Romanian & Hungarian war-crimes

Sid, I said nothing about Flamanda episode. I understand that we as individuals are small and unimportant entities to you, but apparently you are mistaking me with Alexandru H . This is way too much; I’ll send you my seconds this evening and the duel should take place first thing tomorrow. Being a gentleman, I’ll leave it to you to choose the weapons .

Now seriously, if you don’t even have the patience to carefully read what everyone said you should not rush yourself into radical, rude and offensive accusations. Perhaps you didn't know, but replying to every post is not compulsory on this forum. So I’m still waiting for you to apologize, and maybe it would't be such a useless thing to read, at least now, what I said.

It seems that you have something with the word skinned/skinning. You mentioned “Teroarea horthysto-fascista… “ (which falls into the group of books I mentioned in a previous post - well documented about those events, but also using some degree of propaganda) saying that you haven’t found out anything about skinning in it - you should read again. However, since you have red it you should be familiarized with the documented accounts the many killings, beatings, tortures… and other less common physical violence practices: pouring petrol on a four year old girl’s head from a Suncuius, Maramures County, and setting her on fire, forcing a retried person from Oradea to eat excrements spiced with paprika and drink urine, raping and torturing Aurica Manea from Bretcu, Trei Scaune County, in front of her father, and many others. As a part of this general picture does the skinning alive look like an outlying practice to you…?

This post has been edited by Agarici on June 18, 2005 10:12 pm

Sid, there is no contradiction between my two posts. In the first one, I described what happened; in the second, I mentioned my sources....

Sid, nobody contests that the Treznea incident happened. The problems is that the Hungarians have different story concerning the motives of the massacre. The Hungarian story claims that Hungarian soldiers passing through the village were machineguned from the church by the priest's daughters (!).

The truth was that not the soldiers were responsible (the soldiers passed through in order and without any incidents), there were Hungarian ethnics from the nearby city of Zalau, dressed in Hungarian military uniforms, sent by the ex-noble who owned the village. The noble wanted as many villagers as possible to be killed in order to reclaim the deserted village afterwards.

At Treznea the old orthodox priest was burned alive after being shot in both legs. A pregnant woman was stabbed with bayonets in the whom and let to die. Many other women and children were brutally murdered. They even killed 2 ethnic Hungarians from the village, as traitors, because they were trying to stop the massacre and protect their neighbours. I don't know what is so hard to believe that people who did those things could also have skinned a man alive.

I just returned from Europe and started to read through last weeks' posts.

I am very sorry to see that lately posts of certain members with extremist, xenofobic and chauvinistic views have flourished, who propagate unproven facts, with no apparent reaction from the moderators' part, casting a shadow on this forum, directly affecting its credibility.

I will not even attempt to react to all these inflammatory posts, as I am convinced that no amount of reasoning and counter-proofs will change, even the slightest, the opinion of these posters - who luckily are in minority here.

If my time permits, I will select a few posts, particularly those that are connected to aviation, and try to answer them, so the view of others would be heard as well.

I hope the quality of this forum will stay on course and won't slide to substandard levels and thus fade into obscurity.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 18, 2005 04:34 pm

Was anything extremist or xenofobic in my posts? Was there a lack of souces? I spent one day to talk to an entire village before writing what i wrote.

It is a shame to this forum that this guy can be a moderator.

I must say I don't see too many unproven/undocumented facts mentioned by the last posts in this topic. And may I ask, Mr. Denes, who those extremist, xenophobe, chauvinist members would be?

Is this another version of the strategy of denial or some members are still more equal that the others around here, and they could simply tell us what the truth is without having to bring forward a single proof?

This post has been edited by Agarici on June 18, 2005 10:52 pm

I dont know who those members are exactly, but we shouldnt forget members with "one-sided propaganda agenda" who also deal terrible blows to this forum's credibility, as seen here:

http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...=15&#entry34611

take care

Given the fact that this is a sensitive topic, in order to maintain a level of quality of the debate, it is required that all the facts presented should be brought together with the sources, be those books, eye witnesses, indirect accounts etc.

On the other hand, Denes, if those facts are presented with the proper sources, you can attack those sources (with arguments), not the people presenting them.

I agree with Dragos' fair stance on this issue and the points outlined above, which hopefully will find their way into the forum's guidelines (the sooner the better).

Once the problem of listing the sources of various allegations of both sides are clarified - dismissing outright all 'facts' that are not properly sourced - we should take a closer look on the sources themselves. For example, citing the infamous book 'Teroarea horthysto-fascista in nord-vestul Romaniei, septembrie 1940 — octombrie 1944' ['The Horthyst-Fascist Terror in North-Western Rumania (translation: Hungarian Terror in Northern Transylvania)', Sept. 1940 - Oct. 1944] in my opinion is similar to citing Herr Göbbels' or Comrade Ilya Ehrenburg's finest 'works', or the Hungarian extremists' hate-laced texts, like Csaba Dücsö's.

The problem of eye witnesses' recollections after more than a half decade of the events is a controversial one, as memory and over repeated facts can play tricks even on the best intended persons - as I personally learned while talking to persons in their late '70s, early '80s about events that happened during World War 2. What they recall today may or may not be true and can be hardly used as solid evidence.

I am looking forward to seeing the enforcement of the moderator's guidelines on future posts, dismissing all older posts that do not live up to this minimal standard.

Gen. Dénes

P.S. I don't have either the time, or the desire to reply to individual personal attacks, which only qualify the authors. If anyone has anything personal with me, use the PM feature or knock on my door.

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 18, 2005 07:50 pm

This is a radical, exaggerate view and I will simply not take it into account; also, by your own standards it is not documented.

You can see my opinion about the book mentioned expressed in an earlier post. Do you also have some arguments for dismissing this book as a source? I would very much like to hear them, if they exist. It appears to me that you fail to make the difference between the hard facts used, quoted, listed by an author and his conclusions. I think nobody in here quoted any conclusion or value statement from that book - they are pretty much cheap propaganda. But in what the facts itself are concerned, I must tell you that I don’t care who uses (or is trying to use them) if they are accurate, backed by data which could be found and verified in the archives.

This post has been edited by Agarici on June 18, 2005 10:53 pm

As an observation... I do not intend to defend any of the above statements... As I have said - just an observation: you can not put under the sign of relativity all the testimonies... Many of these testimonies are collective testimonies, as I have explained few months ago (my grand-grand mother being sliced by some guys)... I have explained also how my grand-parents "dealed" with such kind of memories that are however hard to forget...

It is pretty sad to see that this thread became a kind of "you killed more people than we did ..."

It is strange that you talk about personal attacks. But you are right and I completely agree with everything you say here. Also in the view of what you have said earlier, your individual personal attack only qualifies you...

Quote Denes:
"I am very sorry to see that lately posts of certain members with extremist, xenofobic and chauvinistic views have flourished, who propagate unproven facts, with no apparent reaction from the moderators' part, casting a shadow on this forum, directly affecting its credibility."

This post has been edited by Agarici on June 18, 2005 10:17 pm

Actually Dragos's stance is not fair at all. You insulted me (and other unidentified members) by calling me extremist, xenophobic and chauvinistic, without any reason. And you got away with it, without at least getting a warning.

I never insulted anyone on this forum. My posts were always based on facts. And now i am insulted by a moderator and the other moderators seem to think it's ok. I will not tolerate this situation. So, unless Denes gets a clear, public warning or he apologises for what he said about me, i will quit this forum soon.

I know that this thread regards the Romanian & Hungarian war crimes, but what about the Germans...

I remember my grand father saying that he saw many Germans gathered together at Ocnita (near Teaca - between Bistrita and Tg-Mures) and being beated by the Romanians (he told me that they were soldiers or gendarms)... There were Romanian warcrimes against the Germans? (Soviets excluded).
As a side note, I observed that the Romanians had a very good opinion about Germans. (actually Saxons)

This post has been edited by johnny_bi on June 18, 2005 09:49 pm

Agarici, Dragos03, relax.
If members were accused of extremism, xenophobic, Victor was among "us" too:

http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=274&st=45

He brought into discussion the skinned alive incident. And he also gave a source!
Apparently his source wasnt good enough either.

[edit -- OK, he didnt actually bring it into discussion, but he confirmed it thru the source in his reply to D-13th]

This post has been edited by Imperialist on June 18, 2005 09:57 pm