The groundless accusations of anti-Semitism and oppression of the ethnic minorities levelled at the Romanian people prompt us to bring here new proofs of the fact that in Romania the ethnic minorities have never been oppressed; that, on the contrary, the Romanians have been oppressed by the Hungarians both in Hungary and in Romania; and that, far from persecuting the Jews, the Romanians helped and saved the Jews in World War II.
We group these documents in two chapters, the first one dealing with the Hungarian accusations, and the second one dealing with the accusation of anti-Semitism.
by Dr. Coriolan Brad
The ethnic conflicts between Hungarians and Romanians have lasted for decades and will continue as long as the Hungarians refuse to acknowledge historical truth. Continually raising demands, they aim in an underhand manner at the territorial expansion of Hungary, a goal that cannot be achieved at present using military force, and 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 claim to 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 are not granted by the Romanian state. As a matter of fact they know full well that no minority enjoys so much political and cultural freedom in Europe 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 ter-ritorial 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 only approximately 4,800 Romanians remained. According to Romanian statistics, in 1930 there lived in Transylvania 1,353,276 Hungarians and Szekels (among the Szekels are counted theRomanians 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.
In the two days I spent this summer in the town of Gyula and around it, I realized from the information imparted by various persons what are the causes of the tragedy of the Romanian minority in Hungary. Nothing happens by chance, everything is well thought out and well organized for an efficient assimilation.
In mixed marriages the Hungarian ethnicity has always prevailed and in the course of nature the children are Hungarian and are raised to be Hungarians. One cannot accuse in any way a decrease in the birth rate of the Romanian population, for I have seen families with two and more children. Especially between the two world wars, and also at present, for a Romanian to be active in a public profession he has to adopt a Hungarian name, the aim being to create a homogeneous Hungarian society, for a person who has adopted a Hungarian name becomes forever integrated in the body of the Hungarian nation (S. Telkes).
It is important to note the absence of associations and institutions that could assure the identity of the Romanians. This summer [1995], the Romanian Union of Hungary has been arbit-rarily abolished; that traditional association that more or less stimulated the Romanian national consciousness has been replaced with the Movement for the Self-Government of the Romanians of Hungary, a body that nobody wanted. The Romanians do not know what it stands for; it was illegally imposed upon a minority that is being discriminated against.
The spiritual Christian life [of the Romanians] takes place in the nineteen Orthodox and one Greek-Catholic parishes aroundGyula, and an Orthodox one in Budapest. These parishes had until this year an insufficient number of priests who officiated divine services taking turns once or twice a month at various parishes. This year, the Orthodox Bishopric of Arad, under whose jurisdiction are the parishes around Gyula, sent a few missionary priests to answer the stringent needs of those parishes. The penury of priests has cause a decline in the Christian Orthodox feeling, seen in the very low participation of the parishioners in the divine services, the increase in the various sects and the visits paid by some parishioners to Hungarian churches.
Among the blatant disregard of the European norms of human rights and the rights of the minorities is the discrepancy between the huge number of schools of all types including universities with Hungarian as the teaching language in Romania, and the penury of schools with Romanian as a teaching language for the Romanian minority in Hungary. In the village of Micherechi with 96% of the population made up of Romanians, there is just one school for the Romanians and the teaching language is part Romanian and part Hungarian. In the other villages the classes for the Romanians are allowed on the premises of the Hungarian schools; in those classes teaching is done to a very small extent in Romanian, but is done mostly in Hungarian. At the Nicolae Balcescu high school of Gyula, which is allegedly a Romanian school, Romanian is but one of the foreign languages taught ordinarily in regular high schools. The study of Romanian has two phases: beginners and advanced. Vague notions of classical Romanian literature are mentioned. But an analysis of I.B. Deleanu's comic epic Tiganiada (The Gypsies) is included in order to allege that the Romanians are descended from Gypsies. Geography and history are studied only in Hungarian with misrepresentations about the Romanian people, about which it is alleged that it invaded its own land sometimes from south ofthe Danube, sometimes from Moldavia or Wallachia. Under these circumstances when historical truth is distorted and traditions and aspirations are misrepresented it is natural that the Romanians cease to feel and think that they are Romanians. The Romanian national consciousness has been eradicated among them, with the result that parents prefer to send their children to be schooled in Hungarian rather than in their mother tongue. The outcome of all that is that all Romanians who live in Hungary are perfectly fluent in Hungarian and speak almost no Romanian at all, so that in the homes of many Romanians only Hungarian is spoken.
If in bookstores in Romania there are whole shelves full of Hungarian books and on the stands there are Hungarian magazines and newspapers, the Romanian minority in Hungary has no access to information though the mass-media. I have visited all bookstores and stands in Bekescsaba and Gyula and found not a single Romanian book, newspaper or magazine. It appears that they are all forbidden except one newspaper titled NOI (Ourselves), published at the end of the week with local news and trivia that have nothing to do with the Romanian spirit and tradition. This newspaper can be received at home by subscribers. The Hungarian television allows the Romanian minority 20 minutes every week only, Saturday between 9 and 9:20 p.m., an inconvenient hour; and the program is censored so as not to demean the dignity of the Hungarian state, while the Hungarians enjoy in Romania a far larger time slot in their mother tongue.
As things stand now, magyarization has progressed and for the Romanians of Hungary a process of annihilation of their Romanian identity takes place. If before the return of Transyl-vania to Romania the Romanians preferred not to learn Hun-garian in order to preserve their tradition and their identity, nowadays with their national consciousness destroyed, the Romanians of Hungary feel that they are Hungarians rather thanRomanians. This phenomenon of magyarization, of alienation, of separation from the body of the nation has its remote historical roots and has not been abated after World War II; on the contrary, it continues today in various forms.
The reasons for the debacle of the Romanian minority of Hungary are many. In the first place, the absence of leaders among them who should identify with the fate of the Romanian minority. Then, the lack of teachers and priests in the villages populated by Romanians who should keep the torch burning of Romanian thinking and of the Dacian-Roman heritage. All governments of Romania are guilty in that respect ever since her emergence up to the present, since all disregarded the fate of the Romanians who lived outside Romania's borders, and did not offer the moral and material support that this minority should have received. And the Orthodox Church shares the guilt for leaving the flock without shepherds.
A natural weakness in the Romanian minority has been their giving in for fear of losing their jobs or not being able to carry on in their public or private professions, which would have entailed the inability to provide for their and their families' material needs.
The twelfth hour had arrived for the Romanian minority in Hungary. As things have evolved and continue to evolve, I do not think that that island of Romanians could save themselves. magyarization has prevailed in all areas of life, politically, culturally, through the church and through the administration. The tragedy of that Romanian minority is to be deeply deplored for it is our tragedy, the tragedy of the Romanian people. The Hungarians have brought to bear their entire ability to achieve the de-nationalization of the Romanians of Hungary and their inte-gration in the Hungarian society, finding favorable circumstances to achieve their goal.
The Hungarian policy toward the Romanian minority ofHungary has destroyed the ethnic and religious identity of the Romanians. what cannot be said of the Hungarian minority of Romania which enjoys as least equal rights with the Romanian population.
It is worth noting that the hatred between the Romanians and the Hungarians in Romania is a diversion artificially created by the Hungarian irredentist leaders. In my trip undertaken this past summer in the Romanian counties with a majority of Hunga-rian inhabitants, of all the persons I talked with, whether Romanians or Hungarians, not one indicated nationalist disputes between the two ethnic groups. I have met many Hungarians who could speak only their mother tongue, but also many Romanians who were bilingual. It follows that the unrest and the ethnic disorders are extremely obviously artificial creations of the Hungarian irredentists. The confirmation of those facts is the failure of the planned Hungarian festivities of July 27 of this year in Debrecen and of September 2 in Odorheiul Secuiesc in Romania.
For months the question has been impertinently raised of a bilateral Romanian-Hungarian treaty, based on a historical reconciliation between Romanians and Hungarians.
Gentlemen of the Democrat Union of the Hungarians of Romania, who should harbor a desire for reconciliation?
Do you believe that paragraph 1201 recommended by the Parliament of the General Assembly of the Council of Europe must be observed only by the Romanians?
Which ethnic group is deprived of elementary fundamental human rights and undergoes destruction?
Whose young people should appear as plaintiffs in Strassbourg, those of the Romanians or those of the Hungarians?
Do you believe that good relationships could prevail between Hungary and Romania only in the final spirit of the communiquI of the Hungarian government published in 1941after the Dictate of Vienna? That is how that text ended: Now that the injustice of Trianon has been done away with, Hungary will do everything in her power to establish good relations between the two countries, which could not prevail in the last twenty years because of the intrigues of the participants in the Entente. Now the Entente is no more. Who is weaving intrigues at present?
We hope that the past will not come to haunt us.
September 1995
Dr. Gheorghe Olteanu interviews Franz Wesner of Dortmund, Germany on March 30, 1993.
Gheorghe Olteanu - GO: You were born in Hungary. Please tell us about your life in that country.
Franz Wesner - FW: Yes, I was born in Hungary in 1927, in what is called in German history-writing "Swabian Turkey". That was a large and compact German colony that has been considered a "Pan-Germanistic nation" and that has been later intentionally destroyed through deportation and exile, so that nowadays there can be no mention any more of a "Swabian Turkey" proper, for it has become a region where very few Swabians live. I was born in the village of H_dyez. It had also been a German village. Apart from the Germans, there lived only Jews in that village; they no longer live there either.
GO: Why were the Jews also deported?
FW: The Jews were deported a short while before we were, to be precise in 1944, and six months later it was our turn. As for my education, as early as kindergarten teaching was done in Hungarian, while at home we spoke only German, since my grandmother knew not a single Hungarian word. We, the child-ren, also understood no Hungarian at all.
GO: But was there no German school?
FW: No, as I said there was not even a German kindergarten, what created a very great hardship for us German children. We had to learn to sing Hungarian songs also. Today I understandthe lyrics of those songs, but as a child it was very difficult to learn them because I did not understand the meaning of the words. The same thing happened with the prayer "Our Father" as at home we prayed only in German. Then I went to school, where I was taught German as a foreign language only; and that only two hours a week. You can imagine that I could not learn German in school. Then came the so-called village school, a Hungarian school where we were forbidden...
GO: Forbidden?
FW: ...to speak German, and if we indulged during recess even (and not in class) to speak any German we were punished and beaten. I went to that school for four years, after which I went to Fgnf Kirchen, the largest Bishop's residence and the largest town in "Swabian Turkey", where we were taught in the same nationalist Hungarian spirit. That happened between 1942 and 1944. Then I left Fgnf Kirchen for H_dyez, my birthplace, and after the Russians came marching into our village we were deported to Russia together with the other Germans in the village.
GO: How old were you then?
FW: I was 17, and my sister was two years older. She too was deported. The order was to deport "the Swabians only". The lists were published, and there were only Swabians on them, not a single Hungarian was among them. From the neighboring village, that was 5 kilometers away from ours, Szakai, a Hungarian village, nobody was deported. Only the Swabians were deported, although all the Russians wanted were people for slave labor, consequently they did not care to have precisely only Swabians.
GO: How long were you in Russia?
FW: We were two years in Russia. The Hungarian government acted according to the directive "spare the Hungarian blood", and so we got taken to Russia where consulting with other Germans in the concentration camps we reached the conclusion that practically from Romania, the whole of Hungary and Yugoslavia only the Germans were deported, following the same principles that condemned us. In the concentration camp I had an extra-ordinary experience. I met there Swabians from the Banat, Saxons from Transylvania, very few Swabians from Satu-Mare and Swabians from the Yugoslavian regions. As far as the language we spoke was concerned, those Germans were by far superior to us. Following the Treaty of Trianon, they had had the possibility of a true national rebirth, both in Romania and in Yugoslavia. They had thus the possibility to study in German, having their own schools. That accounts for the fact that they were far superior to us as far as the German language was concerned. We thought we had to deal with Germans from the German Reich. That is a very interesting finding and demon-strates the fact that those Germans had the chance to develop their national life whereas in Hungary we had been oppressed from that point of view.
Thus, that was Russia. After two years I came home. My sister was very ill and could not even get on her feet; she died immediately after she was released from Russia. After my depor-tation I returned to Fgnf Kirchen, where I continued my education, and then obtained a teacher's certificate. That was a Catholic high school. Between 1949 and 1956 I was a school teacher only in Hungarian villages. In the last year, 1956, I obtained a transfer to a German village near Budapest. There lived some Germans there still, who, interestingly enough, were not deported, for they had been needed there, since they wereminers.
I would like to mention also the fact that when we re-turned home from Russia our family told us how they had been turned out of their home to be sent to Germany. Later they were allowed to stay because those Germans whose children had been deported to Russia were not to be exiled. In 1947 the entire play was staged once again, and my family was to be deported to the German zone that was under Soviet occupation. My father was saved only by his profession. He was a Martin furnace builder, a skilled laborer whose work was useful in the reconstruction. Thus he was saved by his trade, and did not get on the list. All those who had indicated on the 1941 census that they were Germans (judging from their mother tongue) were to be banished.
GO: Tell me more about the expulsion. How did it come about and why were the Germans to be banished?
FW: They were banished because Hungary did not wish to miss this favorable historical circumstance that arose after a long wait. It is not at all the way the Hungarian propaganda wishes to demonstrate. That propaganda asserts that the expulsion took place because the victorious powers ordered it. That assertion is not true for there was in reality no such order.
GO: You are referring to the Potsdam Convention?
FW: Yes, that is what they are citing. In Article 13 of the Potsdam Convention were mentioned Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In that article were mentioned only the countries that requested the expulsion. At Potsdam no decision was made, all they did was approve the expulsion requests made. At Potsdam the initiative to banish populations was made legal. Wehad often asked ourselves why was Romania not listed in Article 13 and why was there listed a vanquished state among the two victorious states, since Poland and Czechoslovakia had the status of victorious states but Hungary had not. Romania had also been an ally of the Third Reich and still she was not listed in Article 13 alongside of Hungary. Of course, there is but one explanation - since the Romanian government did not request that the Germans be banished from Romania, Romania was not listed in Article 13 - which is a very simple explanation. Hungary had for a long time wished to get rid of us; that is proven also by the numerous historical texts.
GO: How did the expulsion take place, in practice?
FW: First I wish to relate what awaited us when we returned from Russia. Our family had been turned out of their home, and allowed to take along from their possessions only objects weighing a total of 50-60 kilograms. Then they were loaded in railway cars and transported to the American zone. The Americans either could not or would not receive other human beings, and one transport was sent back to Hungary. Seeing all that, the Hungarian government was seized - I may say - with mortal terror and approached the Soviet military administration and asked them to take over the Germans from Hungary. Thus, many of us got to be taken to the Soviet jurisdiction zone.
GO: What did the Church have to say to all that happened?
FW: Yes, the Church - I am referring to the Catholic Church - sided with the Hungarian nationalists and was used by them as a tool in the magyarization. Thus, the Church made a distinction between guilty Swabians and innocent Swabians. The guilty ones were the ones who belonged to the Popular Alliance, which wastantamount to harboring a desire to remain Germans; and the other ones, the so-called innocent Swabians, were those who belonged to the "Movement of the Dedicated". That movement was created to fight against the Alliance, to divide us.
GO: Whose idea was it?
FW: The idea originated with to Count Teleki, who was President of the Council of Ministers; it was still he who gave birth to the thesis of the three minorities.
GO: Could you enlarge a little upon that subject?
FW: That is a subject that I will attempt to treat summarily here in a few words. It is well known the Hungarian government demands for the Hungarian minority rights that it does not grant to the minorities that live in Hungary. To account for that, Count Teleki came up with the thesis on three kinds of minorities. According to that thesis, there are: traditional minorities, voluntary minorities and constrained minorities. Us, the Swabians, he listed among the voluntary minorities. He said: "You came to Hungary of your own free will, so that you cannot benefit from the rights of the minorities, whereas the constrained minorities, our Hungarians who live now in Transylvania, Voivodina or Slovakia, who are constrained to live there, unlike the Swabians who came to Hungary of their own free will, have been degraded to the rank of minorities by force. That is why they must have full minority rights, but the Swabians must not." That is in short Teleki's thesis on the three kinds of minorities ... But where were we?
GO: I should have liked you to say a few words about the Catholic Church and about guilty Swabians and innocent ones.
FW: We all were Catholics, but our church did not support us, quite the contrary, it handed us over to the Hungarian nationalists. I do not wish now to go into details explaining why that was, neither do I believe it would be useful.
GO: What can you tell us about Mindzenti?
FW: Mindzenti was the worst of them all. Cardinal Mindzenti worked together with Teleki to set up the organization of the "Movement of the Dedicated". Formerly his name had been Phem, but he later magyarized his name to Mindzenti. Mindzenti was one of the most important pillars of the "Movement of the Dedicated". The aim of that movement was assimilation.
GO: What happened to the Swabians who were part of that movement?
FW: You asked a very interesting question. Not even those Swabians were spared. That is exactly the proof that in Hungary it was not the Nazis that were banished but the Germans, for the Hungarians claimed that those who were in the Alliance were Nazis and those who were in the Movement of the Dedicated should have been anti-Nazis, since they were at the opposite pole. But these latter ones were banished together with those who were in the Popular Alliance. That proves that Hungary did not wish to abolish Nazism among the Hungarians but to abolish Germans among the Hungarians. Thus they achieved ethnic cleansing. That is what Hungary basically desired: that here should be no more compact blocks of nationalities in the land. The other nationalities were scattered throughout the entire country so that they could no longer claim minority rights.
GO: What was Hungary's stand to National Socialism [Nazism]?
FW: What hurt us was that it was exactly the Hungarians who branded us as Nazis, when it is known that Nazism was well received in Hungary and that in the Hungarian Parliament there were very many Hungarian National Socialists. The Popular Alliance I mentioned before was in fact not a political party but a cultural association. It is interesting to note that the Germans of Romania, who even had a National Socialist Party, were not banished, and as far as Nazism was concerned, they knew it better. In Hungary the greatest part of the Germans were peasants, who had no idea about what National Socialism stood for; their desire was to stay Germans.
GO: What can you tell us about compensation paid to the Germans?
FW: Yes, that is a long story. At first nobody wanted to compensate the Swabians, and the law was drawn up so that only the citizens of the Hungarian state who were injured during the communist regime should receive compensations, and the communist regime was set up in Hungary in 1949 through Rakosi. We lost our rights and were expatriated between 1945 and 1948; in 1949 all that was past history. Rakosi set up his communist dictatorship in Hungary in 1949, and in 1950 the Germans of Hungary received, of course in form only, equal rights with those of the other citizens of Hungary. We became in 1950 Hungarian citizens with equal rights.
GO: Tell us please something about the compensation given to the Germans of Hungary.
FW: I cannot say more than this, but as far as I had heard all Swabians were to receive compensations, however all those I talked to told me it was not worth petitioning for that compensation since it was insignificant, as the Hungarian government stated that full compensation was impossible.
GO: Tell us please something about the law of the minorities.
FW: It may be of interest to you that in the Hungarian Parliament there were no members coming from the minorities. There are five deputies in the Hungarian Parliament who bear the title of Deputies for the Nationalities but they do not represent the minorities, they represent their own political parties; some of them represent the party in office, others represent the opposition. Those five deputies represent their political parties in Parliament, not the minorities. Those five attacked Geza Hambuch, the president of the Union of the Germans of Hungary, on account of an interview he gave to the Swabian newspaper of Germany where Hambuch was stating that the Germans have more rights in Romania than they have in Hungary. Thus Hambuch became the target of a deluge of attacks, and those five deputies addressed an open letter to Hambuch asking him "Geza how could you, how could you deface this country's image for the rest of the world". Geza Hambuch asserted in his interview that in Hungary the Germans do not have a single true school where teaching is done in the mother tongue. So, in Hungary, where the policy as regards the minorities is so exemplary, there is no real school for the minorities. As far as the law for the minorities is concerned, many people have high hopes of it; I do not, for I know that in Hungary there have always been written wonderful texts of laws - the best example is the law for the minorities of 1868: there cannot be a more beautiful, more wonderful law - all on paper only, it goes without saying. A British historian named McCartney has said that in Hungary there are wonderfully written laws that are never implemented. And what use is that wonderfully written text of a law to anyone, ifit is never implemented? The then head of the Council of Ministers, Count Tissa Istvan, was asked once why that law [of 1868] was never implemented, and he answered: "if we were to implement all those laws that would be tantamount to the suicide of the Magyar state".
GO: What are your views about the respective positions of Romania and Hungary as regards the united Europe?
FW: I can only speak from my own experience; I believe that here, in the west, Hungary is being favored to the detriment of Romania. It is obvious that Hungary has better press than the news referring to Romania, although as regards the policy against the minorities it should be exactly the other way around, for in Romania, according to my sources, the minorities are flourishing, whereas in Hungary they are on the verge of extinction. That is the reason why nobody emigrates from Hungary any more, not because of the exemplary policy against the minorities that is being pursued there, but because the Germans from Hungary have ceased to think of themselves as Germans, for being German there has always been associated with drawbacks. In Hungary it does not make sense to think of yourself as not being Hungarian. Many Germans of Hungary have lost the awareness of their German ethnic character. That accounts in my view for the relatively low number of emigrants from Hungary and the great number of emigrants from Romania, for there that awareness still prevails. That is why I say that one must not believe what the newspapers write but look for real facts rather.
GO: But do the newsmen not know the real facts?
FW: I have an idea why Romania is presented in such a bad light, unlike Hungary. I believe it is because the Hungarians havemanaged to infiltrate the editorial offices and the scientific organizations. Those are places successfully infiltrated by the Hungarians who knew how to enlist the newspapermen on their side. The people in the western countries, especially in West Germany, do not know what actually takes place in Hungary and in Romania. They swallow whole, hook, line and sinker, every-thing the Hungarian propaganda spoon-feeds them. That accounts in my opinion for the fact that Romania is seen in such a bad light. Maybe Romania does not spend enough on propaganda.
GO: Do politicians play a part in this defamation of Romania?
FW: I cannot say, for I do not know. I know only that in the editorial offices and in the places of learning we encounter Hungarian names all the time. We, the Germans of Hungary, can tell immediately which side the wind is blowing from.
GO: But is there no traditional policy?
FW: When we were banished there was talk in Parliament not about the thousand-year-long German-Hungarian friendship but about the thousand-year-long German-Hungarian enmity. Then that was exacerbated. Today there is a commemorative plaque on the building of the German Parliament - I saw it with my own eyes in Berlin - inscribed with a bilingual Hungarian-German text. That text writes about the thousand-year-old Hungarian-German friendship. Everything took a different turn. But I never saw a plaque with a Romanian inscription. Romania did not banish the Germans who lived on her land, whereas the Hungarian government did. Still, on that plaque Hungary is listed as a friend and not Romania, although the Germans of Hungary were the only ones to be banished from all countries that had been former allies of Germany.
GO: But is that policy not based on a tradition inherited from Bismarck?
FW: Yes it is. The imperial policy of those times valued a Greater Hungary highly. They did not consider Trianon. They considered Greater Hungary as a power in that space. It was a fatal calculation for them, for Trianon happened and that Treaty did not rain down from heaven out of the blue sky, it was bound to be born, following the national policy that was implemented in Hungary.
GO: How do you see the future of the German-Hungarian relationship? Is there a common ground on which the two peoples could build?
FW: It is not easy to answer that question, I am not psychic, I do not know how those two peoples will get along. I can only tell you my own opinion. I believe that there will not be any German life in Hungary any more. The relations at state level between Hungary and Germany are a story in which I do not wish to get mixed up. We have always been the victims of those relations. For Bismarck, and later for Hitler, it was more important to be friends with Hungary than to find out whether the Saxons have a German school to educate their children or do not have it, so that as far as the Germans are concerned we were but pawns in the game. I only fear that the Germans of Hungary will disappear completely.
GO: Professor Wesner, thank you for your cooperation.
FW: It has been my pleasure.
Dr. Gheorghe Olteanu interviews Mr. E. Hauler of Passau, Germany, and Mr. Franz Wesner.
Gheorghe Olteanu - GO: You heard Mr. Franz Wesner's interview. What do you as a Swabian from Satu-Mare think of what he said?
E. Hauler - EH: I cannot state what I think in a few words. Mr. Wesner has personally experienced all that for a long time, he has suffered so much unfortunately, and what he told us is now history, but it is also the pure truth. He did not live in Romania but he noticed that the Germans of Romania had a completely different fate than the ones who stayed in Hungary, in their so-called fatherland. That is why his testimony is so valuable. I think that what he related here could be very well included in history books; for it is history in the true sense of the word, not just mere anecdote.
Franz Wesner - FW: Only when I came to live in Germany did I realize the difference between the Germans who pursuant to the Trianon Treaty came under Romanian rule, and us, those who remained under Hungarian domination. When I was home, in Hungary, I did not know that you Swabians of Romania or the other Swabians on the Danube had it far better. The Hungarian propaganda saw to it that we had no idea about all that.
EH: It is well that you emphasize the fact, for as far as my individual fate is concerned, I also understood the meaning of what happened only here, in Germany. I was born in 1917 in Meintingen, and I grew up and went to school there. I was firmly convinced that I had been educated in a Hungarian elementary school. In the summer of 1992 I returned home for a visit, and I had the opportunity to search the school archive, when I wasflabbergasted to learn that in reality I had been educated in a German school. Of course, you cannot understand what I am saying. Thus... we, the Swabians of Satu-Mare, were turned over to Romania through the Trianon Treaty, but Satu-Mare was 10 kilometers away from the Hungarian border, and the then Romanian government noticed that magyarization is still continuing in Satu-Mare and that the Hungarian Revisionist movement is growing. That is why is was decreed that here in Romania magyarization will be stopped and the Swabians will be taught in German. That decree was published in 1920 and was sent to the bishop, for all Swabians were educated in Roman-Catholic church schools.
FW: Same as with us, the church has been the most aggressive tool in the work of magyarization.
EH: The Romanian Ministry of Education informed the Bishop of Satu-Mare - for he was the head of confessional schools - that in 1921 teaching was to be done in German in the schools where the pupils were the Swabians of Satu-Mare. The bishop refused, and teaching thus continued to be done in Hungarian, although we were in Romania.
FW: Excuse me for interrupting, but I would like to add something to what you say. Do you know what amazed me most and what I discovered also here, in Germany? How and why was it possible that the Romanians should allow the magyarization to continue? I cannot understand that.
EH: We Germans were very pleased with the Romanians. But to answer your question: in Romania took place exactly the reverse of what happened in Hungary: Hungary lost half or more of her territory, and Romania gained in 1920 more than half. Theintellectual forces were unequal, for the greater part of intellectuals were Hungarians. Teaching continued to be done in Hungarian. In 1922 the Romanian government again addressed the bishop.
GO: Do you know the bishop's name?
EH: That is of no consequence now.
GO: Is his name not Fiedler?
EH: No, not at all. Fiedler appeared on the horizon ten years later only. After Bishop Messlinger followed his secretary, Szabo, an administrator. In 1922 it was brought again to the surface, namely that the children of the Germans be raised only in their mother tongue, German. The bishop however again refused to comply. The teachers then tried to find the best solution. In our class roster of 1923-1924, all notations were made in German. The signatures were also in German - Paul Fischer and others. Today, after 60 years, I found out that in fact I had been taught in a German school. It is interesting to note that in the same class roster when Religion was taught all notations were made in Hungarian, including the signature of Dr. Schefner, our teacher of Religion, who later became Bishop of Satu-Mare. My schoolmaster, Paul Fischer, who died this year, had to follow the orders of his superior, namely of the bishop; he found a solution; in the class roster he made the notations in German but teaching was still done in Hungarian.
FW: So that in fact only Hungarian was being taught although the documents showed the German language.
EH: Yes, in reality I never heard a word of German. Only nowdo I understand what must have been the pain of that schoolmaster who had to live a lie, while the teacher of Religion could afford both to make his notations and to teach in Hungarian.
FW: It results that the Romanians were extremely tolerant as regards the national minorities: otherwise I cannot account for the survival of those nationalities.
EH: Look here, not only tolerant, but speaking as we see things now, they were even stupid, allowing them to do anything. Consider, although they decreed that the Germans must be educated in German, still that happened only 10-12 years later, interval in which all teaching of Germans was still done in Hungarian.
FW: Do you know what I often wondered? Could you tell me how it came about that the Catholic clergy embraced so wholeheartedly the magyarization efforts? I was surprised reading here in Germany Pfeiffer's book and other books about your history, the history of the Swabians of Satu-Mare, for in our Swabian villages the Catholic clergy reacted absolutely identically, using almost identical words. What could have been the motivation of the Catholic clergy to embrace so completely the magyarization process? For being a Catholic did not necessarily mean being a Hungarian.
EH: Mr. Wesner, you ask me a question to which you should be the one to give the answer, for I was raised in a Romanian frame of mind, although I had a few Hungarian high school years, whereas you were educated in Hungarian. You must know what happened in the Catholic Church and how in Hungary it identified itself with the government.
FW: That is well said. It was the alliance between the throne and the altar. In Greater Hungary the Catholic Church was granted rights and privileges that it did not wish to relinquish.
GO: I should like to ask you something. How could the Catholic Church be so powerful after World War II?
EH: But we are not talking about World War II.
GO: But after World War II the situation persisted?
EH: We are coming too soon to speak about World War II; let us return to the epoch that followed World War I. I should like to continue about the school I was educated in. In 1926 a German organization emerged and that was a stroke of luck for us. That organization was set up in Satu-Mare with the support of the Swabians from the Banat and of the Saxons from Transylvania. That organization was called The People's Swabian-German Community. That organization also influenced the peasants, for, as you said, the greater part of the Swabians, 99 %V of them, were peasants.
FW: So it was with us too.
EH: That organization also opened in our village of Meintingen [Muftinul Mare] a list where the peasants wrote their names signifying that they wished to have a German school. That list was submitted to the bishop, for he was the school's headmaster. As late as 1930 he gave no answer to that petition. In 1920 the Romanians demanded that in each village there be a Romanian school. That happened in my village too - it was mandated that a public school be built, but the thrifty peasants suggested that the existing village school be split in two. The school had fourclassrooms, in two of them the Romanians were to be taught, and in the other two the magyarized Swabians. In the two Romanian classrooms there were about 40 students in all, and in the other two there were 200, 100 in each. Speaking of that, I met here in Germany an old friend and I asked him in what language he had been taught in school, and he told me that in the first grade he had a German reading book but all teaching was done only in Hungarian. Then in the second grade he had a different teacher and this time everything was only in Hungarian. So, returning to our topic, since the Germans continued to be taught in Hungarian, they demanded from the government, against the wish of the church, a public school where teaching should be done in German. The state approved very fast that request and the Germans received a public school in which one single teacher was teaching over 100 students.
GO: But that is impossible.
EH: And still it happened, and the next year a single teacher was teaching 181 students. Seeing that, the state sent a second teacher, from the Banat. So there were two teachers and 181 students. The desire of the Swabians to learn in German schools was evident. Seeing that in that school there were already 200 Germans, and in the conventional school there were only very few magyarized Germans, the Germans demanded from the bishop a German Catholic school. They had a public school already but they wanted now a Catholic school as well. The bishop rejected that petition. Then that organization approached the bishop showing him all petitions between 1926 and 1930 to which he had never answered, and in the end they threatened to report him to the Vatican. Thus in 1932 Bishop Fiedler took fright at that prospect and sent his secretary to Meintingen. Within 4 days the school was ready for the Swabians and theyalso had been provided with a teacher. I am telling you about Meintingen as it is my birthplace, but the same things happened in the other villages too.
FW: With us the same thing happened.
EH: In the other German villages, teaching in German was but a fiction, in fact all teaching was done in Hungarian only. The Romanians woke up to the situation and the Minister of the Cults, Angelescu, decreed that the Germans must not be taught in Hungarian, and if they do not agree with that their school will be closed. The church and thus also the teacher did not agree and thus the Meintingen school was closed. The state did not allow even a Romanian school in Meintingen for the Germans, only a German one. For two years 210 children were out in the streets. I am not making it up, I have documents to prove it. After two years the school reopened but it was a make-believe that teaching was done in German. It was not the teachers who were to blame, they only did their job. I do not wish to attack the church here, only its representatives, especially a few of the priests and the bishop. Bishop Fiedler, who came from the Banat, being misinformed and being a very devout man, could not believe that the priests, whose head he was, could be so perfidious and could do such things. Those priests were so perfidious, they used to hide ammunition in the theological library. That ammunition was discovered in 1939 by the Romanian authorities. That is why the bishop had to resign.
FW: But why were they hiding ammunition in the library?
EH: You may be sure, not to use it to blow up their church. It was a matter of the Hungarian revisionist movement.
FW: I find the history of the Swabians of Satu-Mare most interesting, as it bears many similarities with our own history. You are the only exception for all other Swabians who detached themselves from Hungary after the Trianon Treaty experienced a true national revival, and were not magyarized like the Swabians of Satu-Mare.
EH: However, we Swabians of Satu-Mare experienced a truly great national revival owing to the Romanians' coming into power, although they were counteracted by the Hungarians {Magyars]. When our "demise" was almost complete, the Romanians were our stroke of good luck.
FW: It may be said without exaggerating that for you Swabians of Satu-Mare the Trianon Treaty was a liberation, the only and ultimate salvation.
EH: Until 1938 schoolteaching continued in Hungarian. In 1938 the Church Council submitted a petition to the King in which it was stressed that for the last 17 years schoolteaching had continued to be done in Hungarian and that it would have been impossible to teach children in German since the children no longer speak German.
GO: The King was a Hohenzollern?
EH: Yes, of course. Based on that petition, teaching continued to be done in Hungarian, but this time officially. However, the King acted swiftly, and on December 7 a school inspector turned up in Meintingen who forbade teaching in Hungarian.
FW: But only for those who were not Hungarians, not for the Hungarians as well, isn't it?
EH: Of course. It was only for the Swabians. The Hungarians kept their rights the same as the Swabians from the Banat. That is exactly our problem, we who are Swabians from Satu-Mare. Here in Germany we were thrown together with the Swabians from the Banat and with the Transylvanian Saxons, and we were told that we could have done everything we wished in Romania. However it was not quite so, for although we had the same laws, in our case they were not observed.
FW: So there was an illegal Hungary?
EH: Exactly, and, as I asserted later, after 1945 in Northern Transylvania there was a Hungarian dictatorship of the proletariat. Before 1940 one could speak of an illegal Hungary, and after 1945 of a Hungarian dictatorship of the proletariat - of course, I refer to Northern Transylvania, and especially to Satu-Mare.
FW: How could the Hungarians do everything they wished? And how did the Romanians tolerate that?
EH: You asked a very good question. In 1940 the Hungarians poured into Northern Transylvania, and thus also into Satu-Mare, peremptorily doing away with teaching in Romanian and in German, in spite of the fact that Hitler had promised the Germans that their rights would be preserved, and in spite of the fact that a German Consulate had been set up in Cluj alongside of the Italian one. So, how was that proletarian dictatorship set up? In 1940 the Romanian intellectuals fled to Romania. In 1945 those Romanians did not return, for they did not wish to be oppressed under Russian rule and they hoped that the British and the Americans would not allow it. Thus, they set out to wait for help from those two powers. The Hungarians however, including those who had become Hungarians through assimilation, realizedthat that was their chance and became members of the Communist Party in mass. In Bucharest even, there were more Hungarians than Romanians in the Social-Democrat Party. Thus they became protegIes, ensuring numerous advantages for themselves and obtaining even a Hungarian autonomy in some regions. The Communist Party was in power, and it was pro-Hungarian and for the collaboration. Thus, until the Romanian educated classed woke up to see the facts, all strategic positions had already been taken, with the Party Secretaries and the Prefects being all Hungarians. In Satu-Mare, 20 years after 1945, Hungarian only was spoken at the Securitate [Secret Police], at the City Hall, and in the stores if you asked for something in Romanian you were not sold anything.
FW: I read the newspapers frequently, and I am amazed to see that the Hungarians of Transylvania have the impertinence to ask that their flag be raised, the green-white-red flag, and that their national anthem be sung. Moreover they demand to have autonomy over all areas where some Hungarian minorities live. In our home lands they have done away with the compact masses of national minorities, through their expulsion policy. Thus, they can claim rights for the Hungarian minorities who live in Hungary's neighboring countries, and do not fear that the minorities who live in Hungary will claim the same rights - for those minorities have been scattered. Hungary had had the epitome of the policy of destroying her national minorities. If you dare assert that in Hungary, you are torn to pieces; that is why we do it openly here and in all other parts of the world where we can tell the truth. We are independent here and we speak freely. We do not wish to accuse the Hungarians unjustly, all we wish to do is tell the truth.
EH: I have taught in a Romanian high school for 30 years, ahigh school that bears the name of the greatest Romanian poet, Mihail Eminescu. I was teaching German as a foreign language there. I taught between 1947 and 1977 and I can tell you that in the interval 1940-1950 my Romanian colleagues feared the rIgime as much as I did, or maybe even more. And that because the Communist Party Secretary and in general all those in leadership positions were in general Hungarians and a deep-rooted magyarization was going on in the Romanian villages. For instance in the village of Bobos, a village situated near the border and 15 kilometers away from our village, the priest was a Greek-Catholic and his homily was in Romanian. His son, a former colleague of mine, a teacher of Mathematics, told me that the Romanians - that was in the 1950's - asked that the homily be delivered in Hungarian. His father spoke no Hungarian and had to leave the village.
GO: That means that the Romanians were already magyarized.
EH: Yes, but the magyarization continued even after 1940, although those of Meintingen, as well as the others, were magyarized between 1920 and 1940. My colleagues trusted me more than they did the Hungarians for we were in the same predicament.
FW: When we asked German schools in Hungary we were told that whoever wants to have them is free to leave for the Black Forest. Not even at this date is there in the whole of Hungary one single true school for the minorities.
EH: We Swabians make a clear cut distinction between the blood Hungarians, who were born Hungarians, and the assimilated ones, who were a lot more dangerous than the others. I am speaking against these latter ones in today's discussion. I shouldlike to show you how deeply the people in Meintingen had been magyarized: a neighbor of mine there told me once: "If I knew that German blood flows in my veins, I would cut them open." I answered him that the best thing for him to do would be to cut his own head off.
FW: We in Hungary also had no problems with the Hungarian peasants, who were on the contrary very decent even, but we had problems with the Hungarian office workers, with the middle class and the nobility. These were very savage, as was for instance Count Teleki, who committed suicide in 1941. And at the hands of the Hungarian writers we received nothing but harassment and persecution. They harassed and persecuted us in all their writings, paving the way in this manner on the ideological plane for our expulsion.
EH: In 1992, when I revisited my native village, I told my wife that I was glad my parents are dead. The houses, formerly shining and clean, were now falling apart.
GO: Do you believe that the Germans who live there stand a chance?
EH: None, although they are well organized and call themselves Swabians. When the census was taken over one half of them declared to be Germans. But they lost the best lands and for that I blame the Romanian government, that had expropriated them. So as not to restore them to the Germans, those lands have been inscribed as the property of Dobrudja, a province that is 700 kilometers away from us. They claim that shepherds in Dobrudja use those lands to graze their sheep. The Swabians were compensated only with land of low quality. Still, owing to their diligence, from one crop only they managed to buy 12 tractors, andnow they are very well equipped. They wanted to take the Romanian government to court, however, gave up the idea. Teaching is done only in Hungarian and in Romanian in schools, and the activities conducted in German are very few.
GO: A friend of mine visited Meintingen recently and confessed that there was nobody there who could converse in German with him.
EH: I did not learn German in my native village either, I learned it in Timisoara. Our parents however spoke no Hungarian. When it was possible to be schooled in German in our village, everybody went to that school; and later, when they could no longer be educated in German under the Hungarians, the Germans joined the SS where they could take German language classes. In their conscience they were Germans, and considered themselves Swabians.
GO: Thank you both.
Materials published by Rum?nisches Forschungsinstitut - Institutul de cercetari al Academiei Americano-Romane of Mannheim, Germany:
by Colonel (ret.) Ntefan-Vasile Stanescu
A strong tie binds my soul to the army, especially to cavalry, since I was 11 years old, when I was admitted to the military school "Nicolae Filipescu" at Manastirea Dealu; that tie persists yet though in 1946 I was turned out of that noble profession of arms as a potential opponent to the communist rIgime, which I was.
I was stupefied to see in 1991 the commemoration of 50 years since the pogrom of the Jews of Yassy, for which the entire blame was cast upon the innocent Romanian army! Most probably what was envisaged was the obtention of various amounts of money in compensation, amounts which for all I know may have been handed over during the rule of Mr. Petre Roman.
The pogrom of Yassy was not performed by the Romanian army; it was performed by the German SS troops. But how was the 1991 Rabbi to make a demand for compensations from a prosperous Germany, the greatest economic power in Europe? What took place took place in Romania, so, adding some untruths, and especially having those untruths supported by Romanians (such as Gelu Voican Voiculescu), the Romanian state can pay.
However, it was not the money that revolted me, for we have often paid for damages caused by others, but the attempt to dishonor our army. This lie broadcast in the press, radio and television left in the soul of our youth the bitter taste of the guilt for deeds done by the members of my generation. I cannot stand by and let this injustice pass without proving that we had nothing to do with those dishonoring actions, and bringing before the readers of the Revista Cavaleriei the authenticity of facts and attitudes that I submit hereby for publication. Thus the historical events of those times will be clarified and the stain will be erased from the brow of the Romanian army whose honor has been defamed by untruthful statements.
I submit here upon my word of honor as a cavalry officer the information I received from Dr. Eugen Munteanu (no invention of mine) that the former father-in-law of Dr. Munteanu, namely Colonel Captaru, who at that time was the Prefect of the County of Yassy, had one Romanian officer and two Romanian soldiers court-martialled because they had participated in that event! Found guilty, they were sentenced to lose their rank and were sent to the Disciplinary Battalion of the Army at Sarata. That was the stand taken by the Romanians! As a matter of fact, the following materials will lead to the conclusion that General Ion Antonescu has humane feelings and contributed to the defense of the innocent Jewish citizens of Romania.
by Dr. Epifanie Cozarescu
I must state from the very beginning that I do not intend to deny or minimize the events that took place in Yassy in June-July 1941 reaching as far as the railway station in Roman. Much has been written and will be written about them, so that my modest contribution would lose itself like a drop of water in an ocean of poison. However, I will bring some new facts to bear on what happened at Roman. The readers of these words have the choice of adding them to the scales in which they weigh the truthfulness of the story. Let us proceed to the railway station of Roman.
It was on the fatal day of July 3 1941 when it was an-nounced that a train with Jews deported from Yassy would pass through! For the girls who worked at the Red Cross canteen, as well as for the employees of the station's first aid unit, that event appeared similar to the short stopping at this station of trains with the wounded bound for another destination... In that interval the wounded received in the train cars the medical and humanitarian aid they needed. However, thinking justly, the doctor who was on duty that day at the first aid unit together with the canteen employees understood that this case would be somewhat differ-ent. That is why they called on Mrs. Viorica Agarici, who was then president of the local branch of the national Red Cross, to help them. She arrived without delay accompanied by the vice-president, Mrs. Eliza Vargolici, and by the county's Doctor-in-Chief, Dr. Ntefan Pasov. After them arrived the chief of the Public Market Commando, Captain I. Cocaneanu. Mrs. Viorica Agarici began immediately to organize the team she was to work with! Members of the team were: Sofia Lazarescu, head of the canteen, schoolteachers Zoe Iacobeanu, Elena Taune and Matia Curelescu, then two young girls, Mura Hagiaturian and RodicaLazarescu, and two nuns on loan from the Agapia monastery. In the meanwhile Captain Cocaneanu obtained additional informa-tion from the railway's dispatch office, and he returned very downcast from that office. When the canteen personnel emerged on the platform with their trays and baskets of food accompanied by four soldiers carrying buckets of tea, and by Dr. Falcoianu with the medic V. Toma and two voluntary nurses from the Red Cross carrying first aid kits and medicines, Cocaneanu approached Mrs. Agarici and whispered something in her ear. Those who were on the spot say that they never knew that lady to be other than mild and polite, but now she had lost her temper!
The train now entered the station - a long train with cattle cars, from which one could hear desperate voices begging for water and for help! Then, regardless of what had been whispered in her ear (the order of the German military command of Yassy that nobody approach that train), Mrs. Agarici stepped forward resolutely beckoning the canteen girls to follow her. She had to cover the distance as far as the fourth rail, where the train with deportees was stationed because the way was not clear for it to proceed. The military German and Romanian trains racing to the front had priority then. So that the train had to be stopped a while, exactly as long as it needed to enter the railway station of Roman. But Hitler's guard, descending from the passenger car next to the engine, encircled the train immediately to prevent anyone from approaching it! When they saw the group of white-clad people approaching their train resolutely, they came to meet them positioning their machine-guns and shouting: Zurgck! Verboten! (Go back! It is forbidden!) It was a first warning! Fearlessly, Mrs. Agarici shouted back in the same voice: "Verfluchte Gewinde! Auf die Seite!" (Damned creatures, step aside!). Captain Cocaneanu, knowing what hose fanatic SS troops could do, came hurriedly asking the team to return to theplatform, for at the second warning those troops will shoot aiming in full. There was a moment of panic. The girls and the soldiers with the buckets turned back! Only Mrs. Viorica Agarici rushed in front of the engine, clinging to it with her hands and shouting as loudly as she could: "If the cars will not be opened so she could give aid to the detainees, she would stay there and let the train pass over her body!"
In the mean time the Germans were minding their own business, waiting for the moment when they could order the train to proceed, risking to run over that furious Romanian woman...
Then Captain Cocaneanu telephoned the Prefect (General Ntefan Ionescu was then county prefect) asking for his help and advice, to save the President of the Red Cross whose life was at risk! Unfortunately the Romanian administration had no jurisdiction over that transport. However they contacted the Office of Internal Affairs and the central office of the Romanian Red Cross in Bucharest, to no avail also. As General Ionescu, the Prefect, insisted, the Bucharest offices contacted the Supreme Command of the Romanian Army, which was then in the train "The Fatherland" somewhere on a railway near the front. Gen. Ion Antonescu was on that train. It was only after he talked with the general who commanded the 11th German army that was headquartered at Yassy (where he together with Sturmbahnfghrer H. Ohlendorf ordered that thousands of Jews be liquidated and deported), that the situation changed instantly! The order came from Yassy through the telephone that the deportees be allowed to receive aid! In the mean time, for about two hours, Mrs. Agarici stood before the engine, in the scorching sun, without retreating an inch. Only after that did she go to the cars, together with her team that had fled originally. When the gate was opened to the first car, she saw a vision of hell: living and dead bodies were lying on top of one another in tattered clothing in a pool or urine and feces! It was too much! So as not to alarm the towns-people (among whom 7,000 were Jewish), who hearing some-thing had begun to converge to the railway station, it was decided to push the train back to Sabaoani. There all cars were opened, the living received first aid, and the dead, having had their death verified by Captain Dr. Radu Popovici, the surgeon of the Mili-tary Hospital who came with his medics, were interred in a grave dug then and there behind the railway station. Of the living, the ill were seen by Dr. Falcoianu, and some of them were admitted to the Military Hospital for the treatment they needed.
In the meantime, Dr. Pasov, working together with the President of the Jewish Community, Dr. Reznic Meer, organized a staggered transportation of all able-bodied deportees to the public bath (formerly Jewish bath) where they were cleaned, given new clothes, given to drink and fed at the expense of the community. All that naturally under strict surveillance to avoid desertions. Through the efforts of the 4th Sanitary Company, all railway cars were in their turn cleaned, disinfected and lined with fresh straw on which was laid fresh linen. Returning, the depor-tees were pleased with the amenities created. The next day, on July 4, 1941, that train that had been the "train of death" until then, started moving with open windows. In the greater junc-tions, the gates of the cars were opened on the platforms and Red Cross teams checked and assisted the deportees. True, now and then one could hear some miscreants cursing, which however did not influence in any way the protective attitude of the official persons. Having reached the town of Calarasi on the Danube in good conditions, 776 persons were taken into the camp, exactly as many as had left the Roman railway station, proving that no one died in transit afterwards. As is known, in 1944 they were all freed.
1. In the 1950s, after the war, the 53 victims were disinterred at Sabaoani - 53 and not 370 as has been erroneously stated! - and to them were added the 360 dead who had been interred at Mircesti before, and they were brought to the Jewish cemetery in Roman where they were buried in two large adjacent graves over which were placed two cement blocks 3 meters wide and 10 meters long. It results that, if in the 20 km. between Mircesti and Roman 53 more people died, without the "miracle" of Roman, only dead bodies would have been delivered in Calarasi.
It was without a doubt owing to Mrs. Viorica Agarici that they were saved! But not only owing to her, for without the cooperation of all persons mentioned above, she could not have achieved it. We list them again: Captain I. Cocaneanu, General Ntefan Ionescu, Vice-President of the Red Cross of Roman Eliza Vargolici, the three doctors, Veronica Falcoianu, Ntefan Pasov, Captain Dr. Radu Popovici, with their assistants, and last but not least the fact that the leader of the state agreed with their initiative, which weighed heavily in the scales. There should be no need to stress the compassion shown by the Christian popula-tion, and the efforts made by the other half of the inhabitants of Roman who were Jewish, who all contributed to alleviate the sufferings of so many innocent people.
As a matter of fact that was the spirit in that town, where an injurious word like "you Yids!" was rarely heard. There is no truth to the allegations that have been made that the water barrels at the railway station had been polluted with petroleum, so that the Jews could not drink any water, or that the Jews were thrownwater in their eyes to exacerbate their thirst... They are all shameless lies!
2. Now, something about Mrs. Viorica Agarici, the heroine of those days. After 1949 she was deprived of all her possessions (her land at Calugareni, the county of Roman, her house in the street Alexandru cel Bun, and the rest) and was thrown destitute into the street, with no means of subsistence. Her only good luck was that a few families of Roman came to her rescue and assisted her. The family of Dr. Mart let her live in a little room in their house, and among the Jews Dr. Josef Abraham and the photographer Jack Reinstein made a monthly collection for her of loose change, which she refused to accept except for services rendered: she tutored schoolchildren (among whom Radu Cozarescu). The families of the children she tutored were also inviting her to dinner of course. Thus she was practically reduced to beggary. She also walked about with a market basket on her arm into which people would throw something now and then. She would have left Roman if she could but there was nowhere for her to go: her husband had died of a general gangrene starting from his appendix in the Roman hospital (and not at Yassy, as some have written), and her three sons, George, Vasilica and Costache, were political prisoners! It was only in 1967 when George was set free that she moved in with him in Bucharest. After that the Federation of Jewish Communities remembered the merits of Mrs. Viorica Agarici and allowed her a small life-time pension. Now the heroine of Roman is sleeping her last sleep in a cemetery in Bucharest, and there is a tree planted in her memory on the "lane of the just" near Richowod in Israel.
There is no fitter end to my writing than repeating the wise advice of His Eminence the Chief Rabbi Mozes Rozen who wrote in 1981: "... blessed be all those who defended the dignityof the Romanian people". And further on: "And all must be remembered now, in these moments when we remember what happened then." He speaks about the Yassy pogrom. That is what we attempt to do here.
Additional Clarifications with Historical Notes
(article published in Romania Libera of July 9, 1993)
I read the description of events given by Dr. Epifanie Cozarescu under the title The Truth about the Train of Death . Those imbued with Romanian feeling can be proud of the fearless action of that "great Romanian lady" Viorica Agarici, President of the Roman branch of the Red Cross who managed to stop "the train of death" with the Jews transported to extermination camps by the SS. troops, risking her life and disregarding the gun that one of those who guarded the train so that nobody could approach it, was pointing at her chest.
Discussing this matter with Dr. Neculai Horga who is now in his nineties and lives in Roman at Bloc 13 A on Strada Tineretului, I found out an important fact. He told me that on that day, July 3, 1941, he was in the company of Dr. Moga before the Roman Hospital when a line of cars stopped there and of one car that had the royal flag stepped out Her Majesty the Queen Mother Elena. She had come to cheer up the wounded in the interior war hospital.
As the two doctors were being introduced to the Queen Mrs. Viorica Agarici arrived in a state of great agitation, and, rushing towards Her Majesty, she reported that a German train full of Jews was approaching the station and that dreadful cries are heard coming from its cars, but the train guards do not allow anybody to give medical assistance and food to those locked upinside. She added that she had left her team of voluntary Red Cross nurses there on the railway line and hearing that Her Majesty had come to Roman had come to beg Her Majesty to intervene in favor of those locked up in the cars.
Her Majesty the Queen Mother ordered that a cavalry colonel (here Dr. Horga is in error, for it was a major and royal aide) drive immediately to the railway station together with Mrs. Viorica Agarici and return as soon as possible with news.
That officer returned from the railway station within minutes confirming the tragic condition of the Jews locked up in the cars.
Then Her Majesty asked General Ntefan Ionescu, who was the Prefect of Roman County, to contact the Supreme Command of the Army and through it to speak with General Ion Antonescu who was then the leader of the Romanian state.
When communication was established with the train "The Fatherland" which was at the front Her Majesty asked the General to intercede with the German Command to allow that the Red Cross assist those locked up in the cars, and General Ion Antonescu did that.
Until the order of Sturmbahnfghrer H. Ohlendorf arrived from Yassy, Mrs. Viorica Agarici stood before the train's engine preventing its departure.
After that the train was pushed to the junction Sabaoani, the dead were taken out, the cars were cleaned and the unfortunate detainees were fed.
I am writing these lines because I want to emphasize that three great Romanian souls were involved in that intervention: Her Majesty the Queen Mother Elena, Mrs. Viorica Agarici, and General Ion Antonescu. The mild but resolute woman who was the President of the local Roman branch of the Red Cross could not have achieved anything if the Royal House and general Antonescu had been indifferent and totally subjected to the inhuman action of the German SS troops on Romanian land.
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Post-scriptum: I found after this article was printed that a tree has been planted in honor of Queen Mother Elena on the "lane of the just" in Israel (Vasile Stanescu).
Article by Pascal Ilie Virgil published in Romania Libera of November 8, 1994:
"The Romanian diplomat Constantin Karadja deserves to be considered in Israel among the 'just men of the Gentiles' - those who saved Jews risking their own lives - along with other 29 'just Gentiles' of the Romanian people", states Professor Alfred Harlaoanu, who holds a Ph.D. in Philological Sciences and performs historical research.
He discovered a few weeks ago a number of documents of exceptional historical value in the archives of the Office of Foreign Affairs. While writing a special chapter concerning the diplomatic ties between Romania and Israel for his new book The World History of the Jewish People (a book of over 1,200 typed pages which is currently being translated into English), this distinguished professional has unearthed documents over 50 years old, dating from the time when Constantin Karadja was Consul General in Berlin. In that capacity, beginning with the year 1942, the Romanian diplomat submitted a number of reports to the appropriate offices in Romania in which he advocated the need to save the Romanian citizens of Jewish origin who were in Germany and in occupied territories. That action took place at a time when the conditions of the survivors among those citizens were desperate.
"He managed thus to save hundreds and hundreds of human lives from Hitler's fury. Owing to the intervention of the Romanian Consular Direction, those people were permitted to return to Romania endowed with passports. In his notes andreports, of which one can be found in the Office of Foreign Affairs file no. 3342, pages 38-39, fund no. 24, dated March 19, 1942, Consul Karadja proves to be a man of lofty principles and high integrity, whose defining characteristic is humaneness", adds Professor Harlaoanu.
In his report no. 288 of December 17, 1943 forwarded from the Consular Direction of the Office of Foreign Affairs, Constantin Karadja first points out the thrust of German policy, outlined by a threatening speech given by Hitler who said: "Should we lose the war, I can guarantee that not a single Jew will survive in Central Europe". Then the report treats of the core of the Jewish problem, "that has for long been one of the hardest to solve in Romania, where the Jews immigrated in compact masses from Poland and the Ukraine especially since Romania became a kingdom", depicting the Romanian tolerant policy toward entire generations of refugees and showing that "those unfortunate people ... who were forced to leave their homes" must find "temporary refuge in Romania, where they shall be well treated."
Constantin Karadja's stand to the rIgime of Berlin results clearly from his personal dossier; he writes: "I entered into a conflict with it because I did my duty and could not cooperate with the Nazis nor follow their orders." As a result of that conflict Karadja was recalled to Bucharest, after a few days however regaining his function as the Consul General of Romania in Berlin through royal decree.
Professor Harlaoanu told us that he would continue his research into the archives of the Office of Foreign Affairs in order to obtain a definitive image of the activities of the diplomat Constantin Karadja. We have a precise figure only for March 1943, when his deputy, Consul General Traian Gallin, saved 53Jews (12 families), sending them to Romania. And Romania's stand as regards the Jewish problem is seen from the note of the President of the Council of Ministers no. 311065 of December 16, 1943 to the General Commissary for Jewish Problems in which it is stated that Marshall Antonescu "has approved the transportation of Jewish children together with those who accompany them on the steamer Belassitta under Bulgarian registry. Those children will be taken to Istanbul and hence they will pass into Palestine."
Note from Killinger to the Foreign Office Regarding the Treatment of Hungarian Jewish Refugees in Romania, reprinted on p. 317, .
II/K213561-563
German Embassy
BucharestBucharest, July 14, 1944
No: 1217SECRET
RE: Flight of Hungarian Jews to Romania
Foreign Office
Previous: Doc. of June 30, 1944File II 1506g
File no. II 1213rec. July 21, 1944
Attachments: 1
______________________________________________________
The facts found at the Consulate General of Klausenburg [Cluj] have been verified, namely that the Hungarian Jews who flee to Romania are being treated like political refugees and they are being allowed by the Romanian government to emigrate to Palestine.
I am attaching the copy and the translation of a letter written by the Deputy President of the Council of Ministers, Mihai Antonescu, to the Jew Zissu of Bucharest on June 17, 1944 asking him to acknowledge it. Zissu is a Zionist and has been put in charge on the Jewish side of the emigration of Jews from Romania. In this letter, at paragraph d), Mihai Antonescu states that the Romanian government has approved in principle the departure of the CRAT Company's steamer currently at anchor in the port of Constantza, however on condition that not only the Jewish orphans from Transnistria depart on it but that the Jewish political refugees who came from other countries and who cannot remain in Romania be also taken along on it.
To the Foreign Office in Berlin. K213561 H322943 E421789
ss.
Telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign Office reproduced at p. 194:
II/K213496NG-5586
Telegram
(station G)
Budapest, July 11, 1944Time: 22:25
Received: July 12, 1944Time: 11:00
1916y
No. 1939 of July 11 Secret!
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs indicated today the difficult position of the Hungarian government because of the different treatment of the Jewish problem at corresponding German positions in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. While in this country [Hungary] we demand from the government the strictest procedures against the Jews, the Romanians and the Slovaks are allowed to treat the Jews there in a much more tolerant way. From Romania are currently sailing even regular transports of Jews bound for Palestine. According to the reports of the Hungarian embassies in Bucharest and Pressburg in the last few weeks numerous Hungarian Jews crossed the border passed illegally into Romania and into Slovakia, where they were more or less openly tolerated by the local authorities. The Romanians even went so far as to add to their transports of Jews bound for Palestine 20 %V Hungarian Jews recently. Apparently that happens in order to create a good impression before our enemies. Hence the appearance is created for the outside world that the Romanians and the Slovaks have adopted a totally different approach in the Jewish problem than the Hungarians, so that the entire hatred of the inimical powers and of the neutral states also is directed against the latter. That fact has a very unfavorable influence upon the stand taken by the Hungarian government.
Veesenmeyer
K213496E421......
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