Levéltári Közlemények, 92. (2021)

Emigráció, ki- és betelepítések - Bariczné Fenyő Noémi: A bukovinai székelyek kálváriája Sántha Menyhért tollából

Emigráció, ki- és betelepítések

Bukovina árva székely népe, Hányszor mondtuk sírva, fohászkodva, Hogy ments meg minket magyarok asszonya, Jó szűzanyánk, nem hagytál el minket.

Keresztények boruljatok térdre, Bukovina árva székely népe.

Hányszor mondtuk sírva, fohászkodva, Hogy ments meg minket magyarok asszonya. Jó szűzanyánk nem hagytál el minket, Isten elé vitted kérésünket,

S meghallgatta könyörgő imáinkat, Visszaadta drága szép hazánkat. Kegyhelyünkön magyar szóval kérünk, Szabadítsd ki többi rab testvérünk, Hogy a világ minden népe lássa, hogy Magyarország Mária országa.

Noémi Bariczné Fenyő

“THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SZEKLERS

OF

BUKOVINA

” BY MENYHÉRT

SÁNTHA

In my grandmother’s heritage I found the photocopy of a notebook in which Menyhért Sántha, the

brother of my great-great-grandfather wrote down the story of the szeklers of Bukovina.

Everything started at Madéfalva,

where

the army of Maria Theresa slaughtered the village due to the fact that the szeklers did not want to get enlisted into the Habsburg army. The survivors moved to Moldva,

however

the Austrians needed a lot of people to repopulate the newly occupied Bukovina. The szeklers moved there and they established five villages: Istensegíts,

Fogadjisten,

Hadikfalva, Andrásfalva

and

Jozseffalva. Life was difficult there as well: until the abolition of the serfdom they suffered a lot from unjust lords, they were plagued by diseases and due to the rapidly growing population many families left Bukovina. After the First World War the land has been occupied by Romania. As the situation became unbearable, all the five villages moved to Bácska

in

1941, where they could live in the houses of the deported Serbians. Nevertheless, three years later they had to leave their homes once again because of the war. They fled to Hungary, however they did not receive any support here at first. After a while, all of the szeklers of Bukovina acquired their own lands, mostly in the counties of Baranya

and

Tolna. Their integration however was not easy, because they had different cultural habits than the Swabians who lived there originally.

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