Tárogató, 1949-1950 (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1949-07-01 / 1-2. szám
TÁROGATÓ 5 Bukharin catechism was translated into Hungarian and distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies; everybody called everybody else comrade everything was nationalized on paper from one day to the next; big propaganda machinery was set up in Budapest to litter the streets with placards, usually of threatening character and promising the death-sentence for even minor offences. Many people left the country; those who stayed were disgusted with the government, with its stupidity and cruelty, especially toward the peasantry. One conspicuous feature of this era was the relatively great part played in it by Jews. There was a growing anti-Semitism during the first revolutionary government since the war-profiteers were identified with Jewry by the soldiers who cursed because of their cardboard-soled boots. So were the speculators who seemed to live an easy life just by re-selling goods which they did not possess. During this communist regime anti-semitism increased to nation-wide proportions. It was latent as long as communist terror groups roamed the country and hanged the peasants and carried out their nightly arrests of so-called antirevolutionary citizens in Budapest. But the tension was there, a tension which came into action in one of the shameful chapters of Hungarian history. This is the story of the socalled “Awakening Magyars”, a movement brought by Admiral Horthy into “white” Hungary and into Budapest when he made his entry there under the protection of the Rumanian army, which actually finished the communist regime in Hungary. All the problems which faced the October revolution in 1918 were still waiting for a solution, and although Horthy did not solve any of them, he tried in his military way to cut through them. His was the task of restoring order. He did so by establishing militarism in Hungary and using military force to trample on the Social-democratic party, to exterminate communists and — on the pretext that they were communists or supporters of them — to exterminate Jews in fairly large numbers. This' latter task was carried out by his own officers, some of them his personal guards and friends, who both in Budapest and in the country tortured and killed Jews and communists, but mostly Jews. Their gangsterism caused public consternation which was not mentioned in the heavily-censored press, but the propaganda against the Jews, who were made the scapegoats of all the evil that befell the Hungarian people, continued to increase and resulted in the establishment of many clubs of the “Awakening Magyars.” The complete story of these “patriots” is not yet known. But whatever evil they did, they did with the full consent of Admiral Horthy, for which, in addition to his other crimes, the present communist masters of Hungary have not deemed it necessary to ask the Allies for his extradition. The fact is, of course, that many Awakening Hungarians did nothing at all, — they were members in order to get promotion; others never prosecuted any Jews, rather they formed cultural groups of defensive character against Jewish influence and the Jewish “spirit”, whatever they meant by this expression. The result was that a few businesses changed hands; freemasonary, which was supposed to be a Jewish organization, was suppressed; but the big estates in Jewish hands remained in their hands, and so it happened with other profitable enterprises. Many of the rural clubs of the Awakening Magyars were under the leadership of clergymen. Since Horthy defended the rights and privileges of the clergy, the clergy supported him. Hence, anti-clericalism, which under the Hapsburg dynasty had always existed in Hungary, greatly increased among progressive men during the Horthy era. I was regarded as one of the leading anti-clericals who sincerely detested those of the clergy who were politically submissive to the reactionary rule of Horthy. I gave vent to my feelings in my periodical “Independent Review”, which I edited for three years (from December 1920 until 1923) until it was suppressed by the Horthy government. I and my friends who cooperated with me watched the Hungarian clergy with the closest possible scrutiny for forcible and unjust acts against the Jews. Not a single act
