The Eighth Tribe, 1981 (8. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1981-07-01 / 7. szám
8. Hungarian churches are under concentrated pressure. Old historic buildings are tom down under the pretext of being “unsafe.” Building permits for new churches are being refused. Parishioners are discouraged by veiled threats from attending church services. Church elders, members of the presbytery are subject to len'gthy interrogations ny the notorious SECURITATE, the “security police.” Clergymen who go around visiting members of their congregations in their homes are often arrested and charged with “conspiracy against the state.” They are often beaten, tortured or driven to suicide. Thes crimes are not unknown to the world. Amnesty International in London, as well as the Human Rights Division of the United Nations pursued intensive studies concerning the treatment of the native Hungarian population by the Rumanian' government. The Congressional Records contain several testimonies and statements on the subject. On July 25, 1979, the Honorable Congressman Richard T. Schulze Republican-Philadelphia, stated (Congressional Records, House, July25, 1979) : “The Rumanian government continues to abuse the Hungarian population. There are over 2,500,000 Hungarians who are being forced to assimilate themselves into the Rumanian culture. They have done away with Hungarian schools, bilingual signs, and any form of self-administration for these Hungarian people . . . The subcommmittee received very detailed, factual, well supported evidence, confirmed also by independent Western sources, of a systematic effort to destroy a whole network of Hungarian cultural institutions, to deprive this ethnic group of its language, traditions, and cultural identity. I emphasize the elements of destruction in this process. It is the closing of the schools where children can study in their mother longue, it is the elimination of one of Europe’s oldest universities, it is the campaign of extreme ethnic, cultural, and religious intolerance which the Hungarians are protesting . . .” Congressman Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat-Connecticut, added: “The plight of over 2,500,000 Hungarians in that country cannot be indifferent to us. Their condition, instead of being improved, it has worsened.” Congressman Larry McDonald, Democrat-Georgia: Rumania shamelessly continues to suppress its national minorities . . .” Congresman John H. Rousselot, Republican-California: “Reports indicate that the ruling regime in Rumania is attempting to systematically eliminate all facets of Hungarian' culture . . .” Congressman Rousselot’s prediction made in 1979 came true: Today all facet of Hungarian culture are eliminated in Transylvania, a country which was regarded sixty-five years ago as the cradle, the citadel and the standard bearer of Hungarian culture. We quote from a letter written by an American citizen of Transylvanian descent who visited his birthplace in August, 1980, accompanied by his wife and two children: Ten years ago Kolozsvár was still the largest Hungarian city in Transylvania. Today there are only a few thousand Hungarians left Just one single month this year, in the month of May, thirtythousand Rumanians were brought into the city and about twenty-thousand Hungarians were removed with nothing but a suitcase in their hands to the swamps of the Danube River in order to make place for new settlers. Many of the Hungarians we visited ten years ago, took their own lives, due to desparation. They were simply thrown out of their homes without compensation, without jobs, without pensions . . .” “Even the cemeteries have changed. When we tried to take flowers to the graves of those beloved, we could not find the gravestone. All the Hungarian gravestones were removed by the truck load, we were told. The graves of our parents and grandparents disappeared. Not even the dead seem to have the right today in Transylvania to rest in a grave with their Hungarian name on the gravestone . . . “As we traveled across Transylvania, there was •lot a single piacé where we could use the Hungarian Language without being exposed to crude and threatening remarks. Those standing in line for potatoes, bread or anything else, if heard by the food distributors whispering among themselves in Hungarian!, were chased away without a bite of food. The discrimination against Hungarians reached such proportions that Hitler’s Germany was nothing compared to it. “We are indeed living in a terrible world and a terrible age,” the letter concludes,” “in which there are plenty of institutions to care for ‘endangered species’, be these species birds or animals, but for endangered humans, nobody seems to care!” The point we want to emphasize in connection with these abuses is the very fact they are committed against a minority which did not migrate voluntarily into Rumania, but was living peacefully in its own homeland as part of the majority nation, and was thrown into minority status by an act of war, over which it had no control whatsoever. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE WITHIN In November 1950, the Socialist Federation of Hungarian Worker in Rumania sent a MEMORANDUM to the United Nations, the governments of the THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY V
