Verhovayak Lapja, 1944 (27. évfolyam, 1-52. szám)
1944 / Verhovay Journal
u fr h o ü a y J o u r n a l VOL. XXVII. • ‘ OCTOBER 12, 1944 31 72 NO. 4 HUNGARIANS AND THE JEWS U (This article appeared first in the Hungarian issue of the Verhovay Journal, August 10th, 1944. It has been widely acclaimed and reprinted in many other papers. It is now published in English by request.) * * * The persecution of the Jews in Hungary has received much attention all over the world. Several national movements have been started aiming to express the protest of civilized mankind against the atrocities the Jews have to endure in every country that has come under the influence of Germany. It is quite certain that the attitude of the Hungarian people and the Hungarian Government towards the Jews will influence to a great extent the outcome of the approaching peace-conferences. It is therefore obvious that the best interests of the Hungarian people are served only by those who attempt to protect the Jewish people against oppression. After all, in our age it is impossible for nations to exist entirely isolated from one another. Distances that once have separated nations and continents, have shrunk due to the development of travelling facilities, and mankind has become a family of nations. No nation has a right to sit at the table of this family which, instead of displaying a civilized attitude, refuses to recognize the right of every nation, religion, or race to a decent living, liberty, and mutual respect. Now, it is our conviction that the Hungarian people is a thoroughly civilized nation. Its civilization is made deeper and truer by its Christianity which cannot 'forget that its Master and Savior considered the Jewish people His own, especially because He Himself was born a Jew.- There always have been and will be Jew-haters in Hungary just as they are present in every country of the world, even here In America. As a rule, Jew-baiting results from the fact that some who have not succeeded in life, try to find a scape-goat in those who have achieved more. We find them in America and in every other country. One cannot blame an entire nation for the fact that some of its members belong to this class. Site Hungarian people have always sympathized with the Jews as is proven, for instance, by the fact that the Hungarian Protestant clergy preached for four centuries about the Jews emphasizing the similarity of the fate of the Hungarian and Jewish people, and drawing its teachings and exhortations from the Old Testament. On the basis of the similarities in the history of the two nations it found the Jews and Hungarians to be brothers- In-fate. Naturally, nobody will persecute one with whom he shares the same fate. And it is for this reason that the Hungarians who have recognized the aiuiilarities of their history with that of the Jews, consistently refused to consider them either strangers, or an alien race, much less enemies. * * * Jew-baiters, as a rule, defend their attitude by claiming that the Jews have entrenched themselves in the most remunerative occupations and the highest professions thereby robbing the Christians of their chance to compete with them. It is true that in Europe the Jews have actually occupied an unproportionally high number of preferable positions but that has a very simple historical reason. The Jews have always been oppressed, persecuted and confined to their ghettos. THEY WERE NOT PERMITTED to practice professions that were preferred by the Christians. Thus the Jews were prohibited from entering civil service or the teaching profession. At the same time the Jews were FORCED to make their living in occupations which were despised by the Christians of those times. Consequently, most of the Jews in Hungary became merchants, physicians, etc., because in those times these were despised occupations which no self-respecting Christian would have entered without feeling humiliated. It is small wonder that the Jews became SPECIALISTS in these professions. The son, the grandson and the great-grandson of the merchant also grew up to become a merchant. It was the same with the money-changer (the later banker), and the medicine man (the later physician). In these occupations every Jew had centuries of experience at his disposal as handed down from father to son through many generations and, as a result, the ! Jews succeeded in elevating these occupations. As a matter of fact, through experience and industriousness they raised the standing of these occupations, and also their income, to such a high level that finally the time came w’hen the Christians begrudged the success of the Jewish merchants and bankers, and physicians, and it dawned upon them that they may themselves profitably enter these professions. Thus the situation developed in Europe. It was entirely different here ,in America. The greater part of the banks, newspapers and industries are not in Jewish hands in our land. The Christian who would have felt humiliated to enter any of these professions in the old country, was willing to make a new beginning as an immigrant and HIS ENDEAVORS HERE WERE PROMPTED BY THE SAME PROFIT-MOTIVE FOR WHICH THE JEWS HAD BECOME HATED IN THE OLD COUNTRY. Of course, no one stopped to think that the Jew, too, has to live. And no one stopped to think that the Jews deserved praise rather than criticism for having elevated those professions that had been forced upon them. The truth Is that the Christian feudalistic landowner does not compare favorably with the Jewish merchant or banker. While the former w'as in no way more conscientious when it came to abusing his serfs as was the Jewish money-changer when he charged atrocious interests on an emergency loan... he lost the fortune earned by the labors of his serfs through gambling and licentious living at the same time that the Jew saved every penny he made to insure his children a better start than was granted to him. These are the historical reasons of why the Jews succeeded in those professions for which they are envied by the Jew-baiters of modern times. * * * The fact remains that the Jews always had a hard time of it. They had to make a living in the face of oppression and racial prejudice. It has been said often that the Jews are unwilling to do hard work. That is not true. This accusation is the result of the fact that in old times the Jews were not permitted to labor with Christians. Where they had a chance to do hard work, they did do it as efficiently as any Christian. More than once I heard Hungarians say: “Naturally, the Jew would not work on the field ... he will prefer to sell the grain of the hard-working farmer for high profit.” However, the truth is that the Jew was not permitted to own land but he was permitted to become a grainsalesman because that again was an occupation despised by Christians. There have been plenty of Jewish farmers and factory laborers in Poland. Jews work on their fields in Palestine just as do the Arabs. The Dominican Republic has opened a certain territory to Jewish refugees who created model farms on that land. Thousands of years of persecution developed adaptability in the Jewish people that enabled them to make a living if only a semblance of opportunity is given to them. And here is the fundamental similarity of the Hungarian and the Jew, for it must be admitted that in “good old Hungary” the son of the earth had as little opportunity as the Jew. The truth is that the best civil service jobs were never given to the simple but talented son of a peasant, but to some aristocrat of German descent. After the first world war Hungary had several ministers in . the department of public education who had a German accent so thick one could skate on it. Klebelsberg and Karafiath who were entrusted with the education of Hungary's youth, did an excellent job developing public education. Klebelsberg especially did a great deal to wipe out illiteracy in Hungary, erecting schools in the remotest corners of the Hungarian “puszta” ... Yet neither of them could express himself in decent Hungarian and one could not help wondering how it was possible that pub lie education it» Hungary was entrusted to men who were unable to attain the knowledge of the language of the people whose education they were called to promote, — while thousands of Hungarian men of the greatest ability were forever deprived of the chance to be placed into such positions. The fact remains that the son of the real Hungarian people was just as oppressed and deprived of his rights as the Jew. The Great- Moguls of Hungarian civil service despised only two classes of people: “the peasant” and “the Jew.” No wonder that the peasants and the Jews were drawn to one another and sympathized with each other! This situation also has a historical back-ground. The people of Hungary were nearly exterminated, first, by the Tatars. In place of the exterminated Hungarians came the—Germans. Then came the Turks and decimated the Hungarian nation. Again the Germans came to bolster the nation and fill the gaps. Then came the Austrian regime, the times of the King and the Kaiser when the Germans were invited to settle in the richest parts of Hungary, in the Banat, the Bácska, Transdanubia, etc. The Hungarian peasant was made to stay on the poorest land. And when he was called into compulsory military service, the sons of the German immigrants easily adapted themselves to the German command, while the peasant’s son, unable to keep up with the German immigrant’s ability to follow orders given in German, remained a private throughout the years of his military service. The Hungarian peasant, who represented 90% of the population, was an outcast in his own country as was the Jew. And if he wanted to improve himself and strive for a better living, he had to struggle as hard as the Jew. Embittered Hungarians emigrated to America by the thousands, and here they proved that one has not to be a Jew in order to be a successful merchant. Having been oppressed, despised and deprived of every opportunity, they were able to show in America, the land of unlimited opportunities, that they could be as smart and as successful as their Jewish friends, * * * And that explains why Anti-Semitism in Hungary, Austria, and other European countries had developed exclusively within the bureaucracy and the aristracracy. But the nation consists not only of bureaucrats and aristocrats. The nation is the people, and the Hungarian people shared the fate of the Jews for the last thousand years. The Hungarian Christian had to struggle for a living as hard as the Jew. However, there was one differenee! The Jew-baiters forced the Jews into occupations in which there were opportunities that were further developed by the Jews. But the Hungarian peasants were banned to ^he “puszta" where there was no opportunity at all. They had no choice but to emigrate, or to revolt as did the famous leader of the Hungarian peasants’ revolution, George Dózsa. If they chose emigration, in nine cases out of ten they made good. But if they took Dozsa’s course, they soon found out that there were more gendarmes than peasants. Now the Jews have a much older history than the Hungarians and consequently more experience, too. They know that revolutions do not pay. Therefore they preferred to take recourse to emigration as did the talented son of the Hungarian peasant who was deprived of his chance. And that is the fundamental reason why AMERICAN HUNGARIANS CONDEMN THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS WITHOUT RESERVATION. They condemn this unjust persecution as much as they do the oppression of the folks of the Hungarian plains. American Hungarians believe that opportunity should be given to talent, a chance to industriousness and freedom to creative ability—for Jews as well as for Christians. And whenever Jews and Christians have equal opportunities, there is very little difference between them. In fact, the only difference is that of the variety of mental ability, character and diligence. * * * As long as human beings remain what they are, the unsuccessful will always blame some scape-goat for their misfortune. One will blame the Government, the other the Jews, the third the industrial barons, the fourth the eolored people, the fifth the
