Magyar Egyház, 2009 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2009-02-01 / 1. szám
18. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ When the Wends and Slovenes of the Muraköz protested their separation from Hungary, when the Ruthenians expressed their desire to remain in the kingdom, - which they shared for a thousand years -, when the Swabians of the Banat protested their annexation into Romania and Yugoslavia (Vojvodina), the answer was always the same: no! There was only one exception, only a single case where President Wilson's principle of selfdetermination prevailed: It was in the case of the city of Sopron, which held a plebiscite and voted (by a majority of 65%) to remain part of Hungary and not to join Austria. The “Guilt” Of Hungary The real reason for dismembering Hungary was the desire of the Western European powers to eliminate the state which could compete with their influence and thereby bring a power balance to the continent. The French came up with the excuse that the spread of Communism could only be prevented, if Hungary was dismembered, but the real reason was the French desire for the domination of all of Europe. Because, the architects of Trianon could not admit this, they invented the theory of Hungary's Guilt. They claimed that Hungary started the First World War, was a German ally and a destabilizing force in Europe. None of these were true. As to the claim of starting WW1, it was the Serb paragovernmental organization, Narodna Obrana, which, with the encouragement of Russia and with the goal of the creation of a Greater Serbia, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 and it was the Premier of Hungary, who alone in the Austro- Hungarian Council of Ministers, voted against a war of retaliation against Serbia. As to the claim of being a natural German ally, history proves just the opposite. Whenever Hungary was independent, she acted as a keystone of balance between the Germanic and Slavic peoples and prevented the attempts of both Pan-Germanic and Pan- Slavic expansions. In the first 500 years of her existence, starting with the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, Hungary fought to block the spread of German influence towards the East and created stability by filling the power vacuum in the region. When under Germanic (Austrian) occupation between 1688 and 1867, she twice rose against the Hapsburgs and eventually gained independence from them. Tacitus: "We Hate Whom We Hurt" In any society, the acid test of civilization is the respect for minority rights. The Great Powers’ attempted to guarantee these rights by making the Successor States sign minority treaties, which outlined the language, religious, cultural and property rights of the Hungarian minorities. For example, the minority treaty signed with Romania on the 9th of December, 1919 in Paris, - guaranteed by the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan -, stated the following: Article 8: No restriction shall be imposed on the free use of any language. Article 9: Equal rights to establish, manage and control religious institutions, schools and other educational establishments. In Article 11: Rumania agrees to accord to the communities of the Szecklers (Hungarian Székelys) and Saxons in Transylvania local autonomy in regard to scholastic and religious matters. Article 12: Rumania agrees that the stipulations in the foregoing Articles, constitute obligations of international concern. Similar treaties were signed with the other Successor States, but none were ever enforced. In fact, the Great Powers turned the other way while the Successor States attempted to “solve” their minority problems, first through denationalization, then by ethnic cleansing through deportations, expulsions, transfers, dispersions and other forms of uprooting. Hungarians had to choose between their nationality and their property. As a result of the savage oppression, intimidation and coercion, 350,000 Hungarians decided to leave all their possessions behind and flee to rump Hungary. The institutions and possessions of Hungarian communities were also targeted. In Transylvania alone, the Hungarian community lost 1,665 of her schools, including the world famous János Bolyai University, named after Einstein's predecessor, the inventor of the new (non-Euclidean) geometry. The Paris Peace Treaty On February 10, 1947, the Great Powers had another opportunity to enforce the until- then-disregarded minority treaties. This was expected because on August 14, 1941, the Atlantic Charter was signed, and it too (like the earlier Wilsonian principles) emphasized the right to self-determination and to plebiscites. Yet, not a single plebiscite was allowed after WW2. In fact, rump Hungary was further violated by the transfer of additional land to Slovakia. This transfer, later, made it possible to build the monstrous Gabcikovo dam project, which unilaterally and illegally transferred the Danube, Hungary's border river, onto Slovak territory in 1992, thereby destroying Europe's oldest wetland region. At the end of the Second World War, the worst crime of legalistic hypocrisy occurred. Eduard Benes, invented the concept of “collective guilt” and used it to confiscate the properties of the Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and later, and to deport them in cattle cars. To this day, the Benes Decrees “collective guilt” have not been repealed and the persecuted have never been compensated for their deportation or for the confiscation of their property. To understand the hypocrisy of this Benes Decree of “Collective Guilt”, one must realize that wartime Slovakia under Tiso was a protectorate of Nazi Germany. It was the representative of the Hungarian minority in the Slovak parliament, János Esterházy, who alone refused to vote in favor of the deportation of the Jews. Yet, after the war, Esterházy died in a Czechoslovakian jail and the Hungarian minorities were collectively declared to be war criminals. Thereby, when the Jewish Hungarians, deported by the Nazis returned to Czechoslovakia from the German death camps, their properties were confiscated and they themselves were deported (again), because of their “collective guilt” for being Hungarians. The Last Decades By the late 1940s, the only protection of the Hungarian minorities, were their churches. In 1948, 600 Hungarian Catholic priests and all six of their bishops were arrested in Transylvania. As the Romanians belong to the Eastern Orthodox faith, Rome later agreed to gerrymander the Catholic sees and to appoint Romanian bishops to lead the all-Hungarian church. The confiscation of Hungarian church properties caused the United States Congress in 2005 to pass House Resolution HR191, demanding their return. Yet, as of this day, over 1000 Hungarian church properties are still waiting to be returned in Romania. In the other Successor States, the fate of the Hungarian Catholics was similar. In 1949, in Ruthenia, the bishop of the 500,000 Catholics was murdered and the parishioners were forced to merge into the Orthodox Church. In Slovakia, in April, 1950, the bishop of 320,000 Catholics was arrested and his parishioners were also forced into the Orthodox Church. In 1956, 2,700 Hungarians died in fighting Soviet tanks and later 289 were hanged and some 300,000 escaped. In the meanwhile, the rulers of the Successor States used the uprising as
