THE CAUSES OF THE ROMANIAN-HUNGARIAN CONFLICT - Traian Golea

 

One of the three big provinces of today's Romania is Transylvania, which is also the cradle of the Romanian nation. Until it was conquered and colonized by the Romans in A.D. 106, the country was populated by Dacians, and the Romans called it " Dacia Felix ". It was a well organized country and under the King Burebista it reached its greatest territorial expansion, from the Balkan Mountains in the South, to Northern Carpathians in the North, and from the river Dniester in the East to the center of Pannonia in the West, what grosso-modo corresponds to the territory inhabited today by the romanized Dacians, the today's Romanians (see chapter Other revisionist thesis against the Romanian continuity, by archaeologist Dumitru Berciu).

The Roman domination of Dacia lasted until 271 AD, when they were forced by the Goths to retreat. It followed a series of other invaders from Asia, among them the most numerous were the Mongols.

As the Christian missionaries reached the country in the second century, the Dacians were christianized.

In IXth and Xth century Europe had known the invasion of the Szeklers and Magyars who, after being defeated by Otto the Great in 955 at Lechfeld, were forced to stabilize in Pannonia. The Magyars were christianized in AD 1.000 under the King Stephen.

On 14th of November 1234 the Pope Gregory the IXth has sent a letter to Bela the IVth, King of Hungary, saying:

"I understand that in the Bishopric of Cumani (Transylvania), there are people who call themselves Romanians and although they say they were Christians, (Orthodox, nn), they are of a different rites which is contrary to the Christian (Catholic) rite....... and many Hungarians and Teutons are joining them, becoming Romanians." The Pope asked the King to swear that he will prosecute these heretics and will push them out of the country. Then, in that day, 14 of November 1234, started the persecutions of the Romanians by the Apostolic state of Hungary.

In the XIIth and XIIIth century the kings of Hungary, in order to strengthen their grip on Transylvania, they brought in some Saxons as colonists.

Prof. S. Mehedinti from the University of Bucharest, in his book "What is Transylvania?" about the fate of the Romanians in Transylvania says:

"Nor the coming of the Hungarians was so tragical for the fate of Romanians of Transylvania. The difficulties arouse with their becoming Christians, when the State of Hungary became a Apostolic State, who asked the Romanians to become Catholics. ... As the whole agricultural land of the country belonged to the King, the Kings of Hungary imposed a condition for being or becoming a landlord to be a Catholic". Thus, all Romanians who wanted to keep their estate or to earn one, had to become Catholic, and as such they entered the Catholic Hungarian society and were lost for the Romanian Orthodox nation. In this way, for seven centuries the Romanians of Transylvania were deprived oftheir political and social elite, of their leaders. Against this state of matter erupted several times revolutions of which one of the most important was that of 1437 from Bobalna, which was cruelly crashed. To prevent new arousing of such revolutions on the part of the Romanian peasants, the Hungarian nobility of the country set up a Unio Trium Nationum, a coalition of the Magyars, Szeklers and Germans, known as the union of favored nations, dispossessing the Romanians of all political and social rights.

In 1458 the Diet of Torda voted the religious freedom for four rites only, for the churches of the three favored nations , namely only for the Evangelical, the Lutheran, the Roman Catholic and the Unitarian church, assuring their free exercise and equal status. An impartial, scholarly historian, Seton Watson, about this decree writes: "The three privileged nations rigidly excluded from all political power a fourth and not less numerous, the Romanian nation; and in exactly the same way the equal rights assured to the four "received religions", were deliberately withheld from a Church which, at the most moderate estimate, had far more adherents than any one of the four, namely the Orthodox Church, to which all Romanians adhered."

In 1867 the ethnic conflict between Romanians and Hungarians received a most vigorous impulse; it was the moment when the Hungarian government issued a law to regulate the civil rights of the minorities in Hungary. There is nothing to object against the law as such, but against the fact that it was not implemented at all. On the contrary, this law was intended only to allow the Hungarian government to put on a nice garb for world public opinion. Internally, and secretly, on administrative ways, the Hungarian governmentdid everything possible to hinder any attempt by the ethnic groups to develop an ethnic cultural life. It is to emphasize here that Hungary's struggle to annihilate its national minorities started in that moment when they issued the most liberal law of minorities rights, namely in 1867 . Since then the fight of the government and of the whole political leadership of Hungary against its national minorities became a state policy. It is this struggle to annihilate Hungary's national minorities that Kosztenszki Geza had acknowledged in 1893 and the government of Hungary had declared its solidarity with Kosztenski Geza's statement, published in "National Politics", which says: "Forget about the conventional lie by which we pretend that we do not wish to exterminate the non-Magyar nations. For we do wish to destroy them, we do and we must wish to kill them all." This statement was republished by Felix Leseur's editorial in "La RIpublique FranGaise" Paris, on May 25, 1893, in which further we read: "This statement of Kosztenszki Geza was applauded by the then Hungarian Minister of Interior who, together with the entire Hungarian government, pledged allegiance to Kosztenszki Geza's stand". After this statement was made, the Hungary's struggle to annihilate its national minorities became a open state policy. It's deployment is described by Zenobius Paclisanu in the Book " Hungary's Struggle to Annihilate its National Minorities", - Based on Secret Hungarian Documents" -, published by "Dacia Books" in Bucharest, 1941, in Romanian, German and Italian language. An English edition was published by "Romanian Historical Studies", 1985, in Miami Beach, FL. USA.

After the dissolution of Great Hungary in 1918 the Hungarian leadership refused to acknowledge theconsequences of the World War I and they conceived a revisionist policy, consisting of two main branches:

 

The first:

They maintained in the school textbooks the data of Great Hungary, so that all generations after 1920 learned the geography and history of Great Hungary. They insisted that "now" Hungary is a mutilated country, suffering a great injustice inflicted by the Allied Power in WW I, injustice which has to be corrected. Further we give some excerpts from the book "Revisionist Hungary" , by L.S. Fenyes, (this book was prohibited In Hungary and the author was expelled the country) which in the chapter "Revisionism in the Textbooks used in schoo l" quotes from the Georg Tak;cs textbook: "The History of the Hungarian People", approved by the Hungarian Ministry of Education with No. 98473/1921. Regarding the " Territory and Population of the Magyar State" we read:

"Hungary has an area of 283,000 square kilometers and a population of 18.232.000 inhabitants", (referring to Great Hungary, because after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary has an area of only 92.000 sq. km and a population of 7.600.000 inhabitants).

We read further:

"All those who live on the territory of the Hungarian State are members of the Hungarian political nation, regardless of their ethnicity and of their language. There are various languages, races and religions within the Hungarian nation: they form the various nationalities. The population of Hungary is broken down according to that criterion - in round numbers - as follows:

 

 

 

"It follows from the above figures that in Hungary the number of inhabitants that belong to the Magyar race is far greater than that of all non-Magyar inhabitants. The Magyar race is consequently dominant not only from a historical and cultural point of view (that of conquering, setting up, organizing and defending the state) but also from a numerical point of view."

Than the textbook proceeds to discuss the non-Magyar nationalities listed above, claiming that each of them wormed its way into Hungary for protection in the Middle Ages, and concludes with the words:

"1. None of the non-Magyar nationalities was indigenous to the territory of Hungary. The conquering Magyars did not find anybody in the conquered territory. All other inhabitants came here a few centuries after the Hungarians settled here and set up a state.":

2. The non-Magyar nationalities did not conquer the territory they now inhabit, but entered it as peaceful settlers in search of a livelihood."

3. "The cession of non-Magyar areas (1918) does not constitute a restoration of those areas to their fatherland and their mother nation, and does not constitute the rectificationof an unjust situation, but constitutes the dismantling of the country that centuries earlier has offered to settlers asylum and the possibility of greater cultural growth than their mother nations offered at home." (S. Fenyes, "Revisionist Hungary", pp 118-121, Romanian Historical Studies, 1988, Miami Beach, FL. USA

These textbooks are the main spring of Hungarian revisionism which, after the school life, is maintained alive by revisionist associations that spawn all over Hungary and disseminate a vindictive literature. A " Creed of Hungarian revisionism" had been produced which we reproduce from "Le litige roumano-hongroise", by Romulus Codarcea, "Universul" Bucharest, 1937. pp 95-06:

"1. Do not ever forget that you are a son of the Magyar nation that has been humiliated and dishonored. Waking up at night even, remember your brothers who suffer under the horrible and brutal yoke of the perfidious bandits."

"2. As long as your oppressed brothers are not liberated, you must never feel joy and must have no celebrations."

"3. Broadcast the idea that there will be no peace and that our enormous sufferings will not end as long as we will not be repossessed of the territories that were once ours."

"4. Swear to dedicate all your efforts and all your means to the task of restoring the boundaries of Great Hungary."

"5. All those who, guided by selfish interests, speak of resignation and of accepting one's fate, shall be your enemies and you will destroy them. Be merciless to them because they are merciless to the fate of Great Hungary."

"6. Those who claim that first we must grow and thenchase the bandits away from our territories are scum who desire their fatherland's ruin. Those despicable creatures speak like that because they are comfortable in the dismantled state of Hungary. But we are still strong enough in the territories that were once ours to be able to liquidate our enemies. All we need is energetic capable leadership."

"7. Strive to achieve the internal demoralization of our enemies. All means are fair when used in the service of fatherland."

"8. Do not cooperate with a hesitant government that lacks vigor."

"9. Give up your possessions for the benefit of the fatherland."

"10. As long as the fatherland is not redeemed, be neither a Christian, nor a liberal, nor a conservative; neither a small businessman, nor the owner of a great estate; neither law-abiding citizen, nor a dissident; neither a legitimist, nor a freethinker. Be a daring Hungarian who trusts his strength; be full of desperate fury. Think of revenge and look forward impatiently to the day of retribution ! Have no mercy ! Be a savage and pagan Magyar!"

It is the Kosztenszki Geza's murderous doctrine of 1893 which was officially adopted as state policy regarding the minorities, and the Revisionist Creed of the "30th years that produced the Dgcs_ Csaba's most bestial murderous doctrine which stil animates the contemporary Hungarian generations.

This revisionist trend of the Hungarian policy will continue as long as the Hungarians refuse to acknowledge the historical facts, namely the decision of The Great National Assembly of the Romanians of Transylvania from the 1 ofDecember, 1918, who represented 76,7% of the whole population, to unite Transylvania with the mother land Romania, as well as the jurisdictional consequences of WW I, namely the Peace Treaty of Trianon in 1920, signed by all belligerent European powers, including United States of America and the Hungarian government of Miklos Horthy itself.

 

 

The second:

The principal methods by which the Horthyst regime tried to exterminate and eliminate the Romanians and thus to change the country's demographic balance in favor of the Magyars were:

- Individual or mass maltreatment and murder;

- expulsion and dislodgement, in most cases of entirecommunities or large groups of Romanians from urban and rural localities;

- Preventing the representatives of the Romanians to take part in political and state affairs;

- forced magyarization by way of religion, education, literature, press, the state life;

- internment in concentration camps, recruitment of forced labor detachments to be sent to Germany or Hungary. - dispossession of property and other acts of economic oppression.

The program of the extermination of the Romanians was theorized in a pamphlet signed by Dgcso Csaba, entitled Nincs kegyelem (No mercy), which was published in 1939 where he says: "The Hungarian nation is the most splendid achievement of the Mongolian dominant race, which knows only victory. The blood of Attila, Arpad and Genghis Khan is boiling in their veins", and further Dgcs_ Csaba says: "I will not wait for revenge to come. I will not wait ! I will suppress every Wallachian (Romanian) that comes my way. I will suppress every one of them. There will be no mercy. I shall set the villages on fire at night - Wallachian (Romanian) villages ! I shall put to the sword the whole population; I shall poison all the wells and shall kill even the babies in their cribs; I will destroy this nation ! .... There will be no mercy for anybody".

By means of an extremely complex political state machinery, the Horthyst Government fostered assassination and cultivated fanatic displays of hyperchauvinisme, with most serious consequences for the Romanian population.

Characterizing the policy carried out by Horthy's Hungary in the occupied territory of Transylvania in 1940, adocument prepared by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted:

"Since Hungary has obtained this territory not following a cruel, bloody war, but as a political favor, and since the stages of this occupation by the Hungarian authorities had been established in advance, down to the last detail, it was expected that everything would proceed in perfect order. It was also believed that Hungary, which until the end of 1918 had been a country with numerous and strong ethnical minorities, had learned that those minorities could neither be assimilated by force, nor eliminated by terror, and that, having become again master over a territory in which the Romanian element made the absolute majority of the population, Hungary will give up its old imperialistic policies and would grant the Romanians a minimum of rights and freedoms which were necessary for a normal development of their national life. Yet it did not happen that way."

The murderous political slogans for the minority problems of Kosztenszki Geza from 1893, and the " Creed of Revisionists " of the '30th years, followed by the more criminal slogans of Ducs_ Csaba have found a nationwide acceptance, as testified by the following quotation from a speech delivered by Baron AczIl Ede, the chief of paramilitary forces in the county of Cluj, when the Hungarian administration took over Northern Transylvania in 1940:

"We must exterminate these Romanian peasants; we must murder them as we kill our worst enemies... Our priests preach love, but that is only a pretext; for God helps only those who are strong and brutal, and we all must be strong and brutal and kill and annihilate these Romanians; The tencommandments of religion are: thou shalt not steal, not covet another man's wife, for it is sinful to do these things. Or is it ? No, it is not! The only sin is to fail to destroy these Romanian peasants. We will have a new massacre of St. Bartholomew and we will murder the unborn infant in its mother's belly."

As all witnesses of good faith testify, the Hungarian St. Bartholomew's night took place. In the last quarter of the year 1940, short after the occupation of Northern Transylvania, 6,830 unarmed Romanian victims, children and women, were martyrized and murdered by Hungarians, 17 churches were razed to the ground, 33 churches were destroyed and prohibited to be repaired and used; 53 churches were closed and sealed by the Hungarian administration, 142 Romanian priests were arrested, exiled, tortured to death and murdered. All the testimonies are gathered at the Romanian Orthodox Bishopric of Sibiu and partly are published in the book: Transylvania, l'ultima persecuzione magiara" (Transylvania, the last Hungarian persecution), Edizione Europa, Roma, 1980, by Ioan Ciolan, and can be perused. Or as the Romanian historian of Jewish decent Dr. Oliver Lustig remarks in his Study "Diastorsions and Misreprezentations that Bring Insults and Desecrate the Memory of the Victims of Horthy's Reign of Terror" , in "Romanian Historical Studies" Miami Beach, 1995, page 3:

"....having invaded the north-west of Romania as a consequence of the arbitrary Dictate of Vienna (30 August 1940), the entire repressive apparatus, the entire machinery of Horthy's oppression was directed against the Romanian population, against whom they perpetrated thousands of individual and collective murders, laying waste and mistreating , spreading fear and terror in towns and villages,installing a reign of terror unparalleled in history for its savageness."

 

Some exemplary atrocities committed by the Hungarians in Northern Transylvania :

 

The case of Father Aurel Munteanu of Huedin is one example. On September 10, 1940, going to a funeral, he was intercepted downtown by a mob of 21 vengeful Hungarians who attacked him, yelling: " Thievish priest, dirty Romanian! " They started dealing him blows so that he fell down streaming with blood. For four hours did they torture him, until finally one of these worthy descendant of Arpad and Genghis Khan, whose name was Buday Janos Gyepu, forced an iron bar down his throat that emerged through the nape of the priests neck. The priests corpse, together with that of his companion Gheorghe Nicula, also beaten to death by this Hungarian mob, was carried out of town and thrown into a ditch. The two slaughtered men lay there unknown for60 days. Finally Gheorghe Nicula's wife found out where the corpses had been hidden and attempted to remove them to a cemetery, to grant them Christian burial. The Hungarian police prevented her. Since however the fact had by now become generally known, the authorities were faced with the necessity of allowing the two corpses to undergo autopsy and burial rites.

Thousands of citizens participated in the funeral of the two Romanian martyrs. An armed Hungarian police detachment intervened and forced the mourners to disperse immediately after the coffins were lowered in the ground.

To appease the general dissatisfaction, a make-believe trial was staged, registered under the No B 4239/1941/6 with the Courthouse of Cluj. The state attorney gave the following explanation for the crime that was committed in his indictment: "It happened in highly emotional circumstances for the sufferings of this minority during the 22 years of Romanian domination." The accused were sentenced to 2-3 months in jail and their sentence was subsequently suspended ( "Transylvania ", by Ioan Ciolan, pag, 24).

Another case is that of the massacre of "Muresenii de Campie". An officer in the Hungarian army, Muray, born in Debrecen, who had never in his life been under Romanian rule, together with a platoon of Hungarian soldiers, came on September 23, 1940, to the house of the Greek Catholic priest Andrei Bujor. They found there the priest himself, his wife Lucretia, his elder daughter Lucia, age 25, B.A. from the University of Cluj, his younger daughter Maria, age 21, a student of Physics at the same university, and his son Victor, age 18, graduating from high school. They also found in the house a Hungarian maid, Shari. They brought withthem the deacon with his wife, and village schoolmistress with her 4-year old daughter and her 70-year old mother. They could not find the schoolmistress's husband.

These eleven victims were beaten and tortured all night long. At dawn they were shot and thrown into a hollow ditch, so that the next day one could still hear the groans of those buried while still alive.

A report of those barbarous proceedings, accounted for only by the atavistic bloodthirstiness of these descendants of Arpad, was filed with the Bishopric of Cluj, and also higher up, with the office of the papal nuncio of Budapesta and the Vatican, (op, cit. pp. 23-26).

The same troop of executioners led by Muray, is responsible for the famous massacre of Traznea , where on September 9, 1941, 81 Romanians were murdered and 27 houses were set on fire. They are also responsible for the massacre of Ip, of September 13, 1940, where 157 Romanians were murdered (op. cit. pag. 9).

Proofs of these crimes committed by the Hungarians against the Romanians subjected to Hungarian government after the Diktat of Vienna of Hitler and Mussolini for the period of 1940-1944, has been also submitted by the Romanian delegates to the Conference of Peace, Paris, 1946.

