life. Yet I was haunted incessantly, day and night, by the lines of the Szózat, cne of our national hymns,

"Peoples of the earth will 3tand around the grave Wherein this nation will be reposed".

Oh how much I argued and quarrelled with myself, in the hours of lone anguish, and how I feared that no tears will be shed when our nation will sink in the grave of ignominy! I had then already been in contact with the resistance movement and volunteered to tasks to which I was particularly fitted by the fact that I was generally regarded as a pious and harmless pastor who happened to have not the peculiar hobby of trying to save the Jews. In my briefcase, along with helpful doouments for the Jews, I was carrying the action plans of the illegal Hungarian Front and I was amused to meet the condescending smile of the Gestapo Guard up in the Buda Castle.

I could not help thinking of what would happen if they knew what I was carrying. Yet I was still unable to quiet my fears. When I was already engaged in this work for the survival of the entire nation, I still had to hold it for certain that we shall not escape- the disaster and the whole country, from one end to the other, will be turned into a battlefield. If the Soviet troups had to fight hard battles for every inch of ground, I could think of no reason why they should regard us further as a sovereign state and as a nation. This anxiety involved the concern for the Hungarian Reformed Church. It would be a lie if X said that I believed the statements of that anti-Soviet propaganda which was spread among us, in the thirties, from the West. But it would also be a lie, if I said that this propaganda which had been going on for decades left rue unaffected. It undoubtedly affected me.

In my lone prayers, I tried to put ourselves on God’s scale, and I always heard this word: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found Wanting". I was to see the two most shameful days of Hungarian history: March 19 and October 15, 1944. Then I witnessed the delirious period which was to