Hungarians in Slovakia in the letters and telegrams of Prince Primate Joseph Mindszenty, directed to the Western Heads of States 1945–1948
https://doi.org/10.61795/fssr.v26y2024i5.04
Abstract: Between 1945 and 1948, Prince Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Esztergom Joseph Mindszenty regularly wrote letters to Pope Pius XII, British diplomats, and cardinals in the United States, Britain, and Australia. His letters and telegrams, protesting against the plight of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia after 1945 and their forced Slovakisation and deportation to the Czech Republic, are prominent among these letters. This was given by his duties as the ecclesiastical superior of the Esztergom archdiocese in the territories on the north of the Danube River and by his status as archbishop and prince-primate. In our paper we attempt to summarize the relevant archivistic material in the years between 1945 and 1948: of the 118 Mindszenty letters found by our research so far, 33 deal with his efforts on behalf of the Hungarian community in Czechoslovakia.
Keywords: Joseph Mindszenty; 1945–1948; letters and telegrams; Hungarians in Czechoslovakia; violation of rights; protest.
Introduction
As an employee of the Vatican Secretariat of State, and especially as employee of the Historical Archives of the Section for Relations with States, I noticed that Cardinal Mindszenty wrote an extraordinary number of letters to Pope Pius XII and his immediate colleagues, the heads of the Vatican Secretariat of State. So far, I have counted 78 letters and telegrams on subjects of public historical interest. Morover, while working on the beatification of the archbishop, I noticed that he wrote an extraordinary number of letters and telegrams to American political leaders, and I found original copies of them in the archives of some of them (Somorjai–Zinner 2013).
The following is a report of the results of this research, indicating that the scope of the material would exceed the possibilities of a short report, so I will limit myself to the most relevant moments, referring to the already published contributions. This is an attempt to broaden the horizon and to complete the picture created by his copious number of correspondences with Hungarian governmental figures.[1]
- Mindszenty and the Hungarians of Slovakia in his letters written to Pope Pius XII
The first question for us is: how exactly did Mindszenty get to Slovakia? He was the Prince-Primate of Hungary, in his own interpretation of Great Hungary, for which there is a Slovak word: “Uhorsko” (in Czech “Uhersko”). However, he probably did not know the word. Here there is a reason for tension: the Holy See, the Vatican, understood the jurisdiction of the prince-primate to be the territory of the respective countries and therefore did not share the position of the Archbishop of Esztergom (Ostrihom in Slovak). We could say that Mindszenty did not come to Slovakia but that southern Slovakia was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Esztergom. The Archdiocese of Esztergom predated the formation of Slovakia as a state. Esztergom, as is well known, became an archbishopric in 1001 by a papal bull issued at the Synod of Ravenna, which was attended by the Christian authorities of the time, including Pope Sylvester II and Emperor Otto III. The Hungarian king was represented by Archbishop Astrik of Coloca (Hungary).
The greater part of the territory of the Archdiocese of Esztergom was located north of the River Danube (and River Ipel), which in 1922 became an apostolic administration with the see in Trnava (Nagyszombat in Hungarian). Most of these, with Hungarian populations, returned to Esztergom in Hungary, according to the first Vienna Award in 1938. Trnava remained the apostolic administration, so the territories under Esztergom had another vicar general for six years, under Hungarian government, with the see Trnovec nad Váhom (Vágtarnóc in Hungarian).
The ecclesiastical annexation of southern Slovakia and Mindszenty’s struggle for its return
When the Soviet troops marched into the Czechoslovak Republic, these areas became again Czechoslovak territory. No peace treaty had yet been signed, but the Czechoslovak authorities had already taken over the administration and taken action, just as in 1919–1920, and many Hungarians, including priests, who were a threat to the old-new state were expelled from their territory.
At that time there was no Archbishop in Esztergom, because Justinian Serédi, who was born in the ancient Benedictine village of Diakovce (Deáki in Hungarian) and had family ties to our territory in discussion, died on March 29, 1945. In the period of vacancy, Msgr. János Drahos was the chapter administrator,[2] but the Czechoslovak authorities did not tolerate his ecclesiastical activity on their own territories. Therefore, at their request, the apostolic see took the administration of these territories away from the see of Esztergom, namely from his vicar general, Rev. Ján Hanzlík of Trnovec nad Váhom, who was a Slovak and spoke Hungarian very well. Hanzlík informed about this in a letter three days after, directed to the new archbishop, Joseph Mindszenty, on October 22, 1945. What happened was that, in the absence of an apostolic nuncio, the Vatican Secretariat of State, on the authority of the chargé d’affaires of the Prague nunciature’s, informed Bishop Pavol Jantausch, Apostolic Administrator of Trnava, that he would regain jurisdiction over these territories on October 19, 1945.
Mindszenty, whose official inauguration took place on October 7, 1945. in Esztergom, inherited this issue as one of his first tasks. In a letter dated October 23, he asked His Holiness Pope Pius XII to make no changes, at least until the peace treaty had been signed. He did no more than reverse the Vatican’s argument rejecting his request of a few years earlier about Prekmurje (Slovenia) to be reattached to the diocese of Szombathely.[3] In our case, this had to be done by February 10, 1947, when the Treaty of Paris, which also established the de jure borders, came into force. Until then, however, the Czechoslovak authorities were de facto in possession.
The official reply was only received after he had personally visited the Vatican Secretariat of State on December 10 and explained his position in detail. At the time, the Secretary to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Msgr. Domenico Tardini,[4] blamed his subordinate for not having duly informed the competent ecclesiastical authority of this important change, but in his defence he said that there was no nuncio in Budapest and that communication between Rome and Esztergom was very difficult. Finally, on January 27, 1946, in a written reply Tardini justified the measure on the grounds of “the urgency of the time,” while reassuring the Archbishop of Esztergom that “the diocesan boundaries would not change in any way.” Therefore, there has been neither a dismemberment nor an aggregation that would reduce or increase the former diocesan boundaries.
Mindszenty then made several more appeals to Pope Pius XII. In a letter of April 11, 1946 (see Somorjai 2019), he argued that the dioceses should not be split up and that the Hungarian faithful in neighboring countries should be cared for in their own language. In a letter of April 24, 1947, he asked that the southern Slovakian part of the Esztergom Archdiocese should not become a separate diocese. Subsequently, in a letter of June 12, 1947, he asked for a share of the income from the estates in Czechoslovakia.
He also wrote other letters concerning his diocese, the most important of which is perhaps the one on August 27, 1947. He resigned his title of archbishop because he had been unable to achieve results. The resignation was conditional, so the official reply of November 5, 1947, encouraged him to continue his efforts.[5]
It goes beyond the time frame indicated in the address, but we note that he sent further correspondences on this subject both from the American Embassy and during his stay in Vienna.
For the historical context of the letters bellow, it is important to make a note on the relationship of Trnava as archdiocese and Mindszenty. On December 30, 1977, Pope Paul VI erected the Apostolic See of Trnava to the rank of archdiocese by his bull Qui divino consilio.[6] The question is why the Vatican waited so long. The answer is presumably (also) because it was mindful of the sensitivities of the former Archbishop Mindszenty and his six further letters on the subject from the US Embassy in Budapest, and two further letters from Vienna, all requesting that no changes be made. After Mindszenty’s death in 1975, his person could no longer be an obstacle to the erection of the seat of Nagyszombat. It should be noted that, following this decision, the other dioceses in Slovakia were subordinated by the Holy See to this metropolis as “suffraganeous.”
The persecution of the Hungarians in Slovakia in the letters of Cardinal Mindszenty
The Czechoslovak Republic wanted to expel the Hungarians from his territories. On this behalf there were two directions. One was the southern one, called population exchange, and the native Hungarians were settled in the areas south of the Danube. Mindszenty, as the competent Bishop and Prince-Primate of Hungary, repeatedly spoke out against this. The Hungarian literature on this subject is abundant, so we will focus on his letters to Pope Pius XII on behalf of the Hungarians deported to the Czech Republic. He had already informed the Vatican Secretariat of State and the leaders of the Allied Powers about the situation of the Hungarians on November 8, 1945, and then in a printed circular letter in Latin on November 15. In a letter of protest to Mindszenty on December 15, Tardini wrote that it was only from this letter of the Cardinal Archbishop that he had learned of the inhuman treatment of the Hungarians in southern Slovakia by the Czechoslovak authorities.
Between 1946 and 1948, he continued to besiege the Pope with letters and dispatches, of which we can only give a taste here: nine in 1946, five in 1947, and one in 1948. On January 9, 1947, he compared the forcible removal of Hungarians from their “ancient land of a thousand years to the so-called Sudetenland” to the deportation of the Jews, and in 1948 he again defended the Hungarian people of Slovakia in his letters. A total of 21 letters on this subject, addressed to Pope Pius XII, have been uncovered so far (See Somorjai 2021).
- Mindszenty and the Hungarians in Slovakia in the letters directed to British authorities
Mindszenty’s letters to the British government officials have been dealt with in several of our publications. Our attention was drawn to the reports of British diplomacy, in so far as we found Mindszenty’s name there. In our communications we have gone as far as June 1946.[7] In our summary and evaluation of these communications, we have highlighted the idea that the British had early on expressed the view that Mindszenty’s political manifestations would not be successful.[8] We can conclude that Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom, Prince-Primate of Hungary, regularly wrote to British diplomats between 1945 and 1948, and also to American, British, and Australian cardinals who were created by Pope Pius XII together with him in 1946. His letters and telegrams protesting against the plight of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia and their deportation occupied an important place among these letters. He was motivated to do so by his duties as bishop, as the ecclesiastical superior of the Esztergom archdiocesan territories north of the Danube, and by his status as archbishop-metropolitan and prince-primate. More recently, we have summarized the relevant material from the period 1945–1948.[9] Of the 40 letters we found, 14 deal with his efforts on behalf of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia.
In the following are a list and quotation from his letters written on behalf of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. In addition, there are several letters from Mindszenty concerning Hungarians in Transcarpathia, Transylvania, and Yugoslavia, as well as several other items describing the political situation in Hungary.
1945
The first letter examined in this context is dated on October 7, 1945, directed to Gascoigne,[10] a British representative in Budapest. In this the prince-primate asked to take steps, that the measures that injured people’s rights and were unlawful be urgently remedied, and that suitable reparations be made. The text of the letter is the following:
Copy
No. 3564/1945 Esztergom, October 7, 1945.
Your Excellency,
A considerable part of the Archdiocese of Esztergom is situated on the other side of the Danube—across the borderline of Trianon which is again effective for the duration of the armistice. From there I am hearing now unceasing cry for help.
The more than one million Hungarians who live on the one hand in a great group immediately on the banks of the Danube on the other hand scattered in whole Slovakia—contrary to the solemn declaration of the Great Powers—are not entitled to those citizenship right which are due the other citizens of the Czechoslovakian State on the land where they have been living for one thousand years and where even the slovaks never suffered such a persecution. In according of this I have had lately the honour to reach Your Excellency some serious particulars.
Now the Czechoslovakian authorities take away from the towns and the little villages the Hungarians often with his families and in the night to unknown places. For example from Érsekujvár [Nové Zámky][11] in the end of October with the assistance of officers of the National Security (Národná Bezpečnost’) coming from Pozsony [Bratislava] and Nyitra [Nitra], recently from Léva [Levice] carried many hundred men away to concentration or working camps of anywhere in Bohemia [i.e., Czechia] in goods wagons locked in a similar manner they carried off the Jews as well. In the present the well situated and smallholders are taken away from their houses in order to lay hands on these and confiscate all personal estates too of the Hungarians in the moment when they must leave their home.
From Mr. Beneš—some people say, that he is democratic—write The Times in his issue of October 22. p. 15, that he “and his Government are adamantly determined to rid the state of almost all of its … 800,000 Hungarians.” The number of the Hungarians living in Czechoslovakia is much more than 800,000 but what they must go away for from the land where they have been living for one thousand years?
Mr. Beneš can only in this way ensure Central Europe’s security? Only this way can he build—what he may call a “temple of peace” (p. 14), but in this temple the dead Hungarians are laying in crypt. One may silence in this manner also Central Europe, but this is a silence of the cemetery.
May I, Your Excellency, repeatedly request that You use all your influence in diplomatic ways that every measure taken against the Hungarians and their persecutions be ceased. It is now evident that this can be satisfactorily settled only by adjusting the border to Hungary in accordance with the desire of the Hungarians living there in a solid group for centuries. The Czechoslovak Government will the result of the plebiscite make smaller, therefore, certainly, persecute and expel now the Hungarians from this territory.
I feel sure, that Your Excellency’s Government already up to the present made much in the cause of truth and particularly in the interests of the Hungarian People, but I beg Your Excellency again, that You take steps, that the measures which injure people’s rights and are unlawful be urgendly remedies and that suitable reparations be made.
I have the honour to be respectfully, Your Excellency,
(Signed) Mindzenty [sic!] Jozsef. [not signed because a copy]
Prince Primate of Hungary,
Archbishop of Esztergom[12]
1946
On April 23, 1946, the prince-primate wrote to the King of the United Kingdom, George VI, and to the President of the United States of America, Harry S. Truman, in the interest of the Hungarians in the nearby states. Here we offer the text of the project in original English to the king (which differs in some details from the letter to the president):
Esztergom, Hungary, Easter Sunday, Sire; May it please Your Majesty; By the Grace—and just now especially onerous mission—of Divine Providence being the chief spiritual lord of Hungary, burdened by the office of my Predecessors who, for 946 or 947 years having been the first barons of the land, very often had to speak for the Hungarian nation, now, on the eve of the Peace negotiations, on behalf and in the name of my people that in the present circumstances are forced to silence, I most respectfully beg to approach immediately Your Majesty, asking Your Majesty, graciously to do everything in order that the mistakes of the Peace Treaty of Trianon after the First World War be not repeated; crushing once more our people, and causing perhaps new storms.
On behalf of the some 3,500,000 Hungarians living outside of the borders of “Trianon Hungary,” a mutilated fraction of the Hungary of King Saint Stephen (who had been the host of King Edmung Ironside’s two sons, and the father-in-law of Edward, and the grandfather of your own great Saint Margaret the Queen of Malcolm of Scotland) and also on behalf the millions of Hungarians residing in “Trianon Hungary” for these one thousand years.
In my conviction, this is the request and deeply felt desire of the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian Nation now unable freely to express themselves. Nor dan I doubt the fairness and justice of this request.
I have the honour to remain, Sire, with the profoundest respect, Your Majesty’s servant in Christ.[13]
On April 29, 1946, the prince-primate wrote a letter to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin.[14] He asked him to annul the agreement between Hungary and Czechoslovakia of February 27, 1946, on the mutual population change, since its decisions are contrary to human rights. He complained that the agreement does not guarantee minority rights for Hungarians. He condemned Beneš’s policies. Mindszenty saw the solution to the fate of the Hungarians in border adjustment: the question will only be settled, he wrote, if the territories in south Slovakia, inhabited by Hungarians, were annexed to Hungary. If the Great Powers do not allow this, then the Hungarians in Slovakia will face certain destruction. The same thing will happen to the Hungarians as had happened to the Jews by the hands of the Slovaks in 1944. He did not even recognize the population exchange agreement itself as valid: in his view, its provisions were contrary to moral and natural law and also to fundamental human rights.[15]
On June 25, 1946, he wrote to the new British representative, Knox Helm.[16] In this letter, he detailed the measures taken by the Slovak authorities five days earlier: they had posted a village-by-village notice that those who had not acquired Czechoslovak citizenship by 1938 had until June 25 to do so. In that case, they would have all rights that go with Czechoslovak citizenship. The next day, on June 21, it was announced that all peasants had to present their land titles at the mayor’s office. One by one they were asked if they wanted to stay in Czechoslovakia. After they had answered in the affirmative, as their parents and grandparents had all lived here, they were asked to sign a piece of paper. When they saw that it was related to Czechoslovak citizenship, they left without signing, except for a few who were in a difficult situation. The majority said they would not deny their Hungarian citizenship. In response, the authorities threatened to confiscate their property, deprive them of their rations of flour and sugar, and fine them 50 Czechoslovak crowns. He then wrote of the cancellation of the new mass in Nagyölved (Veľké Ludince), the ban on the use of the Hungarian language in churches, and the internment of Hungarian citizens from the surrounding areas of Szőgyén (Svodín; June 22), Muzsla (Mužla; June 24), and Kéménd (Kamenín; June 24). Finally, he described the atrocities that had taken place at the “Hidegvölgyi” camps (Nagyölved [Veľké Ludince]), the estate of the Archbishop of Esztergom.[17]
On July 22, 1946, he again appealed to Helm on behalf of the Bishop’s Conference, saying that of the 750,000 Hungarians living in Czechoslovakia, 200,000 were being forced to become Slovaks under threat of exile, confiscation of property, and internment, and another 400,000 were to be expelled. The Hungarian bishops were also, he wrote, standing up for the human rights of the inhabitants of the former Hungary.[18]
On August 4, 1946, Mindszenty wrote to both the American and the British ministers regarding the situation of the Hungarians in Romania and in Czechoslovakia. He wrote “soon after the armistice, Czechoslovakia declared that it did not want to live with the Hungarians (750,000) living on its territory. Because of the inhumane expulsion that had been started, the Hungarian government made an agreement with the Czechoslovak government in February of that year that as many Hungarians as Slovaks would be resettled from truncated Hungary; in addition, they would take 1,000 so-called war criminals from them, and then—without specifying the number—larger war criminals. The Czechoslovak government did not honour the agreement, did not pay the Hungarian officials, and continued the persecution in churches, schools, and economic life. It forced Hungarians to become Slovak citizens. Now all those who did not take Slovak citizenship are being scared hour after hour that they will be expelled.”[19]
On September 2, 1946, he again wrote to the same American and the British ministers, protesting against the resettlement of the Hungarians in Slovakia. The project preserved in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security is as follows. “When the list of expellees was drawn up, it was considered a war crime to display a Hungarian flag when Hungarian troops arrived in 1938. It is not the fascists who are expelled, but only the wealthy small farmers. Its elites have lived there for over a thousand years and have committed no crime. The Nuremberg trials in Germany did not find so many war criminals. What the Czechoslovak government is planning to do here in the near future is a violation of human rights. For this, the educated nations cannot take responsibility, because the human rights proclaimed at that time could prove to be empty propaganda tools. Starving and economically depressed for decades, Hungary is unable to feed another 300,000 people. Romania and Yugoslavia are preparing to take similar action against the same number of Hungarians separately. I ask for your kind intervention to stop this inhumane and criminal deportation.”[20]
On September 17, 1946, again, he protested to the both, British and American state secretaries. (Balogh 2015: 611) The Hungarian bishops, he wrote, “will ask Foreign Minister Bevin at their autumn conference to annul the Prague agreement because it is contrary to human rights and the Paris decisions, to prohibit forced population exchanges, and finally to stipulate and guarantee the rights of minorities in churches, schools, offices, etc.”[21]
On October 26, 1946, he wrote a short letter of recommendation to Secretary of State Bevin regarding the letter of the Hungarian women in Slovakia, written in French, and sent by him in the annex. In this unsigned letter, the Hungarian women in Slovakia described their sufferings. The letters of October 23 and 26 were sent by the Foreign Office to the British Mission in Budapest on January 22, 1947. According to the official note, no further action was intended in the matter.[22]
The deportation of Hungarians from Slovakia to the Czech Republic began on November 15, 1946. The prince-primate was informed of this two days later, and a week later, on November 22, 1946, he appealed to British Prime Minister Attlee.[23] Referring also to the UN General Assembly resolutions of November 19, he asked that justice be done as a matter of urgency to the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have been miserably deprived of their homes and property, and that those who have already been deported be returned to their homes and property as soon as possible through their government. He gave specific news about the villages of Muzsla (Mužla) and Ebed (Obid): “120 families have been deported from Muzsla, but the ‘deportation’ is still going on. There are medical examinations everywhere. The healthy ones are being taken. Muzsla is so surrounded by the military that no one can escape. On November 21, some 27 families escaped from Ebed. They crossed the border at Tát [on the other side of the River Danube, suburb of Esztergom]. On November 21 there is a horse-passage in Ebed; the horse-passages are taken away. Those who are taken away are also taken away, but in a different direction. It was thrown out that the corncrib must be cleared so that they have no hiding place. We are desperate.”[24]
The text is as follows:
Excellency,
The territory of Csallóköz [Žitný ostrov] and the whole northern coast-line of the Danube inhabited purely by Hungarians and at present by the verdict of the Armistice-agreement adjudged to Czechoslovakia became again the place of the most cruel and inhuman persecution.
The Czechs who couldn’t obtain the consent of the United Nations at the conference of Paris to the transfer of one part of the Hungarian population counting more than 600,000 persons, now try to tear off the Hungarian inhabitants from their native land, where they lived since thousand years.
Since the 16th November desperate refugees come to me from the northern side of the Danube and report that a most cruel deportation of the Hungarian is started towards the northern empty places of Czechoslovakia.
They conscript the poor people to work—men, women, youth separately. In the necks of the children boards are hung with dates of their birth. So are family-ties cut cruelly.
The transports are directed towards Kolin, Pilsen, Prague, Binin. Who refuses to go is put in chains and thrown into the cars. Someone saw how a young mother still lying in bed for three days was thrown into the transportation-car.
They permit to take with only 5 kg meal and just knife and fork. On the last day it was allowed already to carry pieces of furniture but the miserable can’t be delighted by this, because they are afraid that even this would be taken of them.
To allege some facts more, the military and the gendarmery arrived on Saturday the 16th November. Only to the village Muzsla 120 gendarmes and soldiers twice more with civil-clothed partisans, who are the worst of all, are arrived. Most of them are Slovakian soldiers but it is told, that there are Czechs among them too. Till now 120 families were expelled from Muzsla, but the conscription goes further on. Medical examination is held everywhere and only the healthy persons are transferred. Muzsla is surrounded so much by military that nobody could escape from there.
On the 21st November about 27 families fled from Ebed and they crossed the frontier by Tát. On this very day in Ebed the horses were conscripted too, the licenses were taken away. The cattle of the inhabitants is equally transferred but in another direction as the men are. It was decreed that even the corn-stalks must to be gathered that no hide-spot will remain to anyone. Everybody is utterly desperated.
The steps of my late predecessor taken by the Hungarian Government till March, 1944 have assured to the Jews in Hungary the best treatment what they could have anywhere in Europe. After the decisive German occupation of our country my predecessor has obtained that the deportation of the Jews in Budapest has begun only about the month of October, when most of them could attain the protection of the liberating armies. Now the Hungarians of Czechoslovakia are in the same or even worse condition. I request, Your Excellency, to carry out the necessary measures to put and end to such misdeeds for those extirpation this war was waged. The Hungarians of Czechoslovakia shall have a share of the fundamental human rights and come back to Hungary, because the experiences of the last two years have sufficiently shown that the use of human rights cannot be hoped in Czechoslovakia.
In the General Assembly of the United Nations, in the meeting held on the 19th November the representatives esteemed necessary to take immediate measures to stop at once the persecution of minorities in certain countries. I am sorry to see, that in the meantime there measures are absolutely needed in Czechoslovakia boasting with his democracy.
I demand, Your Excellency, that by the action of your Government assure justice to hundred thousands of Hungarians reduces to such a deplorable condition, guarantee to the deported people the return to their home and restitution of their property.
I remain, Excellency, with the expression of my high esteem.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed) Joseph Card. Mindszenty,
Prince-Primate of Hungary,
Archbishop of Esztergom.
Budapest, the November 22nd, 1946.
On the next day, November 23, he protested by telegram to the Cardinals who had been created at the same time as he had been: Spellman and Griffin.[25]
The text is as follows:
Alinea according to decision of Paris Peace Conference question of Hungarian in Slovakia should be settled by agreement between Hungarian and Czechoslovak Government or in absence of agreement being reached with assistance council Foreign Ministers STOP Hungarian Government has already expressed willingness open negotiations but these have not started yet STOP without awaiting negotiations Czechoslovak authorities have unilaterally begun solution of question of Hungarians in Slovakia and are using brutal methods with object produce accomplished facts STOP first objective of Czechoslovak move seems removal of Hungarians from Hungarian inhabited areas along south Slovak frontier STOP November seventeenth systematic deportation population Hungarian villages began with methods similar Nazi deportations STOP Hungarians forcibly transported to districts evacuate by Germans in Czechoslovakia STOP villages concerned surrounded by armed guards forbidding Hungarians leave their homes even for attending mass Sunday STOP Alinea deportations carried out under pretext compulsory labour decree but in practice legal provisions disregarded STOP while decree only provides for tempory compulsory labour service of men from sixteen to fifty five and women eighteen to fourthy and exempts mothers young children expectant mothers STOP in violation of decree Czechoslovak authorities deport women with babies or in their seventh or eight month which even results in miscarriage and women being transported separated from their husbands STOP men women and children from tender years and men aged eighty being taken and families being turned from thousand years homes and aged unsupported people incapable of work also deported STOP properties of deported families given to new Slovak settlers and goods and chattles confiscated without compensation STOP Slovak authorities make deportees sign forms in Slovak language which they do not understand STOP population resisting bitterly resulting casualties including wounded and dead STOP intervention my precedessor and all Hungarian bishops stopped deportation of Jews by Nazis thus saving some tho thousand Hungarian Jews STOP now Hungarian catholics are being deported from their thousand year homes in brutal fashion eighteen months after War horrors ended and forced to leave soil of their ancestors STOP feel it my duty appeal for support World public opinion in order to discontinue deportations STOP beg Your Excellency to use your authority with State Department and United Nations for prevention measures contrary all human rights and international law and with a view for arranging for return to their homes of deported Hungarians and restoration of their confiscated properties STOP documentary evidence for cabled facts available
CARDINAL MINDSZENTY
The same text was sent by him by means of the Minister in Rome to the Vatican.[26] The copy sent to Cardinal Griffin is preserved in the files of the Foreign Office, London, which was sent by the Office of Griffin November 25, 1946, to Mr. Christopher Paget Mayhew,[27] Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office.[28] The Catholic Herald, in its November 29, 1949, issue published several citations.[29]
1947
In the course of the year, the prince-primate spoke five times with British politicians in defence of the Hungarian people in Czechoslovakia.
The first in chronological order is his telegram dated February 5, 1947, addressed to King George VI,[30] US President Harry S. Truman,[31] and Msgr. Montini,[32] head of the General Affairs Section of the Vatican Secretariat of State. He addressed the barbaric deportations taking place in Czechoslovakia, because thousands of Hungarians were being resettled in the Sudetenland. He asked for help.
Mindszenty-His Britannic Majesty, London
With deepest respect and hopeful supplication I beg to submit to Your Majesty the case of the horrible persecution of 652 thousand Hungarians since two years under Czechoslovak rule. Summarily without trial Hungarians are deprived of their human rights all their property religious and cultural freedom and the use of their mother tongue. These rights were declared as inviolable and sacred by charter of United Nations and Great Powers and guaranteed by their authority. Since November 16 under pretext of compulsory labour children aged persons invalids bedridden persons women in pregnancy or after childbirth business men smallholders owning land property of 20-100 acres University graduated ordained priests are deported from thousand years home in cattleboxes to work as farm labourers. Among the sick and children many die during the transport owing to intense cold. In name of humanity I beseech your Majesty that similar to the support given to the Churches intervention in case of deportation Jews to years ago deign to raise his voice of protest against these deportations infringing the laws of God as well as humanitarian principles in order to put end to horrible suffering of hundred thousands.
Mindszenty Cardinal Primate of Hungary.[33]
On February 15, 1947, he wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Bevin:[34]
DISPATCH
The Right Honourable
Ernest Bevin
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
LONDON
As the head of the Hungarian Catholic Church, who am observing this debasement and extermination of human beings from the nearest proximity with the deepest affliction and who did everything possible on the most concrete serious bases in order to stop and repair these inhuman actions, I cannot ommit to make certain observations regarding this declaration, commending them to the close attention of the high personage, issuer of the declaration.
The deportations of masses cannot be declared permitted! Anyone, who declares them permitted, has to reckon with the constant agitation of the states and with the incalculable persecution of the inhabitants. What is thus to become of the free and frightless life?
The Czechoslovakian State first deprived the persecuted and deported Hungarians of their citizenship, of all human rights and thrust those who were during ten centuries free-men and farmers into a state of slavery. These are in the true sense of the word offered for sale.
If these unparallelled proceedings of the Czechoslovakian State against the Hungarians, if the deportaions beyond the frontiers of the Czechoslovakian republic and into an Oriental State, if the murders, the suicides of those driven to despair, the cases of madness, of freezings on account of the tremendous cold can be contained in the paragraphs of the Peace Treaties, these latter cannot claim the character of ethical norms. Besides, where is the force and value of Chartas then destined to assure human rights and dignity?
These persecutions and spoliations of right are going on since the spring of 1945, the deportations since November 16, 1946. The Czechoslovakian State was not troubled by the peace-negocitations, it did not await their decisions, but desacrated the period, probably even the day of the signing of the Peace with similar inhuman actions. I need not mention, that in the convention previously concluded with the Hungarian Government regarding the exchange of population it bound itself to refrain from such compulsory measures.
If on the bases and in the interest of the peace and the already signed documents thereof this atrocious injustice will not be stopped and remedied, it cannot be hoped that God’s blessing be on this work of peace.
If I am therefore invoking and imploring justice for the Hungarians in Slovakia also in this form, I am serving this work of peace as well, a work of peace so hard and trying for Hungary. This work of peace has to be furthered in the first place by those mighty nations and their leaders, who own the possibility and the power thereto. In the interest of this great aim did I write my imploring lines.
May I beg Your Excellency to accepts the expression of my special esteem.
Esztergom, February 1947.
Joseph Mindszenty, m.p. [not signed]
Cardinal, Prince Primate,
Archbishop of Esztergom.”[35]
On October 20, 1947, he wrote two letters to some British politicians. It was probably intended that one of them should be forwarded to the British Foreign Minister himself. The texts of the two letters differ.[36]
On October 28, 1947, he wrote a letter to Helm on behalf of the three villages in the nearby of Bratislava, the Slovak Capital, annexed to Czechoslovakia.[37] The text is as follows:
Your Excellency,
The Peace Treaty of Paris obliged Hungary to cede to Czechoslovakia, besides the immense territories amounting to the 1/6 part of the former territory of the country, three other communities from the body of mutilated Hungary (Oroszvár, Horvátjárfalu, Dunacsún [Rusovce, Jarovce, and Čunovo]) which never belonged to Czechoslovakia, being situated on this side of the Danube. All legal basis in respect of either language, history, economics or geography, was entirely lacking. Yet it is not this, but the new development of the fate of these three communities we want to speak of. The human and civil rights of these above named communities were guaranteed by Czechoslovakia. The Peace Treaty only mentions persons departing voluntarily.
On the 15th of the current month Czechoslovakia took possession of the three communities. On the same day delegates of the Czechoslovak school-inspector’s office in Bratislava gave orders on the spot to the four teachers (two nuns and two lay teachers) of the catholic schools at Oroszvár, to continue the teaching as before. On the next day, October 16th, however, the chief school-inspector himself personally informed them by word of mouth that the teaching in Hungarian language will cease and the teachers will be dismissed. The commissary of the community then informed the Hungarian teachers that in case they are willing to teach in Slovak schools and in Slovak language, they should go to Bratislava to the school-inspector’s office. The two nuns—relying on the Peace Treaty—refused to follow this offer. The two lay catholic teachers, however, under the pressure of the danger of losing the means of livelihood for their family—went to Bratislava and signed a declaration at the school-inspector office, according to which they undertake to learn Slovak within six months and go to teach in Slovak schools.
On October 23–24th the registrations of the schoolchildren took place at Oroszvár and the new Slovak teachers announced the beginning of the teaching—presumably Slovak teaching—for October 27th.
The inhabitans of Oroszvár are Hungarians.
In the “integrity of human and civil rights” the right of the mother-tonge, of the national culture, of the former livelihood of those living there (i.e. of the teachers) is included; the right of every citizen to the use of his mother-tongue, to education, to abode in freedom on his former dwelling place, to the inviolability of property, etc.
So the Czechoslovak authorities stood for one single day on the basis of the Peace Treaty, on the very next day, however, they committed a flagrant and brutal offense against it.
Czechoslovakia came into possession of these three communities on the intervention of the Great Powers. As we cannot know whether the Hungarian Government will occupy themselves with this severe offense I confide the matter to the hands of Your Excellency in the name of the protection of the human and civil rights, by virtues of my office of constitutional dignitary who is competent in like matters since 950 years.
I request the urgent reestablishment of the Hungarian schools and the Hungarian teachers, the legal defense of the inhabitants of these communities.
May I ask for kind informations regarding the steps to be taken.
Asking Your Excellency to accept the expression of my sincere esteem, I am
Esztergom, October 28th, 1947.
Sgd: Joseph Cardinal Mindzenty,
Cardinal Prince Primate,
Archbishop of Esztergom.
At the end of November 1947, he wrote to Cardinal Gilroy, Archbishop of Sydney:[38]
MEMORANDUM (typewritten, without name, without date)
By the terms of the Armistice of 1945 Upper Hungary [i.e., Slovakia today] with a population of 652,000 Hungarians was assigned to Czechoslovakia. Ninety per cent of this territory is purely Hungarian belonging to dismembered Hungary.
In a way reminiscent of the Hitler regime, these Hungarians were deprived of all human and civic rights. They lost their property and estates, were thrown out of their trades and professions and left without the means of obtaining their daily bread—and all this without any legal process whatever. Attention is drawn to the following statistics:
- 100,000 Hungarians were inhumanly deported to the Sudeten region and forced to become servants.
- Another 350,000 were inhumanly forced by the police, under terroristic pressure, by forcible deportation and expulsion, by continual threats, to renounce their country and their mother tongue and to declare themselves of Slav nationality.
- 3,000 families were sent into over-populated parts of mutilated Hungary, where misery reigns. The extermination of non-Slav elements is going on under an odious system nothing different from slave-hunting.
After the expulsion of 100 members of the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist clergy of Hungary, the expulsion of another 123 has begun. Through these measures 500,000 Hungarians remaining in Slovakia—a country in which there is a great scarcity of clergy—are deprived of all spiritual care, for they are ignorant of the Slav language. They did not become Slav-speaking automatically when they were registered as Slavs. The priests who were forced out were Slovak speaking. Jews were persecuted in the same way, merely because they were Jews.
This persecution of Hungarians is absolutely opposed to the decision of the Conference of Paris, to the human rights Proclaimed by the Allied Powers, to the elementary idea of freedom. They are deprived of rights, of property, of bread, and of the consolations of religion as well. The savage in central Africa is better treated than they are in the centre of Europe.
The pretext of the persecution is the reception given to Hungarian groops who marched into ancient Hungarian territory with the consent—remember—of the Slovaks. There is surely no proportion between the “crime” and the punishment.
This scandalous treatment of an ancient people is the cause of many deaths, suicides and nervous maladies approaching madness.
The Hungarian Bench of Bishops demands the immediate cessation of this persecution and the immediate establishment of an International Committee in order to prevent the continuation of such atrocities, which the Czechoslovak Government hypocritically denies.”
[not signed]
1948
In this year he again wrote to Helm and the American minister Chapin[39] on behalf of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia, with the date August 10, 1948.[40]
Your Excellency,
I have been informed that Czechoslovakia has again extended for a further period of six months the “labour service” in Sudetenland of the Hungarians carried off by force to that province from the Hungarian territories allotted to it at the end of 1946 and early in 1947.
The outrage on human rights involved both in the original action and its continuation is far too grave to allow me to pass over the matter in silence.
This abduction was made for two reasons:
- The dispersal by force of the 650,000 Hungarians living in a compact block. Such a solution of the nationality question is at variance with the war-aims proclaimed by the Western Powers and with the Charters (Human rights, peace without fear and want, etc.) and runs counter equally to the fundamental conditions underlying the existence of Czechoslovakia laid down in 1919 by the Western Powers. Under Article 1 of Chapter I. of the Treaty of St. Germain Czechoslovakia was established as a nationality State subject to the preliminary condition that Czechoslovakia should guarantee the nationalities allotted to her their nationality and linguistic rights and should never at any time pass laws or issue decrees prejudicing those rights. The fact that between 1919 and 1939 Czechoslovakia failed to make that country popular with her nationalities does not entitle her to flout human rights, to resort to deportation, to the long-established Hungarian block, etc. All she was entitled to was at most to call to account individually persons guilty of offences against the unity of the State and to punish them according to their deserts; but she was not under any circumstances entitled to institute collective punishment, to deprive everyone of his human rights or to take away everyone’s mother tongue and ancestral property wihtout judgment of a court of law,—particularly in view of the fact that the State itself must be held partly responsible for alienating the sympathies of its nationals and that the responsibility must be laid partly also on the judgment of the peace—dictators in forcing into an unnatural union peoples not destined by God or Nature to belong to one and the same State.
- The Czechs had driven the Germans out of Sudetenland. That province had become uninhabited and its fields left without cultivators. Again, Bohemia itself is so entirely a “one-child” country that its agriculture is badly in want of labour; for it is a general world-phenomenon that among peoples addicted to birth-control the people are found leaving the villages and country districts and moving into the towns. These two crimes of the Czech people running counter to human rights (viz. the driving away of the population on the basis of the Hitlerian principle of collective responsibility and the practice of abortion) offer no justification for the committal of this further crime against human rights—the deportation of Hungarians.
The Hungarians have been autoththonous inhabitants of their present places of residence since the ninth century. They have had churches, schools, cemeteries, houses and lands of their own and respectable means of earning sufficient to enable them to provide for their families. This has all been taken from them by the Czechs, who have carried them off in a temperature of 20 to 30° below zero on journeys to foreign parts taking 5–6 days. On the way invalids and infants were frozen to death. Others became victims of armed brutality.
At the Sudeten stations the Czech landowners and officials set up veritable slave-markets in order to dispose of the deportees. In the places of work the deportees were overworked. Women with child had to tend 30-40 head of horned cattle. There was no Sunday rest, no opportunity of going to church; and the children had no Hungarian schools. In more than one place the diet was meagre, there was no fuel, and the deserted dwellings were infested with swarms of rats and mice, which devoured the food and clothes and even the footwear the deportees had brought with them from their homes. The treatment of the deportees was brutal. For that reason many of the deportees escaped. On arriving home, these persons found that their goods and chattels had already been stolen by partisans.
The deportation of the Hungarians was effected on the basis of the so-called “Public Labour” Decree No. 82 ex 1946. This was merely a “blind” to disguise the two objects referred to above. In the meantime, the statesmen who had at the outset attempted denial, admitted this fact. Fierlinger acknowledged that the Government Decree had a nationality objective. This is what appears on the whole to be revealed also by the fact that in 1946 it was officially announced that the public labour obligation applied to Czechs and Slovaks too and that in consequence Hungarians could not be exempted either. And now the Hungarians have been serving for two years already whereas the Czechs and Slovaks—if they were engaged in any public labour at all between the expulsion of the Germans and the end of 1946—were detained for short periods only, and that in the interests of their countries in which they enjoy special rights.
Seeing that the deportation is a breach of the Charters and of the Treaties of Peace (both I. and II.), and that it seriously affects the prestige of the Powers, I beg respectfully to request Your Excellency to take steps through your Government to provide that Czechoslovakia shall observe the Nationality Provision forming a fundamental condition of the First Treaty of Peace, shall see that human rights are enforced, shall convey the Hungarians back to their places of residence and reinstate them in their possessions and in their human rights.
With the expression of my profound respects,
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
Esztergom, August 10, 1948.
(Sgd.) József Mindszenty.
Cardinal, Prince-Primate,
Archbishop of Esztergom.
[To: His Excellency
Alexander Know Helm,
Minister of the British Empire,
Budapest, XIV. Stefánia út 22.]
- Some remarks on recent interpretations
Recent views suggest that Mindszenty would not have recognized the borders of Slovakia (Ungváry 2023). He, however, fought for diocesan boundaries and understood his own title, “Primate of Hungary,” to refer to the territory of Great Hungary, as a spiritual authority. According to the same author, Mindszenty wanted to restore the Polish-Hungarian border (see Somorjai–Zinner 2013: 149 and our commentary), thus abolishing the statehood of Slovakia. The propagator of these views is not correct: in 1939, when Carpathia was reconquered, the people celebrated this fact as the restoration of the 1000-year-old Polish-Hungarian border. Mindszenty may have been referring to this, but there is no sign that he ever referred to the whole line of the Polish-Hungarian border. A detailed refutation of this opinion goes beyond the scope of the subject of our title.
In any case, the Cardinal Archbishop Mindszenty’s argumentation was logical, clear, and unassailable. He asked for respect for international treaties, and he was not thinking in terms of state borders but of diocesan ones. When he sent a draft of diocesan boundaries to the Vatican based on the changed pastoral needs, he proposed changes only for the post-February 10, 1947, (i.e., the then present-day territory of the country), but he did not propose changes for the territories of dioceses in Slovakia and other neighboring countries that extend beyond the current territory at that time (see Balogh 2024). This was only done, as we know, in the case of our country in 1993. His position was that as long as communism lasts nihil innovetur (i.e., no innovations should be made in the ecclesiastical field). No new things should happen; diocesan boundaries should not be changed.
- Final remarks
It is now necessary to include other British archive sources in the research in order to get a clearer picture of how the British authorities related to the letters. Likewise, the archives of the Foreign Office in Prague and the Czechoslovak embassies and embassies also contain archival material relevant to our topic.
Mindszenty also frequently appealed to the American governmental authorities, often sending the same letter, with the same or similar date, to American diplomatic actors. Our impression is that Mindszenty must have had more confidence in the British on the Hungarian issue in Czechoslovakia, being a legitimist and trusting more in the kingdoms than in the republics. In any case, a detailed list of his letters to US diplomats is still to be compiled (see Balogh 2021). At the same time, the prince-primate wrote a couple of letters to the French authorities as well.
Archives consulted
Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (ÁBTL)[Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest]
Archivio Segreteria [di Stato] Rapporti con gli Stati (ASRS), Vatican
Commonwealth of Australia, Department of External Affairs, Canberra
Prímási Levéltár (EPL), Primatial Archives, Esztergom (Hungary)
The National Archives (TNA), Foreign Office (FO), Kew, London
Literature
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Balogh, Margit (2021). „Victim of History”: Cardinal Mindszenty. A Biography. The Catholic University of America Press, Washington D. C.
Balogh, Margit (2024). Mindszenty József esztergomi érsek tervezete az egyházmegyék határainak módosításáról és új püspökségek szervezéséről (1948. augusztus 17.) [The project of te Archbishop of Esztergom, Joseph Mindszenty, on the modification of the diocesan boundaries and the erection of new dioceses in Hungary (August 17, 1948)] Magyar Sion, Új folyam, Vol. 18 (60) (2024), No 1. 137–162.
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Somorjai, Adam – Zinner, Tibor (eds.)(2013). Do Not Forget This Small Honest Nation. Cardinal Mindszenty to 4 US Presidents and State Secretaries 1956-1971 as conserved in American Archives and commented by American diplomats. A documentary overview, Bloomington (IN), Xlibris.
Somorjai, Adam (2019). Az egyházi joghatóság változása a Dunától északra fekvő, ismét csehszlovák államterületen, 1945-1949. Vatikáni iratok alapján. [The change of ecclesiastical authority in the territories on the north of the Danube, again under Checoslovakia administration, 1945–1949. Based on Vatican archivistical documents.] Levéltári Közlemények [Budapest], Vol. 90, 213–239.
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