Fraternity-Testvériség, 1957 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1957-02-01 / 2. szám
FRATERNITY 3 FACING THE PROBLEM INSIDE HUNGARY* By M. Eugene Osterhaven** Our preoccupation with Hungarian refugee problems is an avoidance of the real issue in the Hungarian situation. Those who have fled from Red Terror merit our unmitigated sympathy and generous help. Concentration on that problem, however, can divert attention from the real issue which is a problem inside Hungary. It is the conviction of this observer that that is precisely what has been happening. Even the dramatic trip of Vice President Nixon, as commendable and well-intentionted as it was, may prove not to have an unmixed blessing when the entire story has been written. For Mr. Nixon’s trip has helped to shift the attention of the entire Western world from the unrelenting agony of the millions of people still inside Hungary to the relived situation of a few score thousand Magyars now in the free world. And with such a change in the focus of attention many, reading the reports, or, with the benefit of television, watching refugees cross the last divide to freedom, have emitted a sympathetic and almost simultaneous sigh of relief. The immediate problem for many freedom-seeking Magyars has been solved and we feel a corresponding unburdening of our own spirits. Such an evasion of the real question, however, is unworthy of a country which has been favored with the enlightening influences that have gone into the making of America. Nor does it, of course, discharge our responsibility. We have made a beginning, but the problem has not yet been solved. The problem inside Hungary, let it be said again, is an intolerable Soviet Communist domination. The descriptive adjective was used intentionally in the preceding sentence because the Soviet Communist domination of Hungary, socially, economically, politically and ideologically, has been nothing less than that — intolerable — as could be amply demonstrated by anyone who has keep abreast of developments in Hungary since 1948. But there are many who, bewildered by the rapidly changing scenes of our world today and under the necessity of earning their daily bread, have not been able to keep abreast of developments in that rampart of Western culture since the Communist seizure of the government with the Soviet army in Hungary less than a decade ago. Hence they are unaware of what has been transpiring there during these years which have been so long and so hard to Hungary’s people. They do not know of gross injustices, the flagrant and innumerable violations of elementary human rights, the inhuman atrocities to which some who have dared to oppose the regime have been subjected. (Even Janos Kadar, himself, a Muscovite Communist, once had his fingernails removed, pulled out, because of some minor deviation.) Nor are many aware of the soul-agony of a people watching day after day, year after year, its culture, Western and Christian, built through the storms of the centuries, being supplanted * Reprinted from “The Church Herald”, Feb. 1, 1957. ** Dr. M. Eugene Osterhaven is the professor of Systematic Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.
