Itt-Ott, 1977 (10. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1977 / 4. szám
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY p.o. box 751 Portland, Oregon 97207 503/229-3522 division of arts and letters department of foreign languages July 13, 1977 The Honorable Bob Packwood 1317 Dirksen Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Dear Senator Packwood: Please permit me to commend you for the strong stand you took on the issue of human rights for Rumania's minorities during the latest hearings about that country's most favored nation status. Having spent a year in Transylvania with my wife some time ago on a U.S. government grant (Fullbright), and possessing an excellent knowledge of Hungarian and German, I was able to observe and, to some extent, feel, what a humiliation it is for non-Rumanians to live in this, the most chauvinistic of socialist lands, which makes official policy out of a racist legend reminiscent of Hitlerian ideology. The job discrimination, the second-rate treatment by the bureaucracy, the tokenism, the lack of real equality in education, the systematic redlining of minority communities (even where they are locally still the majority)—all these things are bad enough. Worse than this, however, is the everyday indignity of having to deny their right to be who they are, in the cities their own fathers built, on the land their ancestors tiVed during a millenium. On only one trip we drove 360 km. without crossing a Rumanian settlement--but there was not a signpost, not a storefront to betray this to the unaware traveler. A hushed silence greets the stranger out in the villages, and Rumanian is spoken in his presence by Hungarian to Hungarian, by German to German--not for courtesy, but for fear. That, Senator, is the worst part: the fear, the whispering, the feeling of utter impotence, of not being able to cry out when one wants to scream. No Rumanian statistics about "ethnic" books, schools or folk-dance troupescan ever balance the sheer primitiveness, the deadening spiritual brutality with which the so-called "co-inhabiting nationalities " are treated in the gray reality of Rumanian life—individuall and collectively. Our sojourn in Rumania was in 1968-69; since then, no improvement has come, on the contrary, the conditions have worsened. New laws requiring each conta with foreigners to be reported, laws making it dangerous or impossible to visit not only with westerners but especially with the members of one's own nationality across the Hungarian border, are but a case in point. 13
