The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1982 (9. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1982-10-01 / 10. szám
FACTS AND FIGURES (Reprinted from the book “Documented Facts and Figures on Transylvania”, Danubian Press, 1978). In 1960 the Rumanian Government removed two districts from the Autonomous Hungarian Province, both with 92% Hungarian population, and attached them to a Rumanian populated district, while adding to it in exchange another large area with 88% Rumanian population, thus trying to weaken the Hungarian majority of the Hungarian province. The name was also changed from Autonom Hungarian Province to “Autonom Hungarian-Mures Territory.” In 1963 Edward Crankshaw reported in his article “Hungarian Minority Feats Rumanian Axe” (The New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 15, 1963.) that Hungarian families are being deported in mass from purely Hungarian districts of Transylvania into other parts of Rumania, mostly to the Danube delta, into huge labor camps, where they die by hundreds due to lack of food and medical care. It is being noted also, that those deported or “re-settled under the pretense of job opportunities — already more than 200,000 people — are immediately stricken from the official records in Transylvania, while in their new locations they are listed by the census takers as Rumanians. The Rumanization of Transylvania was so successful, that in September 1963, when Mr. Georghiu-Dej, party-boss and prime minister visited the so-called “Autonomous Hungarian Territory” and the Rumanian newspapers Reported the names of the officials of the territory — there was not one single Hungarian name among them! In 1964 the International Commission of Jurists examined the Transylvanian minority problem, and published a report entitled “The Hungarian Minority Problem in Rumania”. In this report the Commission stated among others that “Rumania ignores the political clauses of the Peace Treaty, and its own constitution, Art. 82, which clearly provides that ‘all national groups are entitled to use their respective languages and to have at all levels establishments of public education in which instruction is given in their mother tongue, and further that the spoken and written language used by administrative and judicial authorities in districts where a national group other than Rumanian is in the majority should be the language of this national group. Civil servants in such areas should be appointed from among the members of this majority group ...’ This commission found that Rumanian administrative measures, and discrimination in the cultural fields, is actually leading to the final genocide of minorities in Transylvania»” On July 4, the same year, the LE MONDE in Paris, France reported of a new wave of deportations from the Hungarian districts in Transylvania to the Danube delta. The same paper estimated the number of Hungarians forced to live in Bucharest alone to 250,000, a figure not included in the official data of any census. On August 8: “Due to the de-Magyarization policy of the Rumanian government of forcibly removing Hungarian families from their native districts and deporting them or forcing them to locate in Moldavia, Dobrudja, even Bucharest or any one of the former Vlach provinces, it seems that 35 to 90 percent of the Transylvanian Hungarians are no longer living in their native land. The vacated houses of the deported or removed Hungarian families are filled with Rumanian families imported from across the Carpathians in order to change the ethnic balance of the purely Hungarian districts. According to Government orders wherever there are two pupils in a Hungarian language school who do not speak that language, the language of the entire school must be changed into Rumanian. Thus, with the settling of these newcomers, all Hungarian language grade, middle, and high-schools are being abolished, one by one . . .” (Congressional Records, August 8, 1964) On November 1964 George Bailey wrote in THE REPORTER: “Rumania has effectively replaced Hungarian at every level as the language of official and public life . . . Hungarians are intimidated, they are scared to use their native tongue. The Rumanian authorities have adopted a wide variety of measures to isolate the Hungarian population from contact with the homeland. Foreign tourists in Rumania are allowed the run of the country, unless they happen to be Hungarian citizens . . .” Robert R. King wrote in “Minorities Under Communism” (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1973) pages 156-157: “The 1964 redistricting of the Magyar Autonomous Region into Mures-Magyar Region increased the Rumanian population of the district from 146,830 (20%) to a 266,403 (35%) while decreasing the number of Hungarians from 565,510 (77%) to 473,154 (62%).” In 1966 CARE Packages and other aids sent by American, Canadian, Australian or West European church organizations, charitable institutions or private individuals to starving Hungarian families in Transylvania, or to Transylvanian Hungarian Churches were confiscated by Rumanian authorities. THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY VI
