Forrai Ibolya szerk.: Néprajzi Közlemények 33. évfolyam - Csángók a 20. században, Élettörténetek (Budapest, 1994)

TCHANGOS IN THE XXth CENTURY - Life stories

The next author, Péter Erdős Szászka (officially: Sescu Petre Paduraru), was born in 1917 in Szabófalva (Sabaoani). He finished 7 classes in a Roumanian school and thus learned to read and write in Hungarian on his own account. During his military service he was also in Hungary. He was originally a smallholder, but worked also at the railways, in the post office, was employee of the local municipality and a co-operative society, until pensioned in 1972. Since then, the farming leaves him enough time for reading an writing; he even tried to write verses. Since 1974 he is writing the history of his village according to his own recollections. Of course, these remembrances present us a picture of the personal fate, too, but this is never accentuated, the leading part being always played by the community. Most of the writings are dealing with the childhood, others give us detailed descriptions of children's games and occupations (guarding of smaller children, taking care of animals etc.), the differentiation of men's and women's work. Spinning and weaving, peaces of wearing, house-building, household furniture, mills, pubs etc. are presented. In a detailed description of the community's habits the old and new forms are always distinguished. This collection of reminiscences in an important source from both the ethnographical and the linguistic point of view, in fact, an authentic document of the actual Hungarian language of Moldavia. The author and central figure of the third Tchango story is Istvan Laczko. He was bom in 1908 in Lábnyik (Vladnic), where the so called Szekler (Hung.: székelyes) Tchangos are living. Even the street names are demonstrating here the Szekler origin. A very small part of the Hungarians of Moldavia have transmigrated in 1945-47 to Hungary. In Lábnyik it was István Laczkó who organized the exodus among the inhabitants of Lábnyik in 1947 and is living since then in Egyházaskozár with his family. The story of the transmigration was written separately, before the biography. The final conclusion of his writings: in spite of hard life, world war and poverty one has the chance to live a well-ordered life, to conserve human values