BALASSAGYARMAT, _April 17th_.
I thought my excitements had come to an end, but ill-fortune has looked
me in the face again. It has just glanced at me, but has not seized me
yet. And now, how long shall I be here? Shall I be driven away, or will
this be the scene of my capture?
I can no longer see the end of my road. I never seem to know when I
shall be able to put a full-stop at the end of my sentence. It makes no
difference. If my diary must remain a fragment, fragments can bear
witness. Every clod plays its part in a land-slide, and there is some
fragment of the great tragedy in every particle that composes it.
When I woke this morning it took me a long time to realise where I was.
The daylight was reflected from the glass doors of a bookcase, and I
heard the sound of a reedflute. The primitive melodies of the cow-herd
mingled with the trampling of the cattle. But where was I? Something
gripped my heart and forced the truth from it. A fugitive, an outlaw! I
looked out of the window: cows were coming down the little street on the
outskirts of the town. Everything was different from my surroundings of
yesterday. The house opposite was indifferently, ignorantly looking at
its reflection in the puddles. Somewhere in that direction the railway
station must lie, and the road to it crosses the square in front of the
town hall. I had a good idea what this square must be like. A big market
with arcades, an old fountain, the old town hall with its tower.... Yes,
it must be like that.
“Good morning!” The children’s clear voices called me from the next
room. Breakfast was ready on a glass-covered verandah, opening on to the
back garden. The old flower-bed under the sprouting ornamental trees had
been replaced by vegetables, but shrubs remained, and beyond the fence
were trees, shingled roofs, little gardens. Aspen trees, willows and
graceful, slender poplars were reflected from a soft, brilliant
mirror—the Ipoly in flood. On the other side of the river were the
vineyards where the Czechs were encamped. For two months their guns have
been trained on the town.
I mentioned my notes; Huszár gave me some paper and a pencil. Then the
front door bell rang. Who could it be? It was unusual to have visitors
at that hour. Gregory, the faithful old coachman, put his head in.
“Two armed Reds are here!” he exclaimed.
I clasped my hands in terror. Mrs. Huszár turned white to the lips:
“What are we to do if they are after you? The town is full of
detectives.” She went out and when she came back she was laughing. “I
was never so frightened in my life. They asked me: ‘Does Comrade Huszár
live here?’ Then one of them made an awful face and added: ‘We have been
informed that there is a—er—library in the house.’ I really thought they
had found you. And all they had discovered was our library!”
It was a good library; I spent a long time among its volumes, and found
them representative of Hungarian history and of the development of
Socialism. I determined to study.
“You’d better write a book,” said Mrs. Huszár. “When we have got over
these times, let people know what we have gone through.”
* * * * *
_April 18th._
Good Friday. At the feet of Christ’s cross, under the black sky, on the
Red land, Hungary has been crucified among the nations.
We hoped that an attack on the town would be delivered this night by the
Czechs. It sounds sheer madness, and yet it was so. It was different
last year, when Károlyi had opened our frontiers and our predatory
neighbours could walk in undisturbed on our unconscious, shackled towns.
Balassagyarmat was the only one that rose to arms and drove out the
intruders.
Hideous change! We are waiting for the Czechs! And this day all those
who are Hungarians in the republic of the Jewish tyrants are waiting in
suspense.
* * * * *
_April 19th._
The night has passed. At dawn only a few stray rifle bullets whistled
over and into the Ipoly, disturbing the surface of the water for a
moment, but the river soon resumed its smoothness and everything is now
as it was yesterday. There is no change, and our deliverers still
hesitate. But within our shamefully constricted frontiers the outlines
of the picture become clear, and the undermining of society goes on with
devilish speed. The newspapers which reached us this day publish an
incredible order—the sixty-second within three weeks.
“The Revolutionary Cabinet considers it its duty to revise the procedure
of such criminal proceedings as have been instituted before the
proclamation of the Soviet, so as to save from punishment those
Proletarians who were called before the tribunals by the old order in
the interest of capitalism alone, and, on the other hand, to punish
severely, those who have sinned against the working Proletarians.”
This order is without precedent in the history of human law. It destroys
at a blow the progress of centuries. It endows the privileged and only
recognised class, the Proletarians, with the monopoly of crime.
Even in the administration of justice, Bolshevism stands on the basis of
class hatred and serves the class war. If the Proletarian has robbed a
member of the middle classes, he cannot be punished; if he has murdered
a bourgeois, he cannot be condemned, because his actions were simply
acts of self-defence against the tyranny of capitalism.
And after abolishing crime as such, it proceeds to the destruction of
its traces. All records are burnt in stacks, and the files of criminal
proceedings which might involve those in power to-day are made away
with. Béla Kun embezzled the funds of a workmen’s benevolent society.
The papers of the prosecution have been burnt and the leader of the
Soviet has purged his honour in the ashes.
Once the Roman Empire of the West, Byzantium, Friul, Saxony, all paid
tribute to the old Hungary. The profiles of conquered Emperors, of
Cæsars and of Princes, minted in gold, flowed into the Danubian province
of Hungary, and later on the harvests of peace sent their surplus into
the treasury of the land, the fruits of valour and of work.
To-day the ruling power burgles safes. Protected by its ordinances, it
steals jewels, gold and precious stones, proclaiming, “No compensation
is due for property delivered to the State.” Everything that can be
exchanged for foreign gold is confiscated. Even stamp collections which
are worth more than two thousand crowns are taken, the happiness of
little schoolboys, the hobby of collectors.
The head of the Directorium of Balassagyarmat returned yesterday from
Budapest. Huszár heard him relating proudly in the street that he had
spoken with Béla Kun himself. The position of the Soviet Republic has
been considerably strengthened abroad and at home, and the economic
conditions are excellent. Béla Kun has declared that he has such a
reserve in jewels, pearls, medals and art treasures that there was no
bourgeois Government in the world that could compete with him.
Negotiations are on foot for the disposal, in Holland, of these
treasures. Huszár’s next statement filled me with shame and anger. Béla
Kun was bargaining with foreign antiquaries for the sale of the Holy
Hungarian Crown!
It is said they offered him 170,000 crowns for it. The stones are
second-rate, the gold is thin, there is just the historical value left.
170,000 crowns for the past glories of the Kings of Hungary! That is
their value to-day.
The Cabinet is still expectant: will anybody bid any more? And if one
day there is a higher bidder, Béla Kun and Számuelly, Comrade Landler
and the others, will open the iron-bound chest in the Coronation Chapel,
lean over it, finger it, and the Jews will take Europe’s oldest royal
crown[1] to the auction room. Will they have time to do it? I thought of
what the president of the Balassagyarmat Directorate had said. They all
talk as if they were to last for ever. Meanwhile, the other bank of the
Ipoly, the hill with the vineyards, keeps silent.
If things were to remain like this for long! The idea tortures me
incessantly and forces me to think of my unhappy position. My hosts are
hospitable, kind, touchingly so, but have I the right to accept their
generosity? Aladár Huszár has given up his office, he declines to serve
the Soviet. His wife’s jewels have been seized, they have no food
coupons. What is consumed to-day cannot be replaced to-morrow. Every
gift means a privation for them. And what if I should be found and
arrested in their house! There are ten years of penal servitude in store
for those who shelter me. I must do something. If there is no change
presently I shall have to go. Have the waters of the Ipoly receded
during the night? Perhaps the Czechs are not guarding the banks any
longer? Perhaps the bridge is open?
“Let us wait,” said Mrs. Huszár. “We confidently expect an attack
to-night, and that would save you.”
“Let us go and have a look. Maybe....”
We walked slowly along the bank of the river. The air was clear and
fresh and the wind rippled the flooded waters. A woman came along the
road with a hamper over her arm and greeted us.
“Do you come from the other bank?”
The woman nodded: “We have a little field over there. But in future,
from to-day, the Czechs have refused to let me pass. They shoot at
anyone who approaches the bridge. They are preparing something.”
As she passed on we looked at each other and then towards the bridge.
That road then existed no longer. The barbed wire in the middle marks
the frontier. Reds and Czechs stand on either bridgehead. The tree which
had fallen across the river near the gardens, the living bridge over
which fugitives had quite recently crawled across, is now under water in
mid-stream. The Ipoly is like a sea.
The silver stream is flowing over the green velvet of the inundated
fields and meadows. The willows on the banks draw a veil over the
silver. Against the lovely blue background of the distant hills, the
poplars look like rows of furled flags. All nature seems in ecstasy.
Birds sing in the dazzling sunshine.
A cart rattled behind us full of soldiers, carrying bread for
distribution among the guards in the villages. It passed us quickly and
disappeared at the turning of the road, but the smell of bread remained
in the air.
It is the Saturday before Easter. The churches are watched by the
mercenaries of the new power and I must avoid their eyes. Only the banks
of the river and the main road are free to me. And yet I am in church.
Under the long cupola of the branches, the mild winds of spring sound
like an organ, recalling to me the eternal mysteries of the
Resurrection.
* * * * *
_April 20th._
Events cast their shadows before them, and as they arrive they enter the
shadow.
Our little street on the outskirts of the town was unusually restless
this morning. As the bells recalled the memories of past Easters to my
mind, the neighbouring villagers were passing under my window in
picturesque costumes on their way to church. I could hear the sound of
footsteps, the rustle of petticoats, even a threat in the loud voices of
the young men. A few of them wore red and white flowers with green
leaves stuck in their hats.
On the other side of the street, soldiers were leaning out of the window
of the Reds’ guard-room. A few were loafing about in the street. They
looked suspiciously at the peasants and as soon as these had passed they
talked among themselves excitedly.
[Illustration:
ON THE BANKS OF THE IPOLY.
]
One soldier rang our front-door bell and insisted on being given a suit
of clothes, as he was going to a wedding. Gentlefolks had plenty to give
him. To give more weight to his claim he began to boast his prowess:
“The attack is expected at Uszok. We are going to wipe out the Czechs
and unite with the Russians, who have already crossed the Carpathians.”
He took what he had exacted under his arm and hurried off.
When Aladár Huszár came home he spoke more cautiously than usual.
“There is much ado among the comrades. On the 16th the Roumanians
attacked between the Szamos and the Maros. The Red International
Regiment fled at the first shot. How the Russian and Viennese Jews ran!
They stormed the trains in their panic, and left the poor Széklers to
their fate, even before the Roumanians had developed their attack.”
We looked at each other: we had never imagined it like this. Even when
our sufferings seemed most unbearable we would have wished it otherwise.
Where are the British and the French troops?
“The members of the local Directorate suppress the facts,” said Huszár,
after a long silence. “At any rate it looks suspicious that they should
again talk so much about the World-Revolution. The World-Revolution is
always to the front when their own affairs are on the decline. Their
newspapers are full of it; Italy and France are seething. Soviet rule
has become more powerful in Munich. The proclamation of the Soviet in
Vienna is only a question of hours.”
How much of this is true? How much lies? Aladár Huszár began to roll
cigarettes. He offered me one: they always offer, always give, and I am
for ever asking and thanking. A match? I should have liked to ask for
one, but could not say the word, so I just held the cigarette in my
hand. Mrs. Huszár nodded to her husband: “Give her a light....” He
jumped up and went to the writing table and brought back a small
cigarette lighter in his palm. “Here is a little Easter present for
you.”
His wife let her sewing fall into her lap and looked at me. “Well done,”
she said, “I hate seeing you obliged to ask for every trifle, when you
yourself have given up everything.”
At that moment I saw behind the lovely cold face the warm heart it
endeavoured to hide.
Huszár took his hat. “I will go to the railway station for a newspaper.”
He seemed restless.
“What has happened?” asked his wife.
He hesitated for a moment. “The Directorate has received a secret order
by telephone. The Cabinet has decided that hostages are to be taken.”
A cloud seemed to pass over the brightness outside, and I felt suddenly
cold. This news was the most terrible we had yet heard. Hostages! The
foreign race is going to guarantee its life with Hungarian lives!
A very little time seemed to have passed before the door flew open and
Aladár Huszár stood there, his eyes shining and his face drawn with
excitement.
“They are done for!” He was so excited that he laughed spasmodically,
while his eyes were full of tears of emotion. “Look here!” He waved the
newspaper in front of us: “The Revolution is in danger!”
In turn we snatched the newspaper out of each other’s hands. The General
Staff of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council had met on the 19th at the
Opera House. It was Kunfi who addressed the crowd:
“The Entente is forging a ring of iron round Soviet Hungary.”
We looked at each other. So they will not let us perish after all! Human
mercy comes to the rescue at last!
“Just listen! Béla Kun himself admits that they are done for: ‘According
to reports the Roumanians have taken Szatmár-Németi. The inhabitants at
once abolished the Soviet Republic, hoisted white flags and raised
cheers for the King. Private property was re-established. The Roumanians
are advancing on Nagy-Várad. In Debreczen, however, the workmen managed
to suppress the Counter-revolution. Everybody must go to the front. If
necessary, we are ready to die for the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat!’”
We have learned to read between the lines of ‘The Red Newspaper.’ They
are afraid, and in their fear they threaten furiously. The electrician
War Minister threatens the working classes: “Anyone committing acts of
indiscipline will be dealt with as if he were a Counter-revolutionary.”
As for the bourgeoisie, Pogány shook his fist at it during the stage
meeting at the Opera.
“Comrades, we must inform the bourgeoisie that from this day we consider
it our hostage. (Violent applause.) Let the bourgeois take notice that
they will get no respite from any advance the Entente’s army may make,
because every step which brings the Serbian and Roumanian armies nearer
shall be made a bitter trial to the bourgeois amongst us. (Stormy
applause.) Let not the bourgeoisie rejoice, let it not stick white flags
out of its windows, for we shall paint them red in their life-blood!”
(Raving applause lasting for several minutes.)
Then Számuelly mounted the tribune: “The Proletarian country is in
danger!” he exclaimed. “Death to all the enemies of the Proletariat!
Death to the bourgeois! Although no blood has yet been shed in defence
of the Republic, the blood of the Proletarians may yet flow, but then
bourgeois blood will flow too.”
And the audience, the foreign crowd of the Workers’ Council, clapped
furiously as the Jew, Számuelly, prophesied the shedding of the blood of
the Hungarian Proletariat and the Hungarian bourgeoisie, stirred up
against each other. Labour, driven to the slaughter, is to vent its fury
and destroy the intellectuals. Magyardom is to crush Magyardom’s brain
with its own hand.
Madness! They sentence both their slaves and their enemies. Will they
last long enough to accomplish the destruction of the nation?
The general assembly on Saturday before Easter resolved that every
Proletarian must rise to arms in the defence of the Dictatorship.
One is oppressed by a sense of calamity. The Roumanians in Nagy-Várad!
But on the other hand, the horrible Dictatorship is falling. Humanity
has pity on us. Even if the Roumanians make encroachments now, peace
will restore our territory to us.
There were steps in the street. A man stopped on the kerb and looked up
at our window. I remembered that I had seen him on the same spot
yesterday. Mrs. Huszár pressed her husband’s arm. Then the street lamps
were lit, and we watched from the dark room. The sinister shape was
still standing at the corner.
* * * * *
_April 21st._
The town remained quiet and the house was wrapped in silence. I could
hear nothing but the throbbing of my pulse. Was that man still standing
at the corner?
After midnight the roar of a single gun disturbed the night. I waited,
but the ominous silence returned. Such must be the silence in a lunatic
asylum at night.... The lamps burn low in the corridors, and now and
then steps pass between the cells. The watchman makes his round.... Out
there the Red patrols pass under the window. Dawn begins to break:
salvation has failed again. And yet the hours are flying for us. If the
powers of the Entente delay, the Dictatorship will make us pay for their
attempts. Let them hurry, lest they be too late. The Dictators are
proclaiming their threat that blood will flow. They are covering the
walls with posters: “To arms!” “Advance, Red soldiers!” “Rise in defence
of the Proletariat!” “The Revolution is in danger!”
The fleeing Reds have been reformed near Debreczen and Nyiregyháza. A
number of battalions and batteries have been removed from this western
theatre. Trains are running at unusual hours: the Directorate is
nervous. The petty tyrants proclaim the victories of the Red army, the
reckless courage of the Proletarian heroes. Booty, innumerable
prisoners! The newspapers write in the same strain. From the capital
come telephone messages and telegrams in cypher. Meanwhile the Czechs
are shouting from the other bank: “Hey, Reds, there is a Red Easter in
store for you!” It is said that many soldiers deserted this night from
the town: certainly there seem to be fewer about than usual. They are
disillusioned now; when they enlisted, they were told: “Down with war!
Henceforth a soldier’s life will be exempt from danger. Red soldiers
will have good pay and they can do whatever they like.” And now, all of
a sudden, revolutionary court martials are established. Béla Kun
abolishes the Soldiers’ Councils and the ‘confidential’ system, and
behold, the soldiers have to go to war!
Towards evening we went to the bank of the river. Tiny armed figures
were visible on the other shore, and single soldiers passed us in haste;
they had already removed the red from their caps and a few wore bonnets
of the old pattern. A cold wind was blowing, driving back the waters in
silvery ripples, and shaking the aspen trees; a shudder passed over the
reeds. Another soldier came along from the town. When he caught sight of
us he left the road and made quickly for the fields.
“He’s deserting!”
The small figures with bayonets on the other bank were gradually
absorbed by the darkness. A tree in blossom alone stood out white
against the leaden grey sky. Our souls knew hope again. If only the
frosty wind does not kill the early spring!
* * * * *
_April 22nd._
No news has reached us: the telegraph wires are silent: people have even
stopped whispering in the street. The soldiers are leaning indolently
out of the guard-room windows, and the Czech guns are silent.
No news! Yet suddenly an awful reminder of the times we live in reached
my ear. A child was singing in the street. I could not see it, but could
hear that it was coming nearer and nearer, so I began to listen. The
little songster was just crossing the end of the narrow street and for
an instant the break in the houses gave his voice free access to us. “My
father ... my mother ...” It was a small boy and he was balancing
himself on the kerbstone as he repeated the refrain. Then I caught the
words:
“My father, my mother, you may——for all I care....”
The song went on, to the stupid tune of a Budapest music-hall ditty. I
have heard many disgusting things told of the new schools established by
the Bolsheviks, but I think this was the most disgusting—and the most
disastrous. The degradation of the Hungarian schools was not the
achievement of a day: it was started unobserved before the war by our
Freemasons’ educational policy and by Freemason mayors of the capital.
Then Károlyi came and prepared the way for Bolshevism in the education
of Hungary’s younger generation. The mass appointment of Jewish masonic
professors and teachers; the Bolshevik reform of school books; the
destruction of the souls of the children; the degradation of parental
authority; the systematic destruction of moral and patriotic principles;
the revelation of sexual matters; all these were the work of Károlyi’s
Government. The Soviet Government, when it came, had only to change a
few men and names, and the whole machine was ready to their hand, to
work exclusively, and to their entire satisfaction, in the interest of
revolution.
One shudders at the thought of those who have the education of Hungary’s
childhood and youth in their hands. They all belong to the foreign race.
The Commissaries for Education: Kunfi, the morphomaniac; Lukács a
degenerate; Pogány, who is openly accused of murder; and Számuelly, the
murderer in Russia of captive Hungarian officers. The dictator of the
students, or so-called ‘young-workers,’ is an assassin, the same
Lékai-Leiter who had attempted to kill Tisza on the steps of the House
of Parliament the day before the outbreak of the Revolution. Murderers
and men devoid of moral sense, how should they consider schools as
anything but the means of propaganda, as devilish laboratories which may
serve to poison young guiltless minds? Normal education is a process of
civilization: Bolshevik education is demoralisation.
In the dormitories of girls’ boarding schools young Jewish masters are
made to sleep, so as to accustom the little girls to the presence of
men. Jewish medical students accompany little girls to the mixed bathing
places that they may kill all modesty with ridicule. Sexual education
grows apace. The purpose of nursery schools has been changed: the
teachers have been informed confidentially that the kindergarten must be
used to estrange the children from their mothers and supplant the
family. All toys are declared common property in order that the children
may forget the crime of private ownership. And while our rulers are
forcing the present generation of youths into the Red army, they decree
that playing with lead soldiers must be forbidden to the coming
generation, lest one day the slaves dream of liberation.
An order has been issued that the old reading and history books must be
given up: they are being replaced by new history books, written by
people who do not even know our language. The workshop of destruction is
producing new school books, for the Commissary for Education has given
instructions that in future all school books must preach the gospel of
class war. Hungarian literature is no longer to be taught; henceforth
nothing but ‘universal literature’ is to be taught in Hungarian schools.
Such scraps of our history as are allowed to be taught are falsified and
systematically besmirched: “John Hunyady was a mountebank, Matthias
Corvinus a charlatan, Denis Pázmándy a scoundrel.”
It is not difficult to understand the purpose of the little boy’s
blasphemous song: let the children despise their fathers and mothers so
that even at home parents may fail in their efforts to repair the
destruction wrought in the schools.
For fifty years a devilish fiend has been slowly robbing the Hungarian
people of its soul. Now that it has attained power it is destroying that
soul with feverish haste, lest they should recover their soul when they
regain their consciousness.
* * * * *
_April 25th._
Black and white shapes are circling in the sky: the storks have come
back, birds of so many legends and stories. They left us in the autumn,
stayed away for many months, and yet they have found their way back to
their own ragged nests on the trees along the banks of the Ipoly.
I looked at them as they descended, calm and peaceful. They did not
attempt to take possession of a strange nest, of another bird’s home.
Mysterious, inviolable laws lead them to their own nests, regardless of
the fact that in our country, at the foot of their trees, a man may no
longer claim his own home. ‘Every house becomes common property,’ and he
who dares to oppose this order is tried by a Revolutionary Tribunal.
Someone had gone out of the room and left the door open. I could see a
man in the corridor and heard him say that he had just come on foot, now
and then getting a lift on a cart. He brought a letter for Aladár Huszár
from his mother at Budapest. I could not help envying Huszár—for _me_
there is never a letter, nor any news.
Huszár showed me his letter: it read as though his mother were taking
leave of him on her death bed. They are starving in the capital and are
living under a perpetual threat. If three people stop to talk to each
other in the street they are promptly driven apart by the former
boisterous advocates of the right of free assembly. Nobody is allowed in
the streets after ten o’clock at night; even family gatherings at home
are prohibited, and after eleven o’clock all lights have to be
extinguished in the houses. People are spied on in their own homes by
the ‘confidential men’ who are quartered on them, and anybody who dares
to move a hand is denounced. Poor Mrs. Huszár complained bitterly in her
letter that a man-servant whom she had dismissed for theft had since
been quartered on her with his wife. They are her guardians. Another old
lady was compelled to find quarters for prostitutes, who received Red
soldiers at night. And these people have to be fed. They get drunk,
dirty the furniture and cover the floor with filth. There are no
servants: she herself has to clean up after them, to save the place from
pollution. Meanwhile the storks return to their last year’s nest. Nature
disregards man-made ordinances and continues her eternal laws.
Instinctively I looked at the newspaper. News: the advance of the
Roumanians has been stopped. Lower down were three nominations: the
Revolutionary Cabinet has appointed the distinguished typewriter
salesman, Böhm,[2] Commander-in-Chief on the Eastern front. The Chief of
Staff of this ridiculous and humiliating Commander is to be the Austrian
comrade Aurelius Stromfeld, the very man who sent a note to Károlyi
informing him that the final victory of the Russian Soviet armies and
the World-Revolution were inevitable. What new misfortune is this gifted
but misguided megalomaniac preparing for us? The third nomination was
that of Számuelly to be the President of the Tribunal of Summary
Jurisdiction established on the Eastern front. He is to be the absolute
judge of all Counter-revolutionary movements behind the front. In his
order issued from General Headquarters he stated his intentions clearly:
“I do not ask the bourgeoisie for anything, but I should like it to
engrave my words on its memory: whoever raises his hand against the
power of the Proletariat signs his own sentence of death. As for the
execution of the sentence, it will be our business to attend to that.”
Who is this man who has the power to speak like that? Whence does he
come, he who from this day onwards can dispose of our lives without
further appeal?
He appeared in the dark beginnings of the Revolution, at the side of
Béla Kun. They crossed the Russian frontier together. Both brought with
them the instructions and the gold of Trotsky.
I remember him: it was last winter, and at that time Visegrad street was
the well-known ‘secret’ nest of the Communists. Two figures were coming
towards me from the corner, from the direction of ‘The Red Newspaper’s’
editorial offices: one was Maria Goszthonyi, who under the name of Maria
Csorba filled important functions in the Soviet and roused the Communist
rabble by her reckless speeches; the other was a young man who, although
he had no hump yet bore on his face that curious expression common to
hunchbacks. I learned later on that this man was Tibor Számuelly.
His grandfather came from Galicia in his gabardine with a bundle on his
back. Tibor Számuelly came young to Nagy-Várad, and without possessing
any special gift for writing and endowed with a superficial education
only, he became a journalist. I may say here that my information
concerning him has been obtained from people who knew him personally at
that time. In the cafés he used to seek out quiet corners and sit if
possible alone at a table. He practically never removed his black
gloves—he always wore black clothes and a black tie, and his long
straight black hair was combed back from his forehead. His clean-shaven
consumptive-looking face was furrowed with blue-black shadows.
[Illustration:
TIBOR SZÁMUELLY.
]
Presently this son of a Polish Jew became a Bohemian eccentric, and wore
clothes after the English fashion; but the change was only skin-deep,
his soul was filled with the ardour of the crowded Synagogue. It
remembered the dim lights of the eves of the old faith’s Sabbaths, the
seven lighted candles, the lust for vengeance of the despised. He mixed
little with Christians, and as for the Christian women of bad fame with
whom he came into contact, it was only to humiliate them (so he said)
that he sought their company. He spoke with hatred of everything that
was Hungarian, though he disguised his own characteristic name under a
Hungarian form. At the beginning of the war he was writing short
unimportant articles for a newspaper in Fiume. Then he joined the staff
of the _Catholic Hungarian Courier_.
He was called up for military service when war broke out. For a time he
cleverly managed to postpone joining his regiment and then for a while
he shirked in various orderly-rooms behind the front. Later on he
surrendered to the Russians, and when the Revolution broke out there a
sudden change took place in the demeanour of this Jew boy, who till then
had been rude and overbearing with his subordinates and cringing to his
superiors. He quickly rose above the others. Soon he was seen recruiting
for the Red army among the Hungarian prisoners of war. He used threats
and every conceivable pressure. The Jewish Czars restored his freedom,
and in astonishing proof of racial solidarity, the insignificant little
Jew of Nyiregyháza became a commander in the Russo-Jewish army of the
Soviet. And then, at last, it seems, he gave the rein to his long-nursed
hatred: he ordered the slaughter of ninety-two Hungarian officers,
prisoners of war.
Last year, in November, he came ‘home,’ and soon after met Károlyi at
Béla Kun’s quarters. Henceforth the two met often, and it was under
Károlyi’s protection that he proclaimed at Communist meetings: “Death to
the Bourgeois!” On the eve of March 22nd he was already Assistant
Commissary for War: now he has become President of the Revolutionary
Tribunals.
Before he left Budapest for General Headquarters he was sitting one
afternoon in the window of Budapest’s smartest confectioner’s and was
looking out on the square. Several people who were close by heard him
say: “I am going to build a guillotine on this square. So many bourgeois
must be killed that the tumbrils will have to drive through pools of
their blood.”
Somebody who had been to Budapest told me that Számuelly was surrounded
by terrorist guards, that his special train was provided with
machine-guns, and that an executioner always travelled with him. In the
Journalist’s Club, the revolutionary ‘Otthon,’ the once obscure
reporter, has become the most important personage among the journalist
representatives of his race. One of the most prominent among them,
Alexander Bródy, is said to have embraced him at a champagne supper and
to have hailed him as “Our prophet!”
Yes, that is what he is, their prophet!... Now that I think of him, the
memory of his dark hyena-like features becomes more and more distinct.
He grins appreciatively at his new power. I can see his black sleek head
and his hand beckoning death. Gallows are erected wherever he goes. And
the gallows, like black Hebrew characters, remain in the landscape when
his special train has passed on to some other rebellious district. It is
in these black characters that this foreigner is inscribing his name
upon our history. Tibor Számuelly has been brought up in the secret
rites of hatred and belongs to an ultra-orthodox sect of oriental Jews
which is stricter in the observance of its ceremonies than any other.
The sect of _Chesidem_ resembles the Hebrews of the Old Testament,
grave, prejudiced and dark. It shuns the light of the sun. Its adherents
admit of no other truth than that which is contained in the _Thora_, and
that only because it is there. This sect interprets the covenant
strictly and to the letter; ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ is
the foundation of its creed.
Számuelly’s degenerate soul has been formed and shaped by these rites
and teachings. Thus he has become the most characteristic type of this
sect whose ruling spirits for many years have lived and increased
stealthily in our midst. Hatred has been given free rein, the type has
thrown off its mask, and the thirst for vengeance, stored up for
innumerable years, is about to be quenched. In the person of Számuelly
the Revolutionary Cabinet has found an executioner for the Hungarian
people who is blood of its blood, soul of its soul.