Magyar Egyház, 1957 (36. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1957-02-01 / 2. szám

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

9

ENGLISH

SECTION

FACING THE PROBLEM INSIDE HUNGARY

BY M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN

Our preoccupation with Hungarian refugee problems is an avoidance of the real issue in the Hungarian situation. Those who have fled from Red Terror merit our unmitigated sympathy and generous help. Concentration on that problem, however, can divert attention from the real issue which is a problem inside Hungary. It is the conviction of this observer that that is precisely what has been happening. Even the dramatic trip of Vice President Nixon, as commendable and well-intentioned as it was, may prove not to have an unmixed blessing when the entire story has been written. For Mr. Nixon’s trip has helped to shift the attention of the entire Western world from the unrelenting agony of the millions of people still inside Hungary to the relieved situation of a few score thousand Magyars now in the free world. And with such a change in the focus of attention many, reading the reports or, with the benefit of television, watching refugees cross the last divide to freedom, have emitted a sympathetic and almost simultaneous sigh of relief. The immediate problem for many freedom-seeking Magyars has been solved and we feel a corresponding unburdening of our own spirits.

Such an evasion of the real question, however, is unworthy of a country which has been favored with the enlightening influences that have gone into the making of America. Nor does it, of course, discharge our responsibility. We have made a beginning but the problem has not yet been solved. The problem inside Hungary, let it be said again, is an intolerable Soviet Communist domination. The descriptive adjective was used intentionally in the preceding sentence because the Soviet Communist domination of Hungary, socially, economically, politically and ideologically, has been nothing less than that, intolerable, as could be amply demonstrated by anyone who has kept abreast of developments in Hungary since 1948.

But there are many who, bewildered by the rapidly changing scenes of our world today and under the necessity of earning their daily bread, have not been able to keep abreast of developments in that rampart of Western culture since the Communist seizure of the government with the Soviet army in Hungary less than a decade ago. Hence they are unaware of what has been transpiring there during these years which have been so long and so hard to Hungary’s people. They do not know of gross injustices, the flagrant and innumerable violations of elementary human rights, the inhuman atrocities to which some who have dared to oppose the regime have been subjected. (Even Janos Kadar, himself, a Muscovite Communist, once had his fingernails removed, pulled out, because of some minor deviation.) Nor are many aware of the soul-agony of a people watching day after day, year after year, its culture, Wertem and Christian, built through the

storms of the centuries, being supplanted by a godless, inhuman ideology. Yet that has been going on systematically and the recent heroic revolt was the reaction of people who could not take it any longer. Most of us, indeed, have been unaware of the real situation in Hungary. Moreover, we have softened our criticism of Communism, and the de-Stalinization that has been going on behind the Iron Curtain these last months has even made us feel that co-existence with the Soviet order was possible and maybe even desirable.

We have been reminded recently, however, that Communism of the Soviet variety, anti-God and by a necessary consequence anti-human, has not changed fundamentally. There is the same subversion of moral and spiritual values, the same denial of human rights, the same ruthless suppression of deviation, the same savage reprisals and the same subjection of people to various forms of inhuman slavery. And having been reminded we have spoken. The courageous and forthright statements of our Ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge, upheld our best traditions.

The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have spoken sharply, the latter specifically accusing “the rules of Russia” of having “expelled God from their belief,” and therefore of being “able to violate and outrage not only all the laws of God but all the hopes and aspirations of the human spirit,” and of having “become to a unique degree the instruments and slaves of the devil.” American Churchmen have also spoken decisively. The World Council of Churches, in a statement signed by its chief officers, has called on “powerful nations to remove the yoke which now prevents other nations and peoples from freely determining their own government and form of society.” President Eisenhower has again exhibited his great leadership, and the United Nations “condemns the violation of the UN charter by the government of the USSR in depriving Hungary of its liberty and independence and the Hungarian people of the exercise of their fundamental rights.” We have spoken, and that is all that we have done with respect to the problem inside Hungary.

There is a touch of irony in our use of words alone in our endeavor to assist Hungary. The West has spoken “words” of encouragement and consolation to Hungary often before. In the thirteenth century when Asiatic invaders were bent on conquering all Europe, the Magyars blocked their path. Requesting aid, their king reminded Pope Innocent IV that the second Mongolian invasion, in 1253, was a concern of all Europe. The embattled Magyars received no assistance from the West, however, “except words”, a phrase which has become a byword in Hungarian history.

During the fifteenth century there lived one of Hungary’s greatest leaders, John Hunyadi, whom all Europe was to praise. Yet in his campaigns against