Romanian & Hungarian war-crimes

The point was that maybe somebody has other figures, to compare.

And yes, it is from the "Teroarea...". BTW, that book is not so innacurate as you seem to consider it. I didn't bother to read it all, i only read the parts about certain crimes (the ones i knew the truth about, from eye-witnesses, like the Aurel Munteanu "excess" or the Treznea and Ip massacres).

The murder of Aurel Munteanu is accurately described, without any distortion. The accounts of the massacres at Treznea and Ip contain exagerations and some facts are altered (like blaming the Hungarian regular troops for the Treznea massacre). But most of the basic facts in the accounts are real.

So, i believe most of the facts in the book are real, although some false data was added. That's why i posted the numbers, i am curious if they are real or not. Is there any other statistic to compare it with this one?

Dragos03, what's exactly your point in listing all these statistics and individual cases?

Based on this thread's title, one could also list similar statistics on Rumanian attrocities against ethnic Hungarians in Southern Transylvania (1940-1944) and Northern Transylvania (after Sept. 1945). But what would be achieved?
Nothing constructive, IMO.

Gen. Dénes

P.S. What's the published source you took the info from (unless you found the documents in the archives)? Isn't it, by any chance, the infamous 'Teroarea Horthysta...' book?

Again "infamous"? If I remember well you have said that before, without being at all able to sustain in any credible way the fact that, apart from the easy recognoscible (and though easy to eliminate) propaganda messages, the book is not a reliable secondary source. Have the archive documents it quotes become less credible because the authors subscribed to the official party line and propaganda…? I have refrained myself to post anything new in this topic in order not to inflate the spirits, although I run into some new data about September 1940, North-Western Transylvania; recently we marked 65 years from those ill fated events. But now that you brought it forward…

As for the first part of your post, I have no information about any atrocity committed in Southern Transylvania, apart from the harassing and economical boycott (or even stealing or robbery) to which some Hungarian ethnics was subjected by the “legionari”, or by the (indeed infamous) “politie legionara”, especially after November 1940 and during the legionar rebellion. Also from what I know, these cases were rather isolated and they seldom included violence, so I would not call them atrocities. I think there’s practically impossible to compare these abuses with the crimes and barbaric acts that happened in the Hungarian occupied zone of Transylvania. Unfortunately after September 1944 it seems that there were several abuses and crimes comitted against the Hungarian ethnics from Transylvania by Romanian extremist groups; also unfortunately these were fuelled by a feeling of revenge generated by numerous report and press account about what happened in North-Western Transylvania during the Hungarian occupation. But we should also note two more things: first, from what I know, those crimes were not backed by or covered for the Romanian state, as it happened in 1940-1944 with the Hungarian state; and I think this is an essential difference. And the second is that the acts of violence that occurred in Transylvania after 1944 were not at all as unilateral as you imply. Take for example what happened in Cluj, 1945, when the Romanian students initiated, in the center of the town, a peaceful manifestation, celebrating the administrative reunification of North-Western Transylvania with Romania; a counter-manifestation was organized by a group of the new Communist Party activists of Hungarian ethnicity. They were against “the sons of the rotten Romanian bourgeoisie, espousing their decaying nationalism”, so they sprayed them with rocks and empty bottles and then stormed them armed with knives and bats. Many students were savagely beaten; they took refuge in their dorm (caminul “Avram Iancu”) and baricadated there. The Hungarian activists assaulted the dorm and, not being able to break in, tried to put it on fire; the students were saved form being burned alive by a Soviet patrol - the soldiers fired a few shots in the air and the aggressors abandoned the “siege” and ran away. So I think you should also take these kind of events into account when talking about Romanian abuses after 1944. Actually the Romanian administration was oficially reinstalled only in 1945 and was pretty frail during the first years after the war, the only “stable” force in the area being the Red army. And as a very strange occurrence, the new ruling party leaders, at least in Transylvania, were in majority Hungarian ethnics.

About “Aurel Munteanu” case, I agree with you, it has been already presented in this topic.

PS: and for the sources, some of my university professors witnessed those events...

This post has been edited by Agarici on September 21, 2005 02:45 am

Dragos, about “Teroarea horthysto-fascista…”, I don’t think that the authors added new facts. They (Ardeleanu and Musat) were professional historians, tough close to the party line. In my opinion, their big mistake was to go along with the socialist/communist vision about history, as a science/discipline serving a political (higher) purpose instead of having as only objective to establish the facts. They discredited themselves by doing that; so given that their interpretation of the events is not to be taken into consideration, in my opinion. But the book is dealing mainly with facts and the analysis/ interpretation part is limited to the introduction and to a few paragraphs in each chapter. There is another flaw of the book which should be underlined here: the title sounds strange (propaganda), and I think it wasn’t a good thing to focus only on the atrocities and to extract them from the general explanatory context of the period in which they took place; however, I think this was highly unusual. In the spirit of Denes’ attitude towards the book, I admit that it could have a manipulatory effect on people completely ignorant of the historical context of those years, which is not the case with most members of this forum. I would like to have a better book about those events, balanced and written with maximal objectivity. Since we don’t, we have to discriminately use what we have, and I think/hope we can deal in a mature way with that. We should also very seriously point out that the authors did not use any offensive or derogatory content towards the Hungarians or their political leaders (not from the present nor from the past); if they had, it would have been a shame to even mention that book, regardless its documentaristic quality. Unfortunately, this thing happen quite often the in the case of Hungarian nationalist propaganda. There was a book presented by Dragos (the moderator), somewhere on the forum, wrote by a Hungarian "historian" - a sort of compendium of Romanian history, full of invectives; still the book was used as a source by some fellow forum members. As for the facts presented in “Teroarea horthysto-fascista”, probably some of them are less or incorrectly documented (Dragos mentioned the Traznea episode), but this kind of shortcomings can quite simply be overcame by using a critical manner of reading: we should check the references for each case in part. If an episode is properly documented than everything is OK, if there are no sources we shouldn’t even mention it, and if the references are incomplete we should proceed with maximum caution and search for complementary/alternative sources.

Denes, I agree that the historian's role is not to count the crimes of the past… but neither to hide them. I think the historian's mission (even of an amateur, “after work hours” historian as some of us pretend to be) is to establish the facts and to analyze them. To hide the realities of the past behind considerations linked with the comfort of the present might be as counterproductive as the counting of the crimes. As for maintaining/improving a good “climate” in the present, I suggested a topic in the General section, with each one’s relevant intercultural experiences (because I’m convinced they exist)… but apparently nobody seemed to be interested. I think this kind of communication is more efficient in fighting any possible prejudices than hiding those events from the past which are not convenient for us… In my humble opinion, if we want to live in harmony we should be working for that in the present (and with the present), and not "re-inventing" the past.

This post has been edited by Agarici on January 26, 2006 05:07 pm

When I was student I lived in "Avram Iancu" hostel. I heard this story from older students. They were baricadeted at the last floor (3th floor) with beds and other pieces of furniture and used boiled water against agresors.

And again about romainian "atrocities": My grand father started the military service after the war, in 1945 in Cluj. After instruction period, his mision was mainlly to accompany the war invalids (blinds) to the medical visit. He told me that for a romanian soldier it was very risky to walk alone in the suburbs of the town or in town in the night because of the hungarian ethnic population's agressivity. From the begining they were stongly adviced to walk allways in groups.

With regard war crimes, Romanian and Hungarian WW2, while at my brother in laws house I found a book called "TEROAREA HORTHYSTO-FASCISTA IN NORD VESTUL ROMANIEI Septembrie 1940 - Octombrie 1944,"

Published in Bucharet in 1985 Inside page says: Authors ION ARDELEANU, GHEORGHE BODEA, MIHAI FATU, OLIVER LUSTIG, MIRCEA MUSAT, LUDOVIC VAJDA,

Contains lots of information and pictures, possibly a copy can be obtained at a local bookseeler or your public library.

I hope its some help, Kevin.

That controversial book has been discussed at lengths before. Check previous posts.

Basically, the book was published by Editura Politica (Political Publishing House) during the last period of the Communist regime, presumably to political order, to fit the nationalist agenda of those times. Therefore it's unreliable and cannot be regarded as a scholarly source.
I believe it has been published in English as well.

Gen. Dénes

Have you read this book Denes?

It is not unreliable, just biased. The book is based on extensive sources and almost all of the facts in it are real. Only some details can be questioned, the basic facts are accurate.

I did read parts of the book, not all, many years ago, so I know what I am talking about. Just look at the title, for example...

I am really surprised that there are historically minded people who still look at this controversial book as a reliable source. That speaks volumes of their mindset.

We've discussed this before, and I don't wish to engage into further polemics on this topic.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 26, 2006 04:44 pm

Maybe you should read the book again, the full book. And after that, maybe you could tell us why this book is innacurate and which facts are not true.

I only bought this book some months ago. Before that, i also thought it is an unreliable book. But, after reading it and checking some of the facts, i changed my opinion.

It is ridiculous to contest a book without presenting any facts and without reading it fully, just because it was published by the communists. I can send you a copy of it if you want. After you read it, we can continue the discussion about it, based on facts.

This post has been edited by dragos03 on January 26, 2006 05:03 pm

Hi Guys,

I think there are two issues here. One is propaganda intent and the other is historical accuracy.

There is no reasonable doubt that the book had nationalist propaganda intent for the Ceausescu regime when first published, some of it probably inherited from wartime propaganda, judging by the photos. However, this does not necessarily mean that it is wildly inaccurate. Truth makes the best propaganda.

Several things did strike me. Firstly, the scale of alleged deaths is not massive by WWII standards. If the numbers are exaggerated they are not exaggerated to implausible heights.

The second thing is that the book is heavily annotated, which means that an attentive researcher can if necessary follow up all the sources if he so wishes. So the authors have left numerous hostages to fortune.

The greatest weakness is that there is no academic detachment. The book is entirely from the Romanian perspective and lacks any Hungarian counterpoint whatsoever.

Despite its limitations, it is a useful book to have because there is nothing much else on the subject. However, I would very much like to see a more truly academically detached study that uses Hungarian sources as well.

Cheers,

Sid.

Sid, I have not asserted that the book is baseless. Obviously, there were atrocities committed during those years - by both sides.

What I've asserted is that since it was written under obvious political guidance in a totalitarian regime, one cannot know where historical accuracy stops and fabrications start. That's why, in my view, the book is unreliable and therefore useless for serious historical studies.

I disagree here. The book's singular status - which I doubt, BTW - does not make it more trustworthy by a single iota. A unique rubbish is still a rubbish - except for artworks, perhaps.

I agree here. I would also like to see a scholarly comprehensive study on this touchy subject. However, I am afraid we have to wait way too long until such a book would be published. Perhaps I am wrong, though. Time will tell.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 26, 2006 09:06 pm

Since the book in discussion offers plenty of photographic material, which can hardly be dismissed, I'm still waiting to see photographs showing Romanian atrocities in Transylvania. Since supposedly there was an equivalence of atorcities between the two sides, there should be the same balance in photographic evidence.

This post has been edited by dragos on January 26, 2006 10:37 pm

I know this might seem a little off-topic here, but it actually puts things into perspective:

http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-2ai011029e.htm

Reading "Teroarea Horthysto-Fascista..." one sees an almost identical type of crimes and atrocities.
But I am sure that some Serbs argue that the ICT data is biased and politicised, mere rubbish.

Since the atrocities you're referring to were committed by Rumanian troops/gunmen, on territory that remained all along under Rumanian control, I believe the photos you're looking for can be found in the Rumanian archives.

All I've seen so far are photos of Hungarian ethnics expulsed by Rumanian authorities from Southern Transylvania into the Hungarian controlled territory.

Gen. Dénes

Mr. Imperialist, having in mind that the Serbs were mostly allies of the Rumanians, and the Hungarians were mostly at war with them (e.g., in the dying days of the 2nd World War and the immediately post-war time period an estimated 40.000 Hungarian ethnics from Vojvodina were massacred by Serbian Communists under Tito's command), I am confused: which side are you trying to compare the Serbs' action in Kosovo to?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 27, 2006 12:55 am