Magyar News, 1994. szeptember-1995. augusztus (5. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1995-06-01 / 10. szám
This was expected because on the 14th of August, 1941, the Atlantic Charter was signed, and it too (similarly to the earlier Wilsonian principles) emphasized the right to self-determination and to plebiscites. Yet, not a single plebiscite was allowed. In fact, rump Hungary was further violated by the transfer of additional land to Slovakia. This transfer, later, made possible the construction which unilaterally and illegally transferred the Danube, Hungary’s border river, onto Slovak territory (in 1992) and built a hydroelectric dam, thereby destroying Europe's oldest wetland region. At the end of the Second Waid War, the worst crime of legalistic hypocrisy occurred; Eduard Benes, with the scandalous connivance of the Western Allies, invented the concept of “collective responsibility” and used it to confiscate the properties of the Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and later, to deport them in cattle cars. To understand the hypocrisy of this deed, one must realize that wartime Slovakia under Tiso, was a protectorate of Nazi Germany, while it was the representative of the Hungarian minority in the Slovak parliament, Janos Esterházy who cast the only dissenting vote against the Jewish laws passed by that body. Yet, after the war, Esterhazy was hanged and the Hungarian minorities he represented were collectively sentenced as war criminals. Thereby, when the deported Jewish Hungarians returned from the death camps, they found their properties confiscated, because of their “collective responsibility”. THE LAST DECADES By the late 1940s, the last protection left to the Catholic Hungarian minorities were their churches. In 1948, 600 Hungarian Catholic priests and all six of their bishops were arrested in Transylvania. Four of the bishops died in captivity. Rome later agreed to gerrymander the Catholic sees and to appoint Romanian bishops to lead the all Hungarian church, as the Romanians belong to the Eastern Orthodox faith. The fate of the Hungarian Catholics in the other successor states was similar. In 1949, in Ruthenia, the bishop of the 500,000 Catholics was murdered and the parishioners were forcibly merged into the Orthodox Church. In Slovakia, in April, 1950, the bishop of 320,000 Catholics was arrested and his parishioners were also forced into the Orthodox Church. After 1956, when the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of Budapest succeeded in mortally wounding the Goliath of Communism, the rulers of the successor states used the uprising as a pretext to speed the forced assimilation of their Hungarian minői ties. It was after the Revolution that the remaining autonomous Hungarian regions, one in Transylvania, the other in Vojvodina have disappeared. Together with the disappearance of the Hungarian autonomous regions (the establishment of which were guaranteed by the Great Powers), the Hungarian language signs from streets of Hungarian villages and towns also started to disappear. 4 After 1989, there was a short period of hope, when for example the Hungarian bishop, László Tokes was temporarily heralded as an all-Romanian national hero, fa leading the successful revolution against Ceaucescu, or when Miklós Duray, the Hungarian leader of Charter 77 was released from jail in Slovakia. Unfortunately this did not last and by 1991, the formerly Communist leaders of the successor states (Milosevits in Yugoslavia, Iliescu in Romania, Mechiar in Slovakia), once again started to use nationalistic and anti-Hungarian propaganda to distract public attention from the pressing economic problems of their nations. THE LESSON It takes time for historic events to reveal their consequences. It took nearly 75 years for the creations of Trianon: Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to self-destruct. It took some 75 years until it became clear that it was the legacy of Trianon which destabilized and “balkanized” Central Europe. By now we see that Trianon did not eliminate the causes of the 1914 murder in Sarajevo and we also realize that no unjust “solution” can standthe erosion of time and Trianon did not provide justice! But what is justice? In this relativistic age, - when my terrorist can be your freedom fighter, when the life of one UN soldier can be more valuable than that of a thousand Bosnian children, and when the Chechen a the Kurd nation are less deserving of selfdetermination than some others, - it is desirable to remind ourselves of what justice is? On the pulpit of the Notre Dame Cathedral, Father Gratry has put it this way: “Every nation’s homeland is sacred. If you destroy one of them, you mutilate the entire human race.” Therefore, the main mistake of 1920 was that it attempted to satisfy the desires of a Benes and a Clemenceau instead of attempting to apply just principles to solve the nationality problems of Central Europe. Unfortunately, this approach has not changed during the last 75 years, the only thing that changed are the names of the architects of injustice. Today, the goal of international efforts is to satisfy the desires of a Milosevich and a Yeltsin, instead of establishing some general principles and applying them to everybody. The principles of a permanent solution, must involve self-determination through plebiscites, autonomy for ethnic minorities and a Danubian or Central European Federation as the ultimate goal. The United Nations should declare that all national minorities anywhere in the world (exceeding some minimum number, say 100,000), have the right to hold supervised plebiscites and receive cultural and linguistic autonomy, if the majority so desires. It should make no difference how these minorities evolved, how long they lived in the particular area or what their language or religion is. Regardless of all that, they etil have the right to maintain their heritage and determine their cultural destiny. Once cultural autonomy is guaranteed, the main cause of tensions between Central European neighbors will also diminish. When the Hungarians enjoy the same autonomy in Romania as the Romanian minorities in Hungary, when the Serb, Russian, Turkish, Albanian, German, or any other minorities erf the region, are also treated equally, the tensions will disappear and the retxiilding can start THE DANUBIAN CONFEDERATION It is the wrong goal for the Danubian nations to individually rush into NATO or the European Community. A much better first goal is the establishment of an economically self-sufficient politically stable, militarily neutral and geographically large enough federation, which by itself is able to fill the power vacuum of the region. It should by now be obvious, that neither Western Europe, nor the UN can fill the present power vacuum in Central Europe and therefore they are not competent to resolve the problems of the region. History teaches us, that the Balkans became unstable whenever a power vacuum evolved in the Carpathian Basin. The wise learns from history, instead of repeating it We should learn that the tragedy of Trianon will not be corrected, justice and stability will not be obtained by maintaining the status quo. What is needed, once the minority problems are solved through autonomy, is to build a strong Danubian federation, one that can be crystallized around the nucleus of Hungary, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Slovenia and Croatia, one that later could expand to include Romania, Yugoslavia or even Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria. History does not solve problems accidentally. Those who want a better future must first have a plan, concept of that future. For the stability and prosperity of Central Europe, that plan should start with autonomy for the minorities and should end with a voluntary federation. It would be fitting, if on the 75th anniversary of the dismemberment of the Hungarian Kingdom, after the unnecessary and undeserved suffering erf three generations of innocent Hungarians, we would start the process erf rebuilding, not a nation state, but ffie Federation erf Central Europe. We're not Hungarian, but we do a pretty good job anyway. ÍFYntTTl PRINTING & GRAPHICS STRATFORD - 377-6571 EUROPEAN NAIL SALON Judith Racz Moved To: 565 Kings Highway, Fairfield, CT (Salon Maggi) Tel: 333-1468
