William Penn Life, 2010 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2010-06-01 / 6. szám
PÁNEURÓPAI PIKNIK '89 H NEMZETKÖZI SZALONNASÜTÉS A HATÁRTALAN"BÉKÉÉR1 198S AUG.19-ÉN15°°TÓL SOPRON-ST. MARGARETHEN KÖZÖTTI HATÁRSÁVBAN A "VASFÜGGÖNY HELYÉN RENDEZŐK: MOF Debreceni Szervezete Soproni Ellenzéki Korokawtal MOl SZDSZ FKGP FIDESZ Országos KluinznAci A poster advertising the Aug. 19, / 989, Pan-European Picnic that resulted in the opening of a border gate between Hungary and Austria. The poster is pictured as part of a permanent open-air exhibition at the Austrian-Hungarian border near Fertőrákos. An Historic Picnic On Aug. 14, men and women from East Germany, the workers and peasants republic of atheist leader Honecker, were lying, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the floor of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Budapest's Zugliget district. The words on the altar read: "All that is not God is nothing." Father Imre Kozma attended to their needs. On Aug. 13, the anniversary of the Berlin Wall's construction, the German consul in Budapest approached Kozma to ask whether some of the East German citizens packed into the overcrowded grounds of the West German embassy could be moved to the church. The priest agreed. Kozma got volunteers to erect tents and distribute food to the refugees. He even tolerated being checked by members of the BND, West Germany's foreign intelligence agency, at the entrance to the grounds of his own church. He also allowed officials from the West German embassy, who had quickly set up a "consular office" inside the church, to hand out green West German passports to the East German citizens. Meanwhile, members of the East German secret police, the Stasi, stood on the roofs of nearby buildings and looked on helplessly, watching as Kozma, who had since February been president of the newly established Hungarian Malteser Caritas, the Order of Malta charity service in Hungary, took on the role of an essentially neutral middleman in the struggle between the two Germanys over the future of tens of thousands of East German citizens. Prime Minister Németh was already suspected of having closer ties to Bonn, the West German capital at the time, than to East Berlin. German Chancellor Kohl and his adviser Horst Teltschik held Németh, a 41-year-old economic expert, in high regard. Kohl was in touch with Németh by telephone, and Németh communicated with Father Kozma. The tens of thousands of East Germans with expired residence permits in Hungary were refusing to return home, and a solution was desperately needed. On Aug. 17, rumors began to spread that there would be an opportunity to flee during the planned "Pan-European Picnic" near Sopron. Representatives of the West German embassy "knew about it, but acted as if the whole thing was of no concern to them," says Kozma today. During the night between Aug. 18 and 19, shortly before the first East German-made Trabants and Wartburgs began moving toward the West, preparations went into high gear at the rectory of the Holy Family Church in Budapest-Zugliget. A German-language flyer had turned up, but no one — supposedly — knew where it had come from. The flyer included an image of a stylized rose in barbed wire, driving directions to the picnic and, as a bonus, a map showing the location of the Austrian border, 2 kilometers north of the picnic site. ‘I Don’t Want to Be a Mass Murderer’ Past Sopronkőhida, the site of Hungary's most notorious prison since the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the road leads uphill toward the border. Shortly before the barrier, on the left-hand side, there was a collective farm consisting of a group of houses and stables in a valley. There, in the plains near the town of Sopron, was the site of the Pan-European Picnic. The organizers were members of various opposition parties that had been permitted in Hungary, a former one-party state, since February 1989. They were about to try something that would have been unthinkable until then: A three-hour opening of the border with Austria, which had been closed for the last 40 years. They had obtained the necessary permits and delegations from both sides had been invited for a barbed wire cutting ceremony. Food would be served and good neighborly relations between the two countries celebrated. The sponsors of the event were Hungarian reformer Pozsgay and Otto von Habsburg, the son of the former Emperor of Austria, but both men declined to attend before the picnic even started. A "large number of East German citizens" were expected, according to a telegram from the border patrol agency's headquarters in Budapest, sent at 10 a.m. on the day before the picnic. Lieutenant Colonel Árpád Bella, 43 years old and in charge of the border patrol near Sopron, had studied the William Penn Life 0 June 2010 ° 15
