Tárogató, 1949-1950 (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1949-07-01 / 1-2. szám
TÁROGATÓ 7 Hence the selection of Mindszenty for bishop by the Pope in 1944 was in itself significant, and Mindszenty, who came from a humble peasant family, fulfilled all the expectations of a leader of a diocese. It was to be expected that he would come into conflict with the Nazis when he defended the rights of his Church. For this he was imprisoned by the Nazis, and this is a fact, a fact which does not suit the purpose of the communist leaders in Hungary. Hence, since they are not able to deny the fact that the Nazis imprisoned Bishop Mindszenty, they try to impute selfish motives to him and reproach him for having requested his liberation. We know by experience that the majority of Christian Church leaders are opposed to totalitarian regimes, hence the totalitarian rulers would do anything to increase the stature of any church leader who is sympathetic to them, and would bestow on him their earthly goods. They knew that Bishop Mindszenty was against all they stood for, hence his removal into prison. Mindszenty could have favoured the Hungarian Nazis by helping them with the persecution of the Jews. The Nazis would have acknowledged this service also, but, on the contrary, Bishop Mindszenty not only did not oblige the Jewbaiters in Hungary, he actually did save the life of many Jews. This is a fact and is so declared by the most competent man in this question, Dr. Bela Fabian, who happened to be president of the Jewish administrative Board in Hungary and certainly is most entitled to pass judgment in this question. In spite of all this, in spite of the fact that parish priest Mindszenty and Bishop Mindszenty tried to and did save the life of many Jews, he was declared to be a Jew-baiter. Why the insistence on this falsehood? Why repeat it in their official propaganda publication and in all the foreign communist papers when it had nothing to do with the charges brought against him at the rial? Why belittle and distort the fact that the Nazis hated him and thought it necessary to remove him from the forum of public life when this fact also had nothing to do with his trial? There is only one answer: the defamation of this man is of greater importance to his communist prosecutors than his sentence, and we try to prove that it is the only important thing to them. Ill Hungary was “liberated” and occupied by the Russian army in 1945. The communists came out of their hiding-places; communist refugees who had fled from Hungary, lived in Russia and had become Russian soviet citizens claimed leading roles in shaping the future of Hungary. There were few of them, they had not many adherents in Hungary, but they managed to get supporters from among those who were willing to support any government which would pay them, and from those who for their previous offences and crimes were liable to punishment unless they joined the communist party. With the active cooperation of the Russian Army, the communists secured for themselves the key positions in the Cabinet, which enabled them to carry out their plans for acquiring all the power they needed to establish a pseudo-democratic and, in fact, a totalitarian regime. The new communist leaders were, and still are, tacticians who at the beginning used diplomatic procedures and well-sounding phrases to cover up their goal: a Hungarian communist state on the pattern of the USSR based on Marxist- Leninist-Stalinist ideas. How they succeeded in fooling simple-minded people abroad who hurried back to the old country only to return disillusioned; how they got rid of the opposition one by one by using all available means to accomplish it; how they tolerated (if not organized) Jewish persecutions in order to persuade the Jews that their only salvation lay in this new Hungarian “democracy”; how they succeeded in forcing tens of thousands of Hungarians out of the life of the country either by transporting them to Russia or putting them into concentration camps and prisons; how they placed one of their own men in any responsible position anywhere; how they prevented any criticism of their procedures either in parliament, or in the Press, or even in semi-privacy by establishing a secret