The extent and the ghastly bloodthirstiness of the atrocities perpetrated by the Hungarians against the Romanians are hard to conceive even by ourselves, those who suffered from them, because acts such as those of the Hungarians do not belong to the range of the human behavior in Europe. The Romanian way of life does not admit cruelty and bloodthirstiness such as that documented here. We, Romanians, never devastated churches, never desecratedreligious symbols, never tore to pieces the insignia of anyone's faith and never turned anyone's place of worship into a toilet. Never were such things done by members of a European nation who call themselves Christians. Those who do such things and those who promote a frame of mind conducive to such acts certainly are not members of a civilized Christian society, no matter how hard they denigrate and calumniate other nations.

It must be stated here that in the entire history of the Romanian people, ever since the Hungarians came to Europe, and all through the years that a Hungarian minority was under Romanian jurisdiction, there can not be cited one single instance in which a Hungarian had ever been misused, mistreated, beaten or murdered by the Romanians because of his nationality.

 

About the Hungarian millennium in Europe

 

One of the main point on the Hungarian revisionism is the theory that Transylvania, which was part of Hungary for a millennium, was ceded to Romania by the Peace Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

That claim is fully untruthful. Until Transyilavnia was engulfed in the Austrian Empire, it had its own prince, its own army, its own currency; it levied customs on imported goods and had its separate foreign policy. It most definitely did not constitute part of Hungary. Even in Hungarian history Transylvania was always described as the Independent Principality of Transylvania . When at the end of 17th century the Austrian Empire annexed it, it became a province of that empire, as was Hungary itself, and as werePoland, Serbia, Croatia, Bohemia, etc.

In 1867, availing themselves of Austria's precarious position, the Hungarians forced it to a compromise known as the Dual System , described by R.W. Seton Watson in his "History of the Romanians" , pag. 300, as follows: "The real motive of the Dualism was a compact between the two races, the Germans of Austria and the Hungarians, to divide the monarchy between them... None of the Austrian races had to complain of grinding oppression... But in Hungary the situation was very different.... The other non-Magyar nationalities - Germans, Slovaks, Ruthenes, Serbs and not least of all Romanians - were relegated to the position of mere political helots and predestined for assimilation by the ruling race."

Thus, the alleged millennium of Hungarian Transylvania boils down to 51 years, upon accurate computation, between the years 1867 and 1918. Hungary itself never existed for a millennium as a country, for it had ceased to exist and was not recorded on the map of Europe between 1526, when it became a Turkish province, only to become an Austrian province until 1848. Before WW I Hungary had been an independent state only for 641, from 955, when they were forced by Otto the Great's decisive victory at Lechfeld to rest content with Pannonia as their home, to 1526 when the Hngarian state was destroyed at the battle of Mohacs, and between 1848 and 1918.

 

Was Transylvania ceded to Romania ?

Also untruthful is the claim that Transylvania was ceded to Romania by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Thebasic idea for the peace in Europe after World War I was the right of the nations to self-determination. As a consequence, all nations of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire held their national assemblies, where they decided to be freed from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and become part of the country ruled by their own co-nationals, or to constitute new independent states. The 1920 Trianon Treaty did nothing more but record the expressed will of the nations and ratified the boundaries of the areas inhabited by those nationalities. Transylvania was not " ceded " to Romania by the 1920 Trianon Treaty, as the revisionist Hungarians claim; it became part of Romania as a result of the will of its inhabitants expressed at the Great National Assembly of December 1, 1918, in Alba Iulia, on the basis of their right to self-determination. Before the Great National Assembly convened at Alba Iulia, on October 12, 1918, Vaida Voevod, the delegate of the National Romanian Party, that was the political representative of all Romanians of Transylvania, spoke in the Hungarian Parliament of Budapest, announcing the decision of the Transylvanians to deny the Hungarian government and the Hungarian Parliament the right to represent the Romanians at the Peace Conference.

Five weeks after the Great National Assembly of the Romanians, namely on January 9, 1919, the Transylvanian Saxons had their own Great National Assembly at Medias, where they too made known their will to be ruled no longer by Hungary, but to become part of Romania. The Transylvanian Saxons drew up a resolution stating that they declare and acknowledge Transylvania as belonging to Romania and the Romanian government of Romania as their government.

Thus, through democratic vote expressing the will of the people, 76.3%Y of the population of Transylvania chose that Transylvania be part of Romania, based on the right of self-determination formulated by the President Wilson of USA.

In 1919, as a consequence of the (communist ruler) Bella Kuhn's decision, the Hungarian army attacked Romania in order to regain control of Transylvania. The Romanian army defeated again the Hungarian army and on August 4, 1919 Budapest, the capital of Hungary, was occupied. After three months, having saved Hungary itself and the whole Central Europe from the bolshevist hordes of Bella Kuhn, the Romanian army retreated from Budapest and turned the Hungarian state over to Horthy, who remained in power until 1945 (Cf. Constantin Kiritzesco, La Roumanie dans la Guerre Mondiale, 1916-1919, Paris, Payot, 1934, pp. 455-485, the R.W. Seton Watson "History of the Romanians ", Archon Books, USA, 1963, pp. 454-457, and N.P.Comnen, "O prima experienta comunista In Ungaria" , (A first Communist Experiment in Hungary), Madrid, Colectia Destin, 1957).

Thus, Transylvania was recovered from Hungary twice in military action (the first time in WW I, and second time following Bella Kuhn's aggression), and once by the people's right to self-determination, when 76,3%Y of the population decided to become part of Romania.

If Transylvania was "ceded" to Romania by the Treaty of Trianon, that would mean that until 1920, when that treaty was concluded, Hungary as a country was entire , with all the provinces that belonged to her before, when she was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, includingTransylvania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovakia. Furthermore, that means that Hungary was forced by the victorious Allied Powers to cede all these provinces to the respective neighboring countries. But the Treaty was concluded two years after the hostilities of WW I had ceased. What happened in Hungary in those two years ?

Let us recall the events:

In October 1918 the Karoly administration came to power in Hungary, precisely at the moment of Hungary's dismemberment. He tried desperately by last minutes concessions and promises to keep all the provinces together, to no avail. By the end of 1918 the dismemberment of Hungary was complete, and the authority of the Hungarian government was limited to the territory of Hungary proper, which geographically corresponds to today's Hungary.

