Comrade Baron by Jaap Scholten

Author:Jaap Scholten [SCHOLTEN, JAAP]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HelenaHistoryPress
Published: 2016-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

In Romania the Hungarian nobles were enemies twice over, class enemies from an enemy country. After the war, Transyl-vanian aristocrats who had served in the Hungarian army or occupied high office were labelled war criminals and traitors by the Romanian government and in most cases sentenced to death in their absence. Their possessions became the property of the Romanian state. For some aristocrats, returning to Transylvania was not an option. The writer Count Albert Wass was sentenced to death in his absence and fled to the West. Erzsébet T.'s brother was another of those who received a death sentence. Baron Endre Atzél returned to Transylvania in 1944 with a three-man delegation, on his way to negotiate with Stalin, and was never heard from again. Géza Kemény, the grandfather of my friend Botond, was dragged out of his house in Pusztakamarás by Romanian soldiers along with his small son and taken into the hills, where a machine gun was put to his head. At the end of the war Béla Bethlen gave orders for the freeing of political prisoners, including many communists, because he feared that otherwise the Germans would execute them. In 1945 he was imprisoned by the communists for ten years, spending some of that time in Gherla. István Bethlen, former prime minister of Hungary and an outspoken opponent of the alliance with Nazi Germany, was taken to Moscow by the Russians and died in prison there in October 1946.

In Romania it was only after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 that show trials took place. In 1957 the Romanian authorities 'discovered' a plot involving fifty-seven people. The aim was to intimidate the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. Among those convicted were forty-nine Hungarians, half of them Catholic priests, Franciscan monks and titled or unti-tled nobles. Here too a small group of symbolic leaders was to be brought down in public. Ten of those convicted were given death sentences and three more died after a short time in prison. The harshest punishments were reserved for the clergy and titled aristocrats.

A number of those found guilty had set up a party whose aim was to restore democracy. During their trial they were accused of preparing a counterrevolution, under the slogan 'Long Live Zamora!' The leader of the organization, Baron József Huszár, was sentenced to death. The suspects were tortured over a long period of interrogation. I was given the details by a man who knew the Huszár family. József Huszár had a glass ampoule pushed into his urethra, which was then smashed with a hammer, and boiling oil was poured over his wounds. His torturers made sure they kept Huszár alive so that he could eventually be hanged.

In a mass trial, Count Farkas Bethlen was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. The court claimed that Károly Orbán, childhood friend of Emma P. and a former large landowner of noble extraction, was due to be appointed ambassador to London or minister of foreign affairs once the communists had been overthrown. The secret meetings Orbán was said to have attended in Marosvásárhely were bridge sessions in cellars.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.