The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-01-01 / 1. szám
all Hungarians belong.” Nearby Hungarian villages took them in temporarily to save them from frost and starvation. Their future is one of the many unsolved problems with which the Hungarians of Transylvania are faced. In 1957, according to the census figures, there were 187 Hungarian families still living in Hóstát. With most of their vegetable lands expropriated to accomodate the government’s housing project and with no other income available, these families engaged themselves in the most intensive gardening effort the world has probably ever seen — in their small backyards. It was called a “miracle” by several specialists and an outstanding German magazine, the “Gartenwissenschaft” published a four-page picture report on the “great achievement of the Hóstát gardeners” in the 1961 July issue. The aim of the government’s housing project was to build modern apartment buildings for the 20,000 Rumanians from old Rumania to be settled into the city Kolozsvár/Cluj in order to change the ethnic ratio of this ancient Hungarian city. After the planned buildings were finished and the new “first class citizens” brought in, turned out that the newly established industries could accomodate more Rumanians if the Hungarians would be moved out. Thus, in 1976 the Hóstát section of the city was condemned as “unsafe”, and the Hungarian population, rooted for five and a half centuries into the rich garden soil, was moved out forcibly, street by street in order to yield space to imported Rumanians. On November 23, 1982 the last leg of this well planned government project took place, ending one of the most heroic, and in the same time, one of the most tragic epics of our age: THE HÓSTÁT SAGA. POLISH DISSIDENTS DEPORTED TO RUMANIA — continued from page 1 — The woman boarded the train on November 29 and arrived next morning at a small railroad station in the upper delta region of the Danube river where several forced labor camps are located. The prisoners are working there on the canalization of the illfamed Dobrudja swamps, under primitive conditions for twelve hours day after day, waist-deep in mud. When the woman was allowed to see her son for a few minutes, she heard some of the prisoners behind the barbed wire fence talk a foreign language. Asking about them, her son whispered: “They are Poles, sent here by the Russians. But you are not supposed to know about it. For heaven’s sake keep quiet!” Apparently the victims of Russian oppression in Poland are still “cared for” by the Ceausescn regime. THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY Hungarian Dissidents in Transylvania Demand Autonomy The Associated Press reported from Vienna on November 19, 1982: A group of etchnic Hungarians living in Rumania have published a firmly worded petition demanding autonomy for areas of Transylvania, freedom of travel to and from Hungary, and other privileges. In an appeal addressed to the Madrid Conference on the Helsinki Agreement, the authors accuse the Rumanian government of persecution and of trying to stamp out Hungarian culture. Rumania’s Hungarian minority has long been a sore point in relations between the two Warsaw Pact allies, even though it is seldom referred to directly in official statements. Transylvania and othler parts of the old Hungarian empire were annexed by Rumania at the end of World War I. More than 2.5 million Hungarians still live in Rumania today, most of them in the West and North-West. “The State Powers treat us as if we were foreign intruders in our own homeland”, the document claims, stating that “Intimidations by the SECURITATE (political police) are of common occurence. Even our professional career is barred by the fact that we are Hungarians. We demand that we be regarded and treated as bound by unbreakable bonds to the Hungarian people.” The authors also demand freedom to travel to Hungary, to accomodate visiting Hungarians in their homes, and to subscribe to Hungarian newspapers and professional publications. They call for amnesty concerning the jailed Hungarian dissidents, for the re-establishment of their Hungarian language, educational institutions, for freedom of religion, and for an international commission to oversee the situation. They also demand the re-establishment of the Autonomius Hungarian Province, and the recognition of the Hungarian language as the second official language of the land. By Soviet bloc standards, Hungary is a prosperous country, where authorities permit some free enterprise and even tolerate a measure of criticism of the government. In Rumania food shortages are common and the regime is the strictest and most despotic in Europe. The Vienna newspaper KURIER reported recently that poet Géza Szőcs, and others associated with the document, had been arrested. Their where abouts are unknown. Ill
