[Table of Contents] [Previous] [Next] [Bibliography] [HMK Home] Genocide in Transylvania
Introduction
This work is dedicated to the conscience of all world free men and women, and it is based on the Christian doctrine that all of us and everyone of us is responsible for the well being of others. This responsibility demands that we aid the oppressed and defend the victims of terror.
We, Americans of Hungarian descent, have been ringing the bells and lighting the torches for many years now, in order to turn the attention of this indifferent world to the sufferings of our Hungarian brethren who are being murdered, ortured and persecuted daily by their Rumanian task masters in the land of Transylvania. 		It is indeed the shame of our civilized word that the native population of the very land where tolerance and religious freedom was first legalized and practiced on the face of this Earth many centuries ago, must suffer today, forsaken by everyone, from the most barbaric terror and savagery that land has ever seen.
That you are going to read here, is true. It was compiled from newspaper reports, from the Congressional Reports, from letters, eyewitness testimonies and articles written and published by those few who strive for a better future and a lasting peace.


The 1966 U.N. Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the government of the Socialist Republic of Rumania, states in Article 27:

IN THOSE STATES IN WHICH ETHNIC RELIGIOUS OR LINGUISTIC MINORITIES EXIST, PERSONS BELONGING TO SUCH MINORITIES SHALL NOT BE DENIED THE RIGHT IN COMMUNITY WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THEIR GROUP TO ENJOY THEIR OWN CULTURE, TO PROFESS AND PRACTICE THEIR OWN RELIGION OR TO USE THEIR OWN LANGUAGE."
The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee in 1948 accepted the following definition as one of the ways by which the crime of cultural genocide may be committed:
"...systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historica.l, artistic or religious value and of objects used in religious worship." (U.N. Doc. !I447)
TO DATE 96 NATIONS HAVE RATIFIED THE PACT THAT MAKE GENOCIDE AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME AND DEFINES IT AS AN ACT "COMMITTED WITH INTENT TO DESTROY IN WHOLE OR IN PART A NATIONAL ETHNICAL RACIAL OR RELIGIOUS GROUP." (The Convention on the Prevention and punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1966).

BACKGROUND
History, Statistics, Essential Problems

History


Transylvania is part of the Carpathian Basin, which is a compact geographical, economical and cultural unit inhabited by Hungarians since 895 A.D. When the Hungarians settled the land, between 895 and 960, except for a few scattered Slavic villages, Transylvania was empty. When the first Vlachs appeared in 1234 and Pope Gregory IX sent a letter to Bela, Prince of Transylvania (later King Bela IV.) asking him "in the name of God" to grant asylum "to those poor Vlach refugees" from the turbulent South, the asylum was granted. The Vlachs were settled under their own chieftains in the Fogaras, Hunyad and Bansag districts, thus becoming citizens of the Hungarian Kingdom. By this time Transylvania already had a large Hungarian population, 18 established and fortified cities, 236 towns and villages. After the Tartar invasion in 1241 and during the rise of the Ottoman (Turk) Empire on the Balkan Penninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more Vlach refugees entered the country, while in the sixteenth century several Hungarian landowners brought in "migrant workers from across the mountains" in order to replace their agricultural work­force which was severely decimated by the long lasting wars against the Turks as well as against the Austrian Empire.
These refugees and migrant workers were the forefathers of the Transylvanian Rumanians. Since according to the 1222 Constitution of the Hungarian Kingdom, all peoples inhabiting the "lands of the Holy Crown" had the equal right to their customs, language and culture, in 1291 the Assembly of Gyulafehervar recognized the Transylvanian Vlachs as a "nation". From this time on the Hungarian government was obligated to supply the "Vlach minority" of Transylvania with churches of the Byzantine Christian faith, with priests imported from the Balkan and to maintain their institutions from government funds. Since the Vlachs did not pay taxes, the burden of these institutions fell upon the native Hungarians. Even the translation of the Bible into the Vlach tongue as well as the printing and distribution of that Bible was done by Transylvanian Hungarians, thereby marking the birth of the Vlach (Rumanian) literature.
Already during the fifteenth century Transylvania was a well established Hungarian cultural center within the Kingdom. After tbe declaration of religious freedom in 1556 and the establishment of the strongest Protestant churches within the kingdom, the already existing cultural ties with the West increased and the Transylvanian institutions of higher learning established a lively exchange of students and faculty with the Universities of England, Holland, Germany and France. Transylvanian cities like Kolozsvar, Nagyvarad, Nagyenyed, Arad, Torda, Marosvasarhely and Brasso became well known centers of the arts and sciences.
In the year of 1914, the Hungarians of Transylvania maintained 14 museums, 8 permanent, year­around theaters, 4 literary magazines, 3 big daily newspapers, one University with worldwide recognition in Kolozsvar, 6 church­affiliated theological colleges (2 for the Rumanians) and 14 church­affiliated college­preparatory schools, known as "gymnasiums" for citizens of Hungarian, German and Rumanian languages.
In short: Transylvania, as part of the Hungarian Kingdom was a free and prosperous land, with equal opportunity to all its citizens, no matter what language they spoke, or in which church they worshipped God.
After World War I, in 1919, all this was changed. The not quite forty year old Rumanian Kingdom across the Carpathians received Transylvania from the victorious Allied Forces as "booty" for turning against its former ally, the Austro­Hungarian Monarchy. The descendants of the Vlach immigrants and migrant workers, the Rumanians, became the masters, and the sufferings of the native Hungarians began.
Within two years all the cities, towns and villages in Transylvania were re­named, including streets. A one­sided land reform was forced through which took the land from the Hungarians and handed it over to Rumanians. More than 200,000 Hungarian families, those of state, district, city and township officials, clerks and other public workers were evacuated and dumped across the new Hungarian border with nothing but a couple of suitcases. The use of the Hungarian language was abolished from all public places. All Hungarian publications, including literary magazines and books were placed under rigid censorship. Hugh Seton­Watson wrote in his book "Eastern Europe Between the Wars" (Archon Books, 1962) on page 300­301:
"The Hungarians became second class citizens in Trans ylvania." The American Committee for the Rights of Religious Minorities reported: "The administrative oppression, the violent enforcing of the Rumanian language, the aggressive hostility... all these are aimed for the total destruction of the established school system. The laws of 1925 serve as oppressive political and nationalistic tools against the minorities. " (Religious Minorities in Transylvania, The Bacon Press, Boston, 1925).
The Hungarians of Transylvania, for a thousand years part of the ruling majority of the Carpathian Basin, found themselves suddenly in the minority status within a foreign country, professing the ideology of the Balkan peninsula. When Transylvania's largest Hungarian­language newspaper, the Brassoi Lapok reported on December 14, 1925 from Csikjenofalva, a 100% Hungarian community, that "the new teacher sent by the government in his effort to enforce the new language regulations handed out such beatings to his pupils that on the first school­day the parents had to carry home twenty­four badly beaten children who were unable to walk...," the editor of the paper was incarcerated for treason and the paper closed down for two months. However, an international investigation started out from England and a group of "revisionists" in England and Holland demanded that the peace treaty be revised, and Transylvania or at least part of it, be returned to Hungary.
Fifteen years later Rumania was forced to yield to the demands of the Soviet Union and evacuate Besarabia as well as Northern Bukovina. Southern Dobrudja had to be returned to Bulgaria, while the Axis powers ordered the return of Northern Transylvania to Hungary, reuniting 1,200,000 Hungarians with their Motherland, while still leaving about 600,000 under Rumanian domination. About 100,000 of these Hungarians became the victims of the angry and barbaric Rumanian retaliation between 1940 and 1945. In the fall of 1944, when the Rumanians returned into Northern Transylvania behind the advancing Russian army, another 100,000 Hungarians were exterminated, deported into death­camps and the most deplorable terrorism took over.
Today, the number of the Hungarian minority is difficult to determine exactly, because Rumanian statistics consistently under report their number. A Rumanian author, living in the West. G. Satmarescu, writing in the East Central Europe (January 1975), edited by Professor Fischer­Galati of the University of Colorado, estimated the number of unreported Hungarians in Transylvania to 900,000, arriving at a find figure of 2.5 million. The Handbuch Europaischer Volksgruppen, published in 1974 by the European Union movement, estimated the number of Hungarians in Rumania to be 2.5 million. The Brazilian Transylvanian organization, Movimento pro Transylvania, using demographic constants of the overall population increase in Rumania and subtracting changes extraneous to the natural increase, arrived at an estimate of 2,816,555 million.
Whatever the true figure, it is substantially higher than that of the Rumanian statistical sources and is probably closer to the figures cited by Satmarescu and the editors of the Reference Book on European Nationalities. In addition to the Transylvanian Hungarians, there are about 200,000 Hungarians living in Moldova, another province of Rumania.
The Hungarians in Rumania are thus placed into the position of being the largest national minority in Europe.

The Ceausescu Doctrine: National Communism Ultranationalistic rule in a multinational state.


In the spring of 1945 Stalin gave Transylvania to Rumania as compensation for the re­annexation of Basarabia and Northern Bucovina into the Soviet Union, under the condition that the new Rumanian government would respect the rights of the ethnic groups, as outlined in the Stalinist National Policy. This consists of the recognition of ethnic autonomies based on the federation of these autonomies. The autonomies granted to the different nationalities were supposed to be "nationalistic in form, socialistic in substance" in accordance with the Marxist doctrines. This meant that the different nationality groups were to be "bolshevized" in their own languages and with respect to their national customs, but under the strict supervision of the almighty Party. Thus, in 1952, under Soviet pressure, the Rumanian government established the "Autonomous Hungarian Province" in Transylvania.
However, in 1959 a new man appeared in the high echelon of the Rumanian communist party. His first action was to abolish Hungarian higher education by "absorbing" the Hungarian University of Kolozsvar, and eight ancient Hungarian high schools all over Transylvania, into their Rumanian counterparts. The merciless persecution of Hungarian educators began, and several of them were driven into suicide, while others died during the "interrogations".
With this, Leader Ceausescu's bloody career began. As unchallenged boss of the Party and dictator of the Rumanian Socialist Republic, in 1966 Ceausescu liquidated the Autonomous Hungarian Province, and declared the "unified and indivisible national State of Great Rumania, land of one Rumanian nation." The ethnic members of the Party assembly, representing almost five­million citizens were told that their constituents must assimilate into the one Rumanian nation or suffer the consequences.
These "conseqnences" turned out to be within a few years the complete cultural annihilation of all nationality groups with the use of terror. The slightest resistance to preserve Hungarian cultural heritage was instantly regarded as "high treason" punishable by life imprisonment and even death.
Comparing the Marxist character of the constitution on which the Socialist Republic of Rumania was based with the practices and doctrines of the Ceausescu regime, we must come to the conclusion that the constitution is nothing more than a "cover­up", a camouflage toward the rest of the world, especially toward the other socialist countries, under which the most barbaric despotism of all ages is trying to eliminate everybody who is not Rumanian. Which means statistically: one­fifth of the total population of the country. The unprecedented personality cult, the immense power distributed to each and every member of the Ceausescu family, remind us of emperors who ruled the Balkan peninsula ages ago. The almost hysterical persecution of the ethnic minorities, and the methods of persecution brings back the memories of Hitler.
What happened is this: Ceausescu invented a new type of communism, mixing Russian marxism with Hitler's National Socialism and personality cult. The "achievements" of the communist state are not intended anymore for "the good of all the workers" as the Marxist doctrine and Rumania's own constituion suggest, but only for the workers of the dominant nationality, excluding all other "inferior" national minorities, who must be, for the good of the State and the ruling nation, absorbed or eliminated.
This "National Communism," invented by Dictator Ceausescu, must be stopped before it can spread into other multi­national countries like an ugly disease bringing in its wake havoc and suffering to millions of innocent people.

Hungarians in Transylvania
A Native Historic Minority


by Prof. H. Fabritius

Former Curator of the Bruckenthal Museum in Kronstadt

(Brasso, Brasov, Transylvania)


In our days, when minority problems are becoming more and more sensitive all over the world, it seems important that the term "minority" be carefully examined, and divided up into different classifications, based on the special characteristics of the minorities in question.
The accepted definition of the word "minority" concerns a group of people, which, in some way, differ from the surrounding population thereby forming a clearly recognizable island. The differences separating minorities from the majorities can be manifold, and are the determining factors of the category into which a certain minority group can be classified.
The most usual type of minority is based on nothing more than mere political views, marking a certain group of people within an otherwise homogenous population, whose political views do not agree with those of the majority. Another similar type of minority status is based on religious affiliation. For example a small group of Protestants in the midst of a solidly Roman Catholic population or vice versa. These two prototypes of minorities in most civilized countries enjoy the full protection of the law, based upon governing constitutions.
The next type of minority, defined as ethnic or racial minority, are groups of immigrants who entered a certain country due to economic or political reasons, and failed to assimilate. The treatment of these minorities by the native majority of the country in question depends on the tolerance of the host nation as well as on certain constitutional provisions created by the ruling majority for just such cases.
Facing the gravest and most difficult situations are those minority groups which were originally the native population of a certain land or territory, where for many centuries they established themselves as part of a ruling majority, and suddenly, usually as a result of war, find themselves annexed by a neighboring country, and thus thrown into a minority status. In cases like this, the greatest difficulty arises from the fact that these people have already created for themselves a very particular national culture, which was known and recognized for centuries as the culture of the land. The very moment an occupying force begins to enforce its own culture upon the native population, conflicts arise which lead to extremely grave situations. Since the natural drive of the conqueror is always to force assimilation upon the newly acquired population in order to secure its future position in the occupied territory, the fate of these native national minorities can be tragic.
In the case of Transylvania, the Germans and the Rumanians are the descendants of immigrants who were allowed to enter the Hungarian Kingdom, and failed to assimilate. The constitution of the Kingdom, as well as the tolerance of the Hungarian nation not only protected these immigrants in the use of their own language, but aided them in developing their ethnic culture throughout the centuries.
After World War I, the Eastern part of Hungary, called Transylvania, was handed over to Rumania as the "spoils of war". The Hungarian population of this territory, for nine centuries part of a strong Hungarian majority inhabiting the Carpathian Basin in East­Central Europe, suddenly became a "native national minority" within a Balkan country inhabited by a strong Rumanian majority.
The gravity of the problems thus created is even more emphasized by the fact that the Transylvanian­Hungarian culture identified this part of the Carpathian Basin for many centuries as the cultural stronghold of the entire Hungarian nation. Through its geographical location, this part of Hungary was the least affected by the Habsburg influence ruling Central Europe during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. All the revolutionary wars fought for Hungarian independence and religious freedom started out from Transylvania, creating historically a strong and lasting psychological relation between the Hungarian people of Transylvania and man's right to freedom and independence.
It is understandable therefore, that the minority status forced upon the Hungarians in this Eastern­most corner of the Carpathian Basin by a culturally inferior Rumanian state, created an immensely difficult and sensitive situation. Though after both wars the peace treaties included very specific guide­lines concerning the rights of the Transylvanian Hungarians under Rumanian rule, these provisions were only partly observed by the Rumanian Kingdom, and not at all by the strongly Stalin­oriented Socialist Republic of Rumania, which seems to be in its nature an extremely nationalistic dictatorship, bent upon assimilating by force all ethnic minorities as fast as possible by the use of themost brutal means if necessary
In a civilized world it is imperative that the rights of minorities, and especially the rights of those native national minorities which were forced into minority status by an act of war, be internationally recognized and protected. In the case of the Hungarians of Transylvania this protection afready exists ­ on paper. It should be the obligation of the United Nations as well as the governments of the Great Powers responsible for the present situation, to take proper steps in enforcing the provisions of the peace treaties which clearly define the rights of the native Hungarian population of Transylvania to regional self­administration and complete cultural freedom.
[Table of Contents] [Previous] [Next] [Bibliography] [HMK Home] Genocide in Transylvania