_June 3rd._
I’ve got a fever of some kind and it frightens me—it would be terrible
to be ill at such a time and in a strange house. I must try to keep
going, but oh! how I long to go to bed.
A man came in from the village this morning and reported that when the
Reds made their advance on Friday morning the houses of all Jews were at
once surrounded by Jewish Red soldiers with fixed bayonets—to prevent
them from being looted. This was corroborated by one of the owners of
the protected houses himself.
Thus even after the abolition of private property the Dictatorship
officially protects all Jews’ belongings. Beyond the Ipoly Red soldiers
have plundered Sztregova, the ancient castle where Imre Madách wrote
_The Tragedy of Man_; but the Jewish Red soldiers protected the house of
Fischer, the land agent of Leszeny....
* * * * *
_June 7th._
I’ve had to give in: I can hardly distinguish things and am unable to
move.
Baron Alexander Jeszensky came to see me, bringing messages from Bercel.
Charles Kiss is with the Kállays and is coming to fetch me in a couple
of days. He has made all preparations for my escape to Vienna.
* * * * *
_June 8th._
The Reds have retaken Kassa from the Czechs. Poor City. It received the
victors with red, white and green flags, thinking they were Hungarians.
Orders promptly came that the flags were to be removed.
Two days ago someone knocked at our window late at night. Anxiety spread
through the house; men’s voices were audible from the corridor. Aladár
Huszár had come home! He looked like an apparition, a man of the woods,
for his dress was torn, his shirt was in shreds, and his beard and hair
had grown inordinately long. For six weeks he had been hiding with his
friend George Pongrácz in the wild hills of Börzsöny.
They, too, were expecting the fall of the Dictatorship and were waiting
for the intervention of the Entente. Then came the offensive of the
Reds. As the battle was progressing northwards they concluded that the
Reds were winning and that there was no escape; and as they could not
ask for asylum from the Czechs, whom they had formerly helped to drive
out, what was the good of waiting any longer?
“So we came home,” said Huszár, and despair was in his eyes. “We shall
give ourselves up to the Directorate and stand our trial.”
The Directorate had ordered proceedings to be taken against them, but
miraculously had failed to arrest them.
* * * * *
The doctor came to see me this morning—I’ve got rheumatic fever, and in
the afternoon the children brought me some forget-me-nots from the
river. Dusk came, then darkness. When I woke up a candle was burning in
the room and Charles Kiss was sitting at my bedside. He brought me news
of my mother, after all this time; she is alive and well, but fretting
about me as she has not heard from me for weeks. She was questioned many
times by the Red agents and they forced her to swear that as soon as she
knew where I was she would report to them. Once a detective said to her:
“How must you have brought up your daughter for her to behave like
this?” “I brought her up as a Hungarian,” my mother replied simply.
Whereupon the detective hung his head and then said, as if ashamed: “I,
too, am Hungarian,” and he kissed my mother’s hand. Since then there
have been no more inquiry agents to see her.
Then Charles Kiss talked about himself. Most of the time he has been
hiding in Western Hungary, where the whole region is in a ferment,
counter-revolutions breaking out here and there. But as soon as ever
there is news of one Számuelly makes a sudden appearance. In Devecser he
had the counter-revolutionaries hanged round the church; with the
exception of a young teacher they were all peasants. He forced the women
to look on. In Nagygencs he had a farmer hanged in front of his
children. The farmer did not die at once and when he was in his coffin
he sat up. The wife and children ran to him sobbing. But the Terror Boys
know no pity: they finished him off in his coffin.
Charles Kiss is going to escape to Vienna. To do this he has to go
through Budapest—a long way round. I watched his face anxiously, afraid
he might say that I should have to take the same road, but to my relief
he said nothing. I raised my arm to shake hands with him when he went,
and had to clench my teeth to restrain a cry of pain. Then I lay for
hours motionless, and all through the night made preparations. In the
morning I was as tired as if I had wandered along endless roads.
* * * * *
_June 11th._
The newspapers are howling victory—the delivery of Kassa. The
Internationale is played and the Red Guard of Honour (?) cheers as
Garbai and Béla Kun pass before it.
Far away I seem to hear wild Kuruc songs ... and see the Kuruc horsemen
waving their caps to their prince[3].... Our lovely town, longing for
deliverance from Czech captivity. What a different home-coming you must
have expected!
And this is how (according to the reporters) Béla Kun held forth:
“Dear comrades! Now, comrades, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a
fine thing, is it not? You have scarcely tasted it, but you will soon
see what a beautiful, good and reasonable thing the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat is, from the workers’ point of view. The Proletarian who
labours, who was oppressed, cannot understand how anyone can want
anything else but the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It is so simple.
We do not mind what language a labouring brother Proletarian speaks, we
have but one enemy—the bourgeoisie, whatever language it may speak....”
Above the words of Béla Kun and the other ‘comrades’ I seem to hear a
thundering voice rising from the depths of the Cathedral crypt:
“_Why did you bring me home? I listened in peace to the murmur of the
sea...._”
* * * * *
_June 12th._
It has been rumoured for days and now it turns out to be true:
Clemenceau is negotiating with Béla Kun in the name of the Peace
Conference. His Note came by wireless from Paris to Budapest “to the
Hungarian Government.”
