Molnár Imre (szerk.): "Gyűlölködés helyett összefogás"Adalékok a két világháború közti csehszlovákiai magyar értelmiségi és diákmozgalmak történetéhez - Elbeszélt történelem 5. (Somorja, 2016)
Tóth László: Utószó
310RESUME „Collaboration Instead Enmity” Historical Lessons from the Activities of Hungarian Intellectuals in Slovakia in the Interwar Period The Archives of Historical Interviews started operating in the transition period under the leadership of Gabor Hanák in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest (Hungary). The team of historians chose oral history as a method for mapping recent historical events. Within this programme, they made interviews in the early 1990s with several eminent personalities of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. In this book we have included interviews with Hungarian intellectuals of Slovakia engaged in the youth movements of the period between the two world wars, socialized in the Sarló movement or in the Circles of Ottokár Prohászka. The interviews have been conducted mainly by Imre Molnár and others (Orsolya Nádor, Iván Gyurcsík, Pál Péter Tóth). The primary objective of the oral history interviews based on life-story telling is to look at past historical events and happenings as if with a magnifying glass, so that to gain an impression on them as experienced by the recollecting person at the time. With the help of this method, our interviewed personalities had not only recalled the events so important from their point of view, but they even “commented” and supplemented them. During the interviews they spoke with strong feeling, reliving their stories with intense emotions, thus helping us gain a more direct, privileged insight into the micro-historical processes of the interwar period, and enabling us to recreate our concept about this historical moment, and assess its significance. This is why the interviews with two prominent personalities of the Sarló movement, László Dobossy and Zoltán Boross, have been included in this publication. We can also have access to the activities of the Prohászka Circles through the interviews with Ferenc Sinkó and László Göndöcs. The conversation with Imre Varga, belonging to the same group, exemplifies best how easily the young talents socialized at the youth movements had found their place and had integrated also to the public life of the Hungarian society of Slovakia via its national (political and cultural) organizations. The renaissance of movements present in the period between the two world wars had in a sense continued in the university and social public life in Tiso's independent Slovakia too. The interviews with Károly Vigh and László Schleicher report partly about this period. Many young Hungarian intellectuals belonging to this generation had undertaken an important role in the field of advocacy and mediation in the disastrous years of “statelessness” hitting the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia by deportations and a forced population exchange. Their tenacious stand is clearly shown in the interviews with Kristóf Hites and Károly Szabó.
