Until this point I consciously avoided to single out the persecution of the 1.75 million Hungarian minority as such since Communist oppression is also felt by the Rumanianorigin citizens of Transylvania as well. However. it would be sanctimonious hypocrisy to state that everyone is equally badly off in Rumania and that there exists no unjustifiable and undeserved persecution of the Hungarian minority which at times approximates a gradual. but not less deadly genocide. I realize that our foreign policy officials shake their heads when one talks about genocide in thL case. to them apparently it means the physical extermination by massacres. gas chambers. or by deportations into inhospitable climate zones of the members of an ethnic group. Yet even by this standard the recent past could be counted as qualifying for the genocide description. Between 1944. the return of the Rumanian Army and irregulars in the wake of the Red army which they joined after fighting it in bloody battles for 3 years. and 1961 the losses of the Transylvanian Hungarians by massacres and deportations into the inhospitable regions of the Danube Delta amounted to about 250.000. or about 15 percent of the ethnic group as of 1947. But what would be the name for a linguistic. cultural. and psychological forced assimilation that the Rumanian Communist regime implements in Transylvania? Is it permissible under the peace treaties to which our country remains a signatory and which provided that Rumania shall not discriminate against any of her citizens on the grounds of sex. religion. and language when the term "Hungarian." nay even the term "Rumanian Hungarian" cannot be printed in any press products. but only cohabiting nationalities within Rumania. when the schools have been merged with thc Rumanian ones and the number of Hungarian courses are decreasing year by year and new and new scores of students are forced to join the Rumanian branches though they are Hungarian by ethnic background and language?
Keywords matched
deportations