This Note, which declares to the Hungarian Government that it has just
been decided to summon its delegates, calls upon it to stop its attack
against Czecho-Slovakia, otherwise the Governments of the Allied and
Associated Powers will take the firmest measures to force Hungary to do
so. The Note reminds Béla Kun of the _gratitude_ which he owes to the
Allied Powers because: “_on two occasions they have stopped the advance
of the Rumanian armies which had crossed the frontiers fixed by the
armistice, and had prevented them from advancing on Budapest, and had
stopped the Serbian and French armies on the southern front of
Hungary_.”
Clemenceau, the President of the Peace Conference, is ready to sit down
at a table with Béla Kun. His blind hatred is ready for anything so long
as it leads to the poisoning of the open wound in the side of poor
Hungary, fallen in a gallant fight. And we, poor fools, expected human
charity from the victors, who by this very document certify that for
months they have been responsible for the prolongation of Bolshevik
misrule in Hungary!
Béla Kun, the Communist of 1919, thus answered M. Clemenceau, the
Communist of 1871:
“Monsieur Clemenceau, President of the Peace Conference. Paris.
“The Hungarian Soviet Government has observed with pleasure the
intention of the Allied and Associated Powers to convoke Hungary to the
Paris Peace Conference. The Hungarian Soviet Republic has no hostile
intention towards any people in the world, it desires to live in
friendship and peace with all of them, all the more as it does not
insist on territorial integrity.” Then he goes on sarcastically: “We are
delighted to hear that the Allied Powers have ordered the Czecho-Slovak
republic, the kingdoms of Rumania and Yugo Slavia to stop their attacks,
but we are forced to emphasise the fact that the States in question have
paid no heed to the orders of the Allies.” Finally he offers the help of
the Red army “to enforce the orders of the Allies.”
* * * * *
_June 13th._
We only heard of it to-day, although it happened at the beginning of the
month: the Directorates of Szombathely and Celldömölk had attempted to
use the military to enforce the enlistment of railwaymen of military age
in the Red army. They, however, decided to stop work and overthrow the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat by a strike. All honest railwaymen
joined the rising one after the other, and on the 2nd of June all trains
between the Austrian frontier and the Danube stopped. The train of
Számuelly with its Lenin Boys alone was running. As Budapest had refused
to join in, the railwaymen did not succeed in stopping the traffic
throughout the country, and after a struggle of six days they returned
to work. The trains started from gallows-trees and with them the halting
circulation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was restored. Another
hope gone. Then followed the fulfilment of Béla Kun’s promise: “I shall
hang a few railwaymen in every station and then order will be restored.
I have done the trick before in Russia.”
But meanwhile the smouldering fuse had again blazed up and
counter-revolution broke out in Sopron. Other towns followed, but it did
not last long, for in a few hours the Reds came in from all sides. In
Csorna the Terrorists of Györ collected the counter-revolutionaries and
crammed one hundred and fifty into a small cell, then closed the iron
shutters to suffocate them.
Then Számuelly arrived in the town. In front of him armed guards ran
shouting: “Into the houses!” and those who did not manage to get out of
the way in time were shot. When Számuelly with his Lenin Boys actually
entered the town the streets had been cleared, so the black hyena in his
armoured car raced amidst a deathly silence to sit in judgment.
A table was placed in the open, and the prisoners were led before
Számuelly one after another. He examined nobody and only asked who was
possessed of property. Then he ordered some to the left and some to the
right. No witnesses were called: Számuelly alone represented the
tribunal. “To death!” he shouted to those on the left, and eighty
started for the square in front of the church.
One of the men sentenced, a journeyman bootmaker, collapsed on the way
and was left there. The others were beaten with rifle-butts and spat
upon by their hangmen. The eye-glasses of Lieut. Takács were thrust into
his eyes until the eyeball was forced out of its socket, and while he
walked on they even tore his handkerchief away so that his eyeball hung
on his cheek. They boxed the ears of Gyula Akics, a mill-owner, while he
stood under the gallows, and then Stephen Tárcsay, Louis Laffer, Gyula
Németh and Francis Glaser were hanged. No doctor was present at the
execution. Before the corpses were cold the Lenin Boys stripped them and
made the other prisoners bury them. Számuelly watched the execution and
made jokes.
Next day he went to Kapuvár and entered the place with a band of a
hundred and fifty Terrorists armed with machine-guns and hand grenades.
All he asked the prisoners was their name. “Hang them!” he cried. The
mayor, the police sergeant and three others were led in front of the
Catholic Church. He reprieved one of them on the way, because he was
told he was the president of the Jewish congregation. In this place,
too, the prisoners were beaten on their way to execution. The rope broke
when police sergeant Pintér was hanged. His two little children ran up
and implored mercy, but Számuelly would not relent. He then imposed a
fine of millions on the town, and all the cattle he could lay hands on
were driven away. Then he went on, without remorse, calmly, in his
princely special train.
This death train passes through Hungary day and night, and wherever it
stops men are hanged on the trees and blood is spilt on the pavements.
Along its track people often find naked and mