Magyar News, 2001. szeptember-2002. augusztus (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2002-05-01 / 9. szám

The Benes Decrees

We heard about it, this article tells about it

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary at the meeting of the Visegrad Four raised the issue of the Benes Decrees, which led to the Slovak-Czech protest, because much of the spirit in present-day Slovakia's relations to its minority Hungarian and Roma population is still guided by these decrees. The Benes Decrees were the foundation of Czechoslovakia's policies toward its Hungarian population following World War II. The ideological justification of these decrees were enunciated in the Kosice (Kassa) Government Program of April 5, 1945.

As Francis S. Wagner demonstrates in his excellent essay ("The Nationality Problem in Czechoslovakia After World War II," 1968) on these decrees, the London exile government of President Edvard Benes already received the support of Joseph Stalin for the implementation of this program when Benes offered to cede Carpathian Ukraine voluntarily to the USSR before May, 1944.

The Kosice Government Program aimed to eliminate all the non-Slavic minorities in order to establish a "national state" of Czechs and Slovaks. The three million Sudetan Germans and the 600,000 Hungarians of Slovakia were not to be part of the re-established Czechoslovakia. Benes held these nationalities "collectively guilty" for the collapse of Czechoslovakia after the Munich debacle of 1938. On his way back to Prague from Kosice in 1945 he stopped in Bratislava (Pozsony) and asserted: "After this war there will be no minority rights. After punishing all the delinquents who committed crimes against the state, the overwhelming majority of the Germans and Hungarians must leave Czechoslovakia. This is our resolute standpoint. Our people cannot live with the Germans and Hungarians in our fatherland." With this objective in mind, the Benes government lobbied to have the Allies approve the ethnic cleansing of the Germans and the Hungarians. At the Potsdam conference Stalin's aggressive support for the mass deportation of the Germans was obtained on July 25th, 1945 with the reluctant acquiescence of Churchill (later Attlee) and Truman. However, the Western Allies did not approve the expulsion of the Hungarians.

This reluctance may have been due to the awareness that Slovakia's Tiso regime was a more enthusiastic supporter of the Third Reich than Slovakia's Hungarian population. Even after the First Vienna Award, the Hungarians that remained in Slovakia, were some of the most consistent

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opponents of Nazification. The best example of this was Janos Esterhazy (the Hungarian Party's faction leader in the Slovak National Assembly) who provided the sole dissenting vote, when in 1942 the Slovak National Assembly voted to deport the Jews to Nazi death camps. Count János Esterházy was tried after the war on trumped-up charges and died in jail.

In spite of the contrasting Slovak and Hungarian record in Slovakia, the Kosice program set the stage for the expulsion of the Hungarians as well. As a first step it deprived the Hungarians of Czechoslovak citizenship. This meant that "non-Slavic elements" were eliminated from public administration. All Hungarian landholdings were confiscated and all Hungarian schools were closed. Hungarians were not allowed to participate in local self-governing institutions even in the overwhelmingly Hungarian inhabited areas. A whole series of Presidential decrees followed which aimed to achieve this objective. In the meantime a ruthless press campaign of hate was unleashed against both the German and Hungarian minorities. This continued the charge of "collective war guilt” and the charge of being unredeemed "fascists." This pressure was intended to make life so unbearable for the Hungarians that they would voluntarily leave or that the Hungarian government would be willing to agree to a population exchange.

Besides the hate campaign the Hungarians were targeted by intense persecution. The people's courts were used to pin the label of "war criminal" on more and more Hungarians. In the trial of "war criminals" between 1946-47, 28.2 percent (2295 persons) were Slovak, 59.76 percent (4812 persons) were Hungarian, while Germans and others constituted 11.77 percent (950 persons) .At that time Slovakia's population included 2.7 million Slovaks, 600,000 Hungarians, and 158,000 Germans.

After the expulsion of those "guilty of war crimes" the Benes decrees provided for the expulsion of all Hungarian school teachers. In one fell swoop the Hungarian minority was decapitated. When the mass firing of Hungarian civil servants took place pursuant to directive 44/1945 of the Slovak National Council, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarians remained without earnings overnight. Concurrently, all retirement payments to Hungarians were halted. The purge was not limited to government employees. Directive 69/1945 of the Slovak National Council ordered all "unreliable" Hungarians to be fired from

private employment as well.

Finally, about 60,000 Hungarians were railroaded to the lands left vacant by the Sudetan Germans to provide the slave labor on the abandoned farms. 90,000 were also thrown across the border into Hungary in a coerced population exchange. It is incomprehensible that the Czech and Slovak policy makers refuse to renounce these notorious Benes decrees. These are a mirror-image of the Third Reich policies. Central Europe cannot really become part of Europe with this kind of legacy. Closure is only possible if there is forgiveness.

Forgiveness, however, is not likely to come until those responsible for the abuse and suffering admit to having caused it and ask for forgiveness from those who have been wronged. Undoing the past wrongs will open the door to reconciliation and peacefiil coexistence in the future.

Andrew Ludanyi

Kernan Robson

Professor of Government

Ohio Northern University -President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia and his government committed grave crimes against the German and Hungarian citizens of their country in 1945-1946. Tens of thousands were massacred, many more were tortured or thrown into concentrations camps, and millions of Germans were expelled from their own country. The expulsion of half a million Hungarians was only prevented by American protest.

President Vaclav Havel had the courage to apologize for these crimes against humanity, but not the government of the Czech Republic or the president and government of Slovakia. They are afraid that, in case of an official repudiation of Benes' decrees, Hungarians and Germans will make restitution claims. This is no excuse, especially by the leadership of two countries, once united, whose western half acted as model satellite under German occupation and whose eastern part was an openly fascist state.

There were many of Slavic origin, called “tirpák"-s who from Szabolcs County went to the areas in Czechoszlovakia vacated by Hungarians. It was amazing to see them go back to their original homesteads in Szabolcs Megye. Those Hungarians who were thrown over the border were lucky to arrive only with the clothes on their back.