The Eighth Tribe, 1981 (8. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1981-10-01 / 10. szám

Socialist Republic are condemned by the decent-minded nations of the world, the Transylvanian World Federation, Amnesty International, and a great part of the honest politicians and statesmen of the world, including Soviet and American statesmen.

Any enumeration of the facts must include the mention of important historical truths. For about 1,000 years Transylvania was, for one reason or another, an integral part of Hungary. The Germans settled by Hungary have been living in Transylvania for about 800 years. In addition, a major portion of Transylvanian Jews, direct descendents of the non-Semetic Jews historically known as the Kazars, were integrated into the Hungarian people and have since lived in Transylvania for more than 1,000 years. Consequently, the immigrants from Vlachia who would become the forefathers of today’s Rumanians were admitted into Transylvania as colonists of the Hungarians only a few hundred years after other peoples were allowed to immigrate.

It is a documented fact that between the years 1332 and 1337the Hungarian King Endre III settled all Rumanians (numbering about 18,000) on a sole estate of 20,000 hectares. The documents of the papal archives reveal that during this period Transylvania was populated by about 310,000 Hungarians and 21,000 Germans (Saxons). Consequently, the number of Rumanians present 400 years after the second Hungarian-led occupation amounted to only 6 percent of the population of Transylvanian Hungarians (this on mostly uninhabited land) and did not even approach 1 percent of the population of Hungarians in Hungary.

I do not wish to try the patience of the Government of the Rumanian Socialist Republic with historical data, but it is absolutely essential to know the facts before enumerating the discriminatory procedures being carried out against Hungarians, Germans and Jews by the Rumanian Socialist Republic. Transylvanian Hungarians, when compared to the Rumanians, cannot be considered a minority because they constitute the overwhelming majority of the people who live between the western frontiers of the Hungarian People’s Republic and the Carpathians of Transylvania (Hungary’s 1000-year-old borders).

The Hungarians of Transylvania have been plunged into a minority status and dismembered from their majority, with their rights of self-determination made a mockery. Denied the right to opinion or vote, they have become victims of shortsighted, colonialist and outdated French and English World War I politics (the treaty of which was never ratified by the Congress of the United States) originally intended to strangle Germany and the Soviet Union.

The problems of Transylvanian Hungarians are not only those of human rights, but of nationality as well. As such, they are exempt from any party ideology. The Transylvanian World Federation considers the right to nationality an intrinsic component of human rights. When we demand freedom of speech, press, religion, or the use of our national language at the Communist Party meetings, we do not mean in Rumanian, but in our mother tongue.

We do not wish to be judged as individuals. We, the Hungarians of Transylvania, are not individuals but a people. We have been living on this land for more than 1,000 years. Our ancestors made possible the increase and evolution of the Rumanian people into a nation. We do not want to be separated from our brethren and assimilated as Rumanians. We want to live in peace with the Rumanian people, but the peace cannot be based upon the principle of unlimited toleration.

The following acts and/or intentions of the Rumanian Socialist Republic, both in Transylvania and Moldavia, have been proven:

1. The Rumanian Socialist Republic wants to annihilate 20 to 25 percent of the Hungarians of the world by a fixed date. The Hungarians and Germans in Moldavia, who settled there well before the Rumanians and composed a 42 percent majority among the more than twenty nationalities living there, have been almost completely annihilated by the Rumanian Socialist Republic;

2. In Moldavia, all of the schools have been confiscated from the approximately 250,000 Hungarians who live there today;

3. Hungarian schools in Transylvania are being gradually closed according to planned procedures;

4. The Autonomous Hungarian Territory has been abolished;

5. In Rumania, Hungarian churches are razed in the pretext of “urbanization,” and Rumanian churches are built to ensure the Rumanian character of the

cities;

6. Epitaphs in Hungarian graveyards ae “Rumanized”;

7. In the death camps of the Danube Delta, 70 to 75 percent of the prisoners are Hungarians even though the number of Hungarians presently in Great Rumania amounts to only 15 to 17 percent of the population;

8. The leaders of the Hungarian nationalities are being annihilated by police or subjected to psychological terror. (According to Amnesty International, several have been barbarously murdered.);

9. A total of IVi million Rumanians have settled in Transylvania since the end of World War II, and the

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THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY