The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1982 (9. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1982-01-01 / 1. szám

THE FACTS OF GENOCIDE

1. “The systematic destruction of historical

or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses. Destruction or dispersion of historical, artistic, or religious values and objects.” (U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, 1948.)

As previously reported in this Quarterly, many ancient Hungarian educational institutions in Transylvania were confiscated and closed down by the Ceausescu government; libraries, archives, museums were destroyed; the use of the Hungarian language banished from all public places; history rewritten; historical markers, monuments, landmarks, even old. tombstones destroyed. Famous relics such as artistically hand-carved and painted Hungarian farm gates (Szekelykapu) and the old totem-pole-like gravemarkers (Kopjafa-javelin) are being burned by the hundreds in order to eliminate the traditional Hungarian character of the Transylvanian landscape. Hungarian children from the age of three are being enforced into Rumanian institutions where they are forced, through beatings and other intimidations, to call themselves “good little Rumanians”, abandon their mother tongue, and deny their Hungarian heritage. Hungarian language schools are being systematically closed down and taken over. Hungarian educators, clergymen and other intellectuals are being ruthlessly persecuted, beaten to death or driven to suicide.

2. “Genocide - a program of action intended

to destroy a national or ethnic group.” (New World Dictionary.)

The Hungarians of Transylvania, close to three million strong, are the native inhabitants of that land, which was for more than 1,000 years part of the Hungarian Kingdom and the easternmost citadel of the Western Christian civilization. Transylvania is the land where in the sixteenth century the Hungarian Congress declared the FREEDOM OF RELIGION, many years before any other country on the face of the Earth.

Therefore, the Hungarians living today in Rumanian occupied Transylvania, as a sad result, of two World Wars, cannot be regarded as immigrants or foreigners. They are part of a nation still located in its ancestral homeland, the Carpathian Basin, but thrown into the role of an ethnic minority as a result of global wars.

The “program of action intended to destroy” the Hungarians in Transylvania is no secret. It was openly expressed by Rumanian dictator Ceausescu on several occasions assuring his audiences that “Rumania belongs to the Rumanians alone”

II

and “all foreign elements must be absorbed or eliminated.” This program of “absorption or elimination” is being implemented over the last seven years in the most barbaric manner by all governmental agencies, most of all by the dreaded SECURITATE.

Religions, cultural, and political leaders of the Transylvanian Hungarians are constantly persecuted, imprisoned, beaten to death or driven to suicide. During the last two years 28 clergymen, 8 writers and artists, 29 educators, and 17 other Hungarians intellectuals were eliminated one way or another. Among these, inter-national attention was focused on minority-leader Karoly Király, as well as professors Zsufka, Szikszai, Kuthy, and Sima.

Entire Hungarian villages and sections of cities are constantly being evacuated and the Hungarian inhabitants moved into Rumania proper, where they are scattered into different locations, mostly labor camps. Recently, the Hungarian populatioin of the famous “Hostat” in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), three entire villages in the Kalotasneg region, more than half of the Hungarian population of Torda (Turda), Nagyenyed (Aiud), Nagyvarad (Oradea), and Brassó (Brasov) were moved from their homes and transported into other parts of the country.

Rumanians and Rumania proper are moved into the evacuated Hungarian villages and towns. They are given special privileges, to the detriment of those native Hungarians who escaped evacuation and are still tolerated in their homeland. Those Hungarians will be employed in better paid jobs and receive adequate food and clothing only if they denounce their Hungarian origin and declare themselves Rumanians.

Hungarian children forced to attend Rumania educational institutional institutions from kindergarten on are under severe pressure, even exposed to beatings to force them to denounce their cultural heritage and declare themselves “good little Rumanians.” They are strictly forbidden the use of their language and their Hungarian parents are constantly referred to as “bums”, “foreigners”, “vagrants”, “parasites”, and other derogatory names.

As one American traveling through Transylvania remarked in his report (Transylvania Quarterly, No. 6, January, 1981, page 9):

“WE ARE LIVING INDEED IN A TERRIBLE WORLD AND A TERRIBLE AGE, IN WHICH THERE ARE PLENTY OF INSTITUTIONS TO CARE FOR ‘ENDANGERED SPECIES’ IF THESE SPECIES HAPPEN TO BE BIRDS OR ANIMALS, BUT FOR ENDANGERED HUMANS NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE...!”

THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY