A friend sent me an old book called "Laughing in the Jail" (in Hungarian). Let me translate the first two paragraph of its Introduction:
In 1949 I was being followed night and day by detectives. I had no doubt what was to follow. In order to ready myself for my future, I read all available Hungarian jail journals. From Kazinczy I learnt how one can write with one's blood (I could not use the information, my blood was enough only for a few lines). The 1849 Hungarian freedom fighters's jail memories put me in a melancholic mood. They were sent to Josephstadt and other Austrian prisons, where they spent the time in card games, playing chess and smoking their pipes. When they wanted to smoke, the jailer filled their pipes and produced the fire.
Nineteen century tyrannies were so different from twentieth century totalitarian dictatorships that I was seized by a feeling of nostalgy. I had the same feeling reading Vas Zoltan's story of his years in the penitenciary of Vac; the petty bad will of the officials, the attorneys, the judges and the jail's director were, in my opinion, bagatelles, small things only too human, and the whole ambience was totally out of place in Hungary 1949. After 1949 even more so. In the times of Admiral Horthy it could have never happened that a prisioner sentenced to ten years was simply hanged like Deszkas, or beaten to death like Havas Bandi. There was no precedent that a 16 years old boy was sentenced to death and held in jail till his 18th birthday, when he was hanged, as was done in Kadar's "socialist legality" after the 1956 revolution.
7 comments:
The writer has selective memory - he forgets about the Arrow Cross and how they threw Jews into the Danube. The Communists did not invent terror in Hungary. Szálasi received more of a fair trial than he deserved - I would not have minded if they had just shot him and thrown his body in the river.
It just occurred to me that as a landlocked country, Hungary must not have had much of a navy, so what sort of admiral was he anyway? Did he sail toy boats on Lake Balaton?
K
Szalasi terror followed Admiral Horthy's conservative regime. Horthy was a bona fide Admiral in the Austro Hungarian navy, with port in Fiume (now Slovenia or Italy). Austro-Hungary was a world power, had colonies in China and the Solomon Islands.
The Communists did not invent terror in Hungary.
Bela Kun begs to differ.
Ivan
Yes but the author makes it seem as if '49 was a turning point instead of more of the same. Since the end of the empire, Hungary has bounced back and forth between left and right and neither was any good, to this day.
K
Here is the difference: the Fascist Right murdered people in a time of war, when they were fighting for what they perceived as national survival. The Communist Left murdered people in a time of peace, when their power was supreme. Well, they are both dead now, good riddance to both, we have new evils coming up on the horizon.
B,
As a non-Hungarian, and a hater of the K.u.K. regime, I would like to agree. But for all his hideous characteristics, Bela Kun was never the undisputed master of Hungary. Hungary was under something of a state of civil war during his regime. Kun's attempt to retake Transylvania utterly failed, and the Romanian army took advantage of the collapse of Hungarian governance to invade (and, indeed, to march all the way to Budapest to dictate terms; they occupied Budapest for about 8 months, 1919-1920, which is longer than Kun's government lasted.)
Btw, those wondering why the odium of Communism stuck to the Hungarian Jews would do well to remember such names as Kun (Cohn), Szamuely, Landler, Polgany (Pepper,) Rakosi, Gero... Rakosi is said to have joked that Garbai was hired so that there would be someone to sign the death sentences on Saturdays.
Of course, decency and common sense prohibit the improper attribution of their acts to the Hungarian Jews in general, just as I wouldn't care to be considered guilty of the crimes of my co-ethnics (and just as Hungarians today are not guilty of their immediate ancestors' crimes against, inter alia, the Hungarian Jews...)
-s.n.
Bela Kun did not have sufficient scope to show his true character within the short-lived Red regime. He made up for it in the Crimea, by killing 50,000 Whites after they were promised safe passage by Frunze. Sanguinary re-enactments of the massacres of the French Revolution, including the "wedding of the waters" were performed for the edification of all.
Ivan
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