The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-01-01 / 1. szám
Hungarians In Transylvania Forced Into Extreme Misery (TWF Newsrelease, December 14, 1982) While in neighbouring Hungary people are prfeparing for Christmas and the usual feast that goes with it, letters reaching the West from Transylvania as Well as reports of recent visitors render a bleak picture of the situation in this Rumanian occupied Hungarian land. Most of the food is available only on coupons, and in very limited quantities. Government offices issuing those coupons use the “merit system”: Persons with Rumanian names are given one “merit” for the name alone. Another merit is added for a “letter of recommendation” from the local communist party office, and a third for a letter of approval from the office of the work-force, to which the person requesting the coupons is assigned. Three “merits” entitle a person to coupons for 1 kg. (2 pounds) of meat, 3 kg. bread and Vs kg. of hogfat or sunflower oil per week. An average Rumanian family with two working members and two children — and no demerits — will have enough food on the table not to go hungry. Hungarians, on the other hand, if they don’t change their names, can have only two “merits” to begin with, and even those only if they “behave properly”. This means that they do not offend anybody with the “provocative use” of their mother tongue and do not get involved in any kind of activities their Rumanian rulers frown upon. Thus, even the most humble Hungarian is handicapped at the very beginning. One wrong word spoken forfeits the “merits” for an entire month. Another handicap is those retired members of the family who do not receive any retirement pay because forty years ago they happened to be “serving the wrong party”: the Hungarian government, the Hungarian army, Hungarian institutions or they were independent “capitalists” owning their own business. For example: a woman, no matter how old now, if she served as a cook in a Hungarian upper or middle class household, can not claim retirement benefits front the “socialist treasury”. Not that those benefits would máké an old person independent and free from poverty. We hear in one of the letters: “My widowed mother retired four years ago from the local co-op. Her retirement pay is 87 lei each month. Exactly the price of one kilogram of meat. A retiree who worked for 36 years on the fields from daybreak to sundown receives one kilogram (two pounds) of meat as a month’s compensation. I must add, that meat can be purchased only once week perhaps if you get up at four o’clock in the morning to be close to the head of the line when the shop opens at eight.” Another letter was written by a grandmother who is lucky to live in Budapest, Hungary, while the rest of her family is in Transylvania. In November 1982 she went to visit her children and grandchildren in Nagyvárad/Oradea, under Rumanian occupation. She carried a suitcase of edibles: ham, bacon, sugar, butter, salami etc. On the border the Rumanian custom officials confiscated everything. Even presents, like sweaters and shoes for the children. “First time in my life I had them all together”, she writes, “my son and his wife, my daughter and her husband, and my nine grandchildren whom I’ve never seen. I was so happy! But my happiness was thwarted by the terrible poverty I have found there and by the Rumanian officials who robbed me from all the presents which would have made their lives easier for a few days.” “Way back during the war I suffered hard times, too. Lack of food and so on. But it was never like this! Everybody was hungry all the time and there was no way to get anything. The shops were closed most of the time, and evenAvhen they were open what we were able to buy on coupons to feed 14 people was not enough for seven. At dinner time the children had to be fed, and what was left we divided among ourselves.” “Once,” the letter goes on, “I went with my daughter to get some potatoes. The word was out in the neighbourhood that a whole truckload came in, and coupons were not needed. Wlien we got there the line was already about two hundred meter long on the street. After two hours of waiting in the cold rain there were only about twenty people ahead of us. My daughter told me before we went there never to open my mouth because I can not speak Rumanian. S I kept quiet. But then I just had to go somewhere and whispered to my daughter where the restrooms might be? The woman behind us began to yell in Rumanian, then others were yelling, too, and the policeman at the door came over and told us to get out of there and go home, we are foreigners, we don’t belong ...” The Transylvanian Quarterlyis a supplement to the Eighth Tribe bi-lingual monthly magazine. Subscription is 110.00 per year — $12.00 in Canada, payable in U.S.A. funds. Eighth Tribe, P.O. Box 637, Ligonier, Pennsylvania 15658. VI THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY
