| QUOTE (Dénes @ February 08, 2011 08:12 pm) | ||
I fully agree with Dragos. He is also right in what he has written further on. Indeed, it would have been a bloodbath all over Northern Transylvania had all Rumanian villagers been armed. Luckily, this wasn't generally the case, thus the entrance of the Hungarian troops unfolded overwhelmingly peacefully. Massacres of smaller or larger magnitude happened only in several villages, like Ip, where - according to Hungarian documents and witnesses - the Hungarian troops were fired upon. As stated, this was no excuse for the atrocities committed against innocent civilians. So, C-2, this case does not support at all the theory that armed civilians discourage violence - your main reason why posting the movie. Gen. Dénes P.S. And with referring to this movie, C-2 you did manage to stir up old wounds, a topic which already has a dedicated thread. Also, this artistically made movie largely based on a true story also serves to incite ethnic hatred and increase political tension among the simple or stupid people - see the remark on the very site you recommended: "Un motiv pentru care sunt impotriva Legii Educatiei Maghiarizate" (This is a reason why I am against the Magyarised Law of Education). What on Earth have the education rights of current Hungarian ethnics with the described massacres that happened over 70 years ago?  |
The anexation of Transylvania in 1940 wasn’t overwhelmingly peaceful. The tightly censored Romanian press of the time, through which the authorities had (at least) the visible interest to minimize their foreign policy failure by minimizing the consequences of the “diktat”, was full of the accounts of those abuses and atrocities. Their impact shouldn’t be neglected, and the “thesis” denying them, or saying that they were justified is not a new one. As a side question, could anything justify the mass killing of innocent/civilian women and children? Perhaps Aurel Munteanu, the priest from Huedin tortured to death by several Hungarian civilians on the street, in broad daylight (an episode which, because of its shocking and hard to believe details, I would label as one of the most gruesome occurrences from the history of torture of WW 2, a history with a not at all scarce list of such events), was guilty of provoking his murderers?
We cannot talk about an overwhelmingly peaceful installation of the Hungarian/Horthyst administration exactly because of these facts. On the one hand the atrocities were, even if not a rule in term of numbers, outrageous and repulsive by themselves (ex. Ip, Trăsnea, the brutal murdering of Aurel Munteanu, etc). On the other hand the abuses were quite widespread (ex. one of my grandfathers, a quite well-of peasant from an area near Dej, not involved into politics, was “only” beaten and threatened/intimidated in order to accept the administrative change of his name/"magyarisation" from Vasile to Ladislau - and he was not an exception in his village; perhaps it was thought to be a good thing if he and some of the “gospodarii satului” would became, overnight, Hungarian - at least for the statistics). I mention the latter episode "en passant" only, because it was told by him to me when I was a child, in a without grudge and jokingly “Stan Păţitul”-like manner - like in the jokes with Transylvanians/ardeleni. Now of course I didn’t search for any witness from the “Hungarian side” - in order not to be biased or to counter-check his story - nor do I care about the possible macro-explanation or justification of a Hungarian historian about this fact.
Maybe that’s why someone from that site, more or less educated, mention his/her suspicion towards a “magyarised” education law. Because more and more people fear the fact that, as some Hungarian leaders (holding administrative offices) from Harkov made a rule/habit in the last few years from publicly displaying some Hungarian private organizations’ symbols or the Hungarian national flag on the public buildings (in spite and against the laws, and in defiance of the requests of the Romanian minority living in those counties), the official history learn in Romania in Hungarian language by the Hungarian children could became an equivalent of the collection of Revisionist and negationist myths circulated by some Hungarian politicians and self-styled historians. Remember the so-called “documentary movie” “Trianon”? I think that some fear, perhaps with some substance, that a collection of that sort of clichees could become a substitute for the history learned in school. And because they do not agree with the double standards in Romanian-Hungarian relations. As an example, on the one hand, the ethnic Hungarians from Romania can celebrate, from years now and in a normal environment, the all-Hungarian national holyday. Sometimes the Romanian officials (such as the president) send them public and official greetings on that occasion. On the other hand, the UDMR/RMDS leaders, members of the governing coalition(s) from 2000 onwards, boycott on a regular basis the Romanian national holydays. Hear and then, in their absence, they sent a "coroana de flori". When in last December a public building (the Hungarian National Theater main hall in Budapest) was subcontracted by the institution manager (in exchange for a sum money) to the Romanian embassy in order to celebrate the national day (December 1), the episode was considered a scandal, a defiance - a “lack of sensitivity for Hungary’s loss” (!) - the manager was labeled as sort of a traitor so the deal had to be called off and the poor fellow to apologize publicly. It is indeed very comfortable to be non-conformist, anti-nationalist, “sine ira et studio” and open-minded - and to take all the details into account - when it suits us…
and a good example of living togheter in harmony.