In March 1919 the Karoly administration desperately handed over the Hungarian state authority to communist Bella Kuhn. On 20th of July Bella Kuhn ordered the Hungarian army to attack Romania with the aim to recapture Transylvania for Hungary. That means that at that time Transylvania belonged to Romania, and that was in 1919, one year before the concluding of the Trianon Treaty. The Hungarian army was again defeated and on August 4, 1919, the regime of Bella Kuhn was overthrown.

In the period of Bella Kuhn's government a strong opposition of the " whites " was formed at Szegedin, to which belonged all prominent political personalities of that times: Count Andrassy, former prime-minister, Count Stefan Bethlen, former prime-minister, Prince Louis von Windischgraetz, Wassony, Admiral Horthy, and others. They formed at Szegedin the provisional government of Hungary.On July 10, 1919, they addressed an appeal to the government of Romania - of which Transylvania was already a part - asking her to send the Romanian army to overthrow the regime of Bella Kuhn and install Horthy's government. They concluded their appeal with the words: "It is only with your (the Romanian) help that we shall be able to save our country (the Hungary, that had been reduced to its proper boundaries), and that peace and order will return to Central Europe". Their appeal for aid was summarized under the headings:

1. Romania should support the government of Szegedin.

2. Romania should favor the formation of Hungarian " white guards" .

3. The Romanian army should enter Hungary crossing the river Tisza and should attack and overthrow the army of Bella Kuhn; it should occupy Budapest and, having expelled Bella Kuhn, would replace his bolshevist government with a national Hungarian government built around the kernel formed at Szegedin by Admiral Horthy (N.P.Comnen, op. cit. pp 120-121, and Oscar Jassy, "Magyariens Schuld, Ungarns Shghne ", Mgnchen, 1923, p. 159)

Thus, the provisional government of Hungary under Horthy, which in November 1919 became the official government of the mutilated Hungary, asked the Romanian army to enter Hungary, crossing the river Tisza , which was the new borderline between Romania and Hungary. Their appeal formulated as such was a de facto recognition that Transylvania at that time belonged to Romania, and the river Tisza was the borderline between the two countries.

As it was mentioned above, Budapest was occupiedby the Romanian army on August 4, 1919. Ten days later, on August 14, Prince von Windischgraetz issued a statement in his name and in the name of his political friends - the provisional government from Szegedin - statement which was published in the European newspapers of the time and of which we reproduce an excerpt from N.P.Comnen, op. cit. p. 129;

"I would have gladly laid down my life to keep Transylvania in Hungary's possession and I would have preferred to see Hungarian troops enter Budapest to chase the bolshevists away. Since that was impossible, I declare openly that I prefer to see the Romanians in Budapest than Bella Kuhn and his ilks, who have destroyed my fatherland politically and economically. I faithfully acknowledge herewith that by occupying Budapest the Romanians have rendered a great service to Hungary and to the whole of mankind at the same time."

In all that period when Hungary was occupied by the Romanian army, there had not been one single case in which a Romanian beat or tortured or killed a Hungarian, or demolished a church, although the Romanians entered Hungary with the memory still fresh in their minds of the sufferings, oppression and tortures inflicted upon them by the Hungarians during the Austro-Hungarian dualism, and any act of revenge would have been justified.

Seen through Hungarian eyes, naturally, it was sign of weakness to have those who have injured you in your power and not to wreak vengeance upon them. But the Romanian nature lacks cruelty and vindictiveness. We do not think that it is a weakness to spare those who have injured us; we think that it is a virtue. The Romanian world outlook is comprisedof humanness, charity and respect for our neighbors. Our ethics are based on mercy and tolerance; we cannot be " savage and pagan" , as the Magyars are enjoined to be in their literature and we do not understand the " savage and pagan" mind.

 

Other Hungarian cruelties

 

For those who are inclined to think that the above description of the crimes committed by the Hungarians against the Romanians in Northern Transylvania is exaggerated, let us bring the testimony of a Hungarian politician, Oscar Jaszy, a member of the Karoly government in 1918-1919, who lllustrates Hungarian cruelties in earlier times and against their own kinsmen; it seems that inhuman cruelties is not alien to the very racial character of the Magyars:

"The country was studded with numerous vindictive tribunals, who sentenced and executed in a quick manner not only the profiteers of the communist revolution (Bella Kuhn, 1919), but also everybody who seemed to them to be "suspect". This "legal" procedure, however, did not satisfy them. It was to slow, to ceremoniously and especially to controllable. They started then to lace the country with armed, repressive detachments, and began to hunt down the "suspects".

......

"Some of these paramilitary organizations, e.g., those under the command of Jejjes Ostenburg and Pr[nay became so strong that they formed as it were independent states, whose acts nobody controlled; they did not know any legal ormoral restrictions. They arrested, blackmailed, tortured and killed arbitrarily, or simply gave free course to their sadistic impulses."

"The most abject atrocities of the red guards are attributed to halfbeasts or totally debased social elements. Those of the white guards, however, were planned, organized and executed by elegant army officers. There is not enough place to describe such cruelties. However to give the uninformed reader an inkling of the scale, means, mentality and moral of this period I take it upon my self to present a few typical cases......" and Oscar Jaszy fills 20 pages with cases of atrocities committed by the white guards of Horthy, and concludes:

"The above mentioned cases are but a small part of the total number of robbing, torturing and murders. I do not want to comment on these horrible crimes, but I want to underline one thing, namely that the names of all those but one or two, who committed those crimes, are well known and they are still unpunished; furthermore, the intellectual and moral authors of those atrocities belong to the intimate circle of Regent Horthy."

Ten days after the Romanians occupied Budapest, as we have seen earlier, Prince von Windischgraetz thanked the Romanian army and expressed his gratitude for the help and deliverance "Hungary as well as the whole world" had received at the hands of the Romanians. To underline the behavior of the Romanians during the occupation of Hungary, let us bring the quotation from the "Revue des Deux Monds" - by Jules Cambon, french diplomat, December 1927 issue, p. 619-620:

"When the Romanian army was preparing to leaveHungary, the Hungarian prefect of Szabolcs interceded with the Romanian army headquarters to prolong their stay in Hungary and to protect the population from the red armies (of Bella Kuhn); a few months later the Romanian army received a similar request, but this time it was motivated by the population's fear of the reaction of the white guards (the Horthy's guards).

 

Romanian continuity in Roman Dacia

 

Going back to the roots of the Hungarian revisionism, to the textbooks for the public schools, in the Conclusion we read:

"1. None of the non-Magyar nationalities was indigenous to the territory of Hungary. The conquering Magyars did not find anybody in the conquered territory. All other inhabitants came here a few centuries after the Hungarians settled here and set up a state.":

2. The non-Magyar nationalities did not conquer the territory they now inhabit, but entered it as peaceful settlers in search of a livelihood."

3. "The cession of non-Magyar areas does not constitute a restoration of those areas to their fatherland and their mother nation, and does not constitute the rectification of an unjust situation, but constitutes the dismantling of the country that centuries earlier has offered to settlers asylum and the possibility of greater cultural growth than their mother nations offered at home." (S. Fenyes, "Revisionist Hungary", pp 118-121, Romanian Historical Studies, 1988, Miami Beach, FL. USA

Let us pause for a moment and pay due attention tothe way historical truth is totally reversed, distorted and made to stand on its head in the 15 lines of the text books. It is that utter untruth that constitute the basis of the growth of the Hungarian revisionism at home and abroad. It is on that foundation of falsehood and exaggerations built by concealing or misrepresenting facts, that Hungarian revisionism wants to erect the future of the Hungarian nation. The truth about the circumstances in which the Magyars conquered the territory of Pannonia and set up the Hungarian state, and about the indigenous nations they found in the territories they invaded when they came pouring from Asia, has been clearly stated by Hungarian eye witnesses and chroniclers themselves, such as Anonymous or Simon de Keza. Neither is that truth unknown to serious scholars and historians. We quote below a few more excerpts from American, English and German authors:

Appony himself, the Hungarian statesman who unleashed the most ferocious Magyarization campaign of the non-Magyars in Great Hungary before World War I, describes the Magyar invasion of Europe: "In the basin of the middle Danube, the Hungarians did not occupy the same territories as the other peoples of the Great Migration. They settled down solely on the lands best suitable for the cultivation of steppe plants...", which is Pannonia. That certainly leaves out the hilly and mountainous land of Transylvania. (Appony, Note XII of January 21, 1920, "Les negociations of the paix hongroise ", Vol. I, p. 420).

The Transylvanian German historian Johann Troester wrote in seventeenth century: "Moldavians, Wallachians and Transylvanians are nothing but remainders of Roman legions, which were retreated by Aurelian, as I mentioned itelsewhere. For Traian, as narrates Eutropius, had ordered to summon people from the whole Roman Empire and filled with them the newly conquered Dacia. But when Aurelian could not stop the Goths any more from entering Dacia and was obliged to retire the legions, the Roman colonies remained under the Goths domination."

"Notwithstanding the humiliation to which the Romanian people is exposed in Transylvania, they are the prototype of the old Roman..." (Johann Troester, "Das alt und neu Teutsche Dacia" , Ngremberg, 1666).

The Romanian continuity on the territory of present-day Romania since the first century A.D. has long been an established fact in ethnological research. Traugott Tamm wrote in 19th century: "The Romanians are still living today where 17 century ago their ancestors used to live. Peoples came one after the other and dominated the provinces of the lower Danube, - but none could destroy the national existence of the Romanians. 'The water flows, the stones remain', says a Romanian proverb" (Traugott Tamm, "fber den Ursprung der Rum?nen. Ein Beitrag zur Ethnographie Sgd-Ost Europas" , Bonn, 1891, pp 85-86).

And an English ethnologist, John Paget, still in 19th century, reached the following conclusions: "It was only natural that the quasi-civilized Dacians should feel disdain and enmity for the savage hordes that poured in after the Roman administration retreated and that, although the Romans had vanquished them, they should proudly cherish the name ' Roman' ."

"However, I am greatly inclined to doubt that the mixture of races that allegedly took place had so great an importance as travelers tend to believe when they observe thephysiognomical differences between the Romanians and their neighbors, the Magyars and the Saxons, because the features of the Romanians are more similar to those of the Dacians they are engraved on Trajan's Column than to those of the Romans of the more recent Italians. The longer I turn this matter over in my mind, the more convinced do I become that most Romanians are genuine Dacians", (John Paget, "Hungary and Transylvania" , German version " Ungarn und Siebenbgrgen" , Leipzig, Verlag von J.J. Weber, 1842, pp 144-145).

And more recently, in 1979, the American archaeologist Paul MacKendrick wrote, based on the latest archaeological discoveries:

"The (Roman) withdrawal of 271 A.D., ordered by Aurelian, meant evacuating the administration and the landowners. The Dacians stayed on. They had already been Romanized, and the Romanization continued to this day. After the Roman army and administration withdraw, the natives continued to speak Latin, which is still the basis of the Romanian language." (Paul MacKendrick, " The Mute Stone Speak", The Story of Archaeology in Italy, Apud Radio Free Europe Research, RAD Background Report 252, Romania, 21 Nov. 1979).

Finally, even Hungarian historians testify to the Romanian continuity in Transylvania since the Roman conquest of Dacia to this day. Thus, Antonius Bonfinius, secretary of Hungary's greatest king, Matheus Corvinus, wrote: "The Romanians of Transylvania are the direct descendants of the legionaries and colonists which settled down in Dacia, according to emperor Trayan's orders; their language, which resembles the Italian, proves it." (ApudRomulus Seisanu, "Romania , Historical and Geopolitical Atlas" , Bucharest, Universul, 1936, p. 11).

Three centuries later, the Hungarian historian Huszti Andras also declares: "No nation has a language coming so near to the ancient Roman (Latin) language as the Wallachians (Romanians). This is a certain proof which can't deceive, that they are in Transylvania the descendants of the ancient Roman colonists", (Huszti Andras. "Z es Uj Dacia, azaz Erdelynek regi mostani ;llapotj;n;l val[ Historia" , Bestben, 1791, p. 131).

Yet another Hungarian historian, Paul Hunfalvy, wrote in the 19th century: "The ancestors of the actual Romanians never ceased, from Trajan's time, to live in old Dacia, i.e., in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia; consequently, the Romanian inhabitants of these countries are the direct descendants of the colonists established by Trajan in Dacia", (Paul Hunfalvy, "Neuere Erscheinungen der rum?nischen Geschichtsschreibung" , Vienna, Teschen, 1886, pp. 9-10).

Archaeological and numismatic findings prove without a doubt the continuity of the Daco-Roman population on the territory inhabited today by the Romanians, including Transylvania. George Cioranescu winds up the discussion of the geographical and historical boundaries of the Daco-Roman life throughout the centuries, quoting the conclusions reached by archaeological research, summarized in Dumitru Berciu's work as scientist and director of the Institute for Thracian Studies: "In the Berciu's opinion, present day Romanian archaeology has proved that the Romanian people's original home extended from the Haemus (modern Balkan) Mountains in the South, to the Carpathians in the North, and from the Tyras (ancient name for Dniester) in theEast, to Tissus (the ancient name of Tisa), as well as Northwestern Bulgaria and old eastern Serbia. All this, Berciu believes, would roughly correspond to Burebista's kingdom. In his turn, he took the task to question those foreign historians who, ignoring historical truth, still maintain that Dacia's population was exterminated in the two Daco-Roman wars, and that in 271 A.D. the Romans withdraw the entire population of the province, thus creating two demographic voids at two different times. The archaeological discoveries, which are increasing year by year, are related to the life of the natives who have stayed on in 106 A.D. We find them in the villages around the Roman cities, close to the fortresses and even inside them .... The fact remains that the archaeological and numismatic discoveries testify as to how unscientific the opinion of those people who allege that the Romans withdraw the entire Dacian population in 271 A.D. Not only Daco-Roman, but real Roman communities remained on the spot. It is enough to remember that the Roman cemetery in Apulum, (Alba Iulia), still existed after the year 271 A.D. and Roman coins continued to be in use." (George Cioranescu, apud Radio Free Europe Research, RAD Background Report 252, Romania, 21). Nov.

 

Pretended "wellbeing and cultural superiority" of the Hungarians

 

Let see how true are the assertion that "The non-Magyar nationalities entered as peaceful settlers in search of a livelihood. The cessation of non-Magyar areas ...... constitutes the dismantling of the country that centuriesearlier has offered to settlers asylum and the possibility of greater cultural growth than their mother nations offered them at home."

The Hungarians of Pannonia were described by those who witnessed their invasion into Europe as "barbarous and savage in their manners and language, for not calling them human monster" (Bishop Otto of Freising, Germany, wrote in 1147 in Otto Frisingensis episcopi de gestis Friderici, I imp. Liber Primus, cap. XXXI, De situ Ungariae et more gentis - apud R. Seisanu, op. cit. p. 23).

And Reginonis Chronicon, a German chronicler contemporary to Hungarian invasion of Pannonia, wrote in 889 in M. Germ, SS I. pp. 599-600, (Apud R. Seisanu, op. ibidem), "Hungarian people are most ferocious and more cruel than wild beast. Hungarians live not like men but like wild beasts; they feed on raw meat, drink blood and eat as a remedy the heart of the war prisoners; they know no pity and no goodly feeling moves their heart."

And the German historian Leonard Boehm (Apud Romulus Seisanu, op. cit. p. 14) tells us that: "the Germans, the Slavs and the Romanians accustomed their Hungarian neighbors to have a steadfast domicile; they incited them to marriage and to peaceful occupations; to land economy and to cultivate the vineyards, - although a long time passed before the Hungarian people was able to handle a plough."

 

For how many centuries did the Hungarians defend western civilization against the Turks ?

 

The Hungarians claim they have defended the western civilization against the Turks for three hundred years. S. Fenyes, the Hungarian author of the book " Revisionist Hungary", (op. cit, pp 14-21) answers the question as follows:

"The Turks reached the Hungarian territory for the first time in 1428, when they came to Galamboc (today's Kolumbacs in Yugoslavia). It is at that date that the period during which the Hungarians defended the West against the Turks must be considered to have started, which brings the total time during which the Hungarians defended the West against the Turks up to two generation; it was 60 to 70 years, and not three hundred years. The period during which the Hungarians defended the West against the Ottoman destruction lasted exactly the time the Hungarians were led by the two great Romanian statesmen, Ioan de Huniade and his son, Hungary's king Mathias Corvinus. The victorious resistance of the Hungarians against the Turks was organized by Ioan de Huniade, King Sigismund's general, whose energy was worn away by the endless greed, envy and baseness of the Magyar oligarchy rather than by the Ottoman power."

..........

"In the battle at Belgrad, short after the fall of Constantinopole, in 1453, when the Turks prepared to conquer the rest of Europe, it was the army of Huniade, maintained out of his own pocket,..... that put up a heroic resistance; they repelled the attack and taking a powerful offensive, they destroyed the entire Turkish army. Huniade won the most brilliant victory of the entire Christian world against the Ottoman invasion. A few days later Ioan de Huniade died."

.........

"Ioan de Huniade's widow reorganized her late husband's army and managed to put an end to civil war. King Ladislaus died and the National Assembly was called at Buda to elect the new king. Under the auspices of Huniade's armies, encamped on the Danube which was frozen over, King Mathias, Ioan de Huniade's younger son, age 18 at that time, was elected. (He had to be ransomed and brought home from Prague)."The 32 years long rule of the Romanian Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, is the most glorious pages of the entire Hungarian history. Mathias army, which was 50.000 soldiers strong all the times, raised Hungary to the level of a prestigious European and international power."

 

The pretended "infiltration" of the non-Magyars into Hungary

 

About the assertion that "the non-Magyar nationalities entered, (wormed their way into Hungary) as peaceful settlers in search of a livelihood", the answer is:

The Rmanians never infiltrated into Transylvania after the Huns and the Magyars came to Europe. On the contrary. After Transylvania fell under Hungarian rulers, massive emigration occurred of Transylvanian Romanians who had to renounce their fatherland and their possessions and flee from the unparalleled cruelty of the Hungarian rulers. Documents attest to the massive flight of Romanians from Transylvania. Declaration of Joseph II, Austria's Emperor, made at Arad on April 21, 1768: "It seems incredible", said the Emperor, "that at a single court of justice 69-70 defendants should be tried every three months.This number is too high...... The Romanians are iltreated. They are frequently constrained to abandon their houses and ground to others and to move out. Many of them emigrate for this very reason." (In Arad v;rmegye es Arad Szabad Kiraly v;ros Monographi;bo, Jancso Benedek II k_tet, Arad 1895).

In 1773 a memorandum was submitted to the Imperial Court of Vienna by the Romanians of Transylvania. In it they said that: "Thousands of Romanians are passing to the other side of the Carpathians into the Romanian Principality and into Moldavia, so that the inhabitants of these countries, stupefied by the invasion, exclaimed: All Transylvanians are coming among us!" (Stupefactia vociferari auditi sunt: Tota Transylvania ad nos venit) (Romulus Seisanu, "Romania", Bucharest, Imprimeria Nationala, 1939, p. 30).

In 1878, Sulzer likewise mentioned this social phenomenon: "Many family from Transylvania abandoned their country and their farms and settled here in Romania.... 8.000 Transylvanian Romanian refugees have settled here in mine time under the name of 'Ungureni'", (Romulus Seisanu, ibidem).

And Bernard Auerbach, in "Les races et les nationalitIs" (apud Romulus Seisanu, op. cit. p. 30) says: "Thus, while the Magyar nobility, the Szekels and the Saxons formed the trinity of Transylvanian nations, the Wallachian nation was excluded from all political rights; its condition was so hard that many emigrated in the 18th century to Moldavia and Turkey, preferring the regime of the boyars and pashas".

 

The role of the press in revisionist policy of Hungary

 

That is the last item on our agenda to respond to Hungarian revisionism in this short form. We are citing again from the "Revisionist Hungary" (of S. Fenyes, op. cit. pg. 197-205):

".... I would like to see whether in Hungary it would be possible for a newspaper to appear containing an anti-revisionist statement, or even to appear without pro-revisionist statements, and whether in Hungary it would be permitted for a newspaper to have relations with Romania. Anything like that is punished with extreme penalties, including jailing, while in Romania nobody is even as much as recorded for having done those things. That is the truth about the alleged Balkanic method used by Romania and the alleged enlightened European methods used by Hungary, where nothing may be even mentioned that is not approved by the country's enlightened administration."

"According to Bethlen's claim and to those of the Hungarian government, it would mean that the Hungarians in the territories liberated from the Austro-Hungarian yoke desire nothing more than to be united again with mother Hungary."

"That is not true."

"There is no such desire, only artificially fomented revisionism."

"Hungary supports the newsmedia in the liberated territories with money and other favors, and in return the newsmedia foment a revisionist attitude."

"As a consequence, the Hungarian newspapers strive openly or covertly to create the belief that the Hungarians of the liberated territories suffer persecutions and threaten all the time to file complains with the League of Nations."

"As a matter of fact, there is only one country in which the Hungarian press is manacled in chains heavier than those of ordinary censorship, and that country is Hungary. It is in Hungary that freedom of expression is generally suppressed."

".....In Romania, on the other hand, one may write about anything, even about the most serious disagreements between the ministers and the administration. The government may be attacked in whole untruthful chronicles, and lie may be printed on any project and one may threaten to complain to the League of Nations every other day....."

"How freely can the newspaper of the Hungarian National Party appear in Romania, like mushrooms in the rainy season, can also be seen from the fact that only in Transylvania and the Banat, for one and a half million Hungarian readers, there are 42 Hungarian newspapers, more than there were ever at any time in Hungary before the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."

.......

"It could be claimed that the press is not so much the leader as the interpreter and spokesman of public opinion. Hence, if the entire reading public is in favor of the revision of Hungary's borders, than the press can not be against it."

"But the Hungarian public of Romania and of the other retroceded territories is not in favor of the revision of Hungary,s borders either in its entirety, or in its greater part."

"If the working class and the masses of the peasants, with few exceptions, do not wish to be reunited with Hungary, then 70%Y of the Hungarians do not wish the revision of Hungary's borders. The Hungarian peasants ofSlovakia sent a delegation to President Masaryk to inform him that they do not wish to be ceded to Hungary in any event."

"To summarize, it may be safely said that the Hungarian masses of the people of the territories liberated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire are not in favor of the revision of Hungary's borders."

"Consequently, the Hungarian press of Romania, showing by the apparent reticence that it favors revisionism, is in direct opposition to its own reading public. The Hungarian press is far more revisionist than the Hungarian population."

"If in spite of all that no Hungarian raised his voice against revisionism, that is only owing to the usual terrorist actions taken by the Hungarian press in Romania. Many people have business connections or family ties with Hungary. If they dare utter a word against revisionism, they might justifiedly be afraid that they would be branded as traitors of the Hungarian nation."

 

Conclusions

 

This is the way the Hungarians are writing their history on which they want to base their future and on which they claim their political and historical rights, "aiming in an underhand manner at the territorial expansion toward Great Hungary, as Mr Coriolan Brad concludes in a memorandum. As at present time that goal cannot be achieved using military force, for that reason they have changed their tactics. They use the Hungarian minority of Romania in a dishonest manner. If until World War II they openly raised their claimto Transylvania, currently their fundamentally revisionist claim is masked under the claims of the Hungarian minority of Romania that go far beyond the limits of the law and that can not and are not granted by the Romanian state. As a matter of fact, they know full well that no minority in Europe enjoys so much political and cultural freedom as the Hungarians of Romania enjoy; however, by raising ever greater claims on the one hand they try to achieve the dissolution of Romania's territorial integrity and on the other hand a boycott of Romania's admission in international democratic bodies.

There are still Romanians living in Hungary. I would like to know to what extent the principle of civic equality has been or is being applied objectively for that Romanian minority. After World War I approximately 250,000 Romanians were living in Hungary, concentrated mainly in places around the town of Gyula. According to the Hungarian statistic of 1990, in Hungary remained only approximately 4,800 Romanians. According to Romanian statistics, in 1930 there lived in Transylvania 1,353,276 Hungarians and Szekels (among the Szekels are counted the Romanians forced to live as Szekels), and according to the 1992 census in Romania live 1,620,000 Hungarians (a number that includes all Hungarian-speaking persons, that is Hungarians and Szekels). No need to comment: the above figures speak for themselves, and show where one can see ethnic and cultural genocide going on, and how justified are their laments as a prosecuted ethnic minority in Romania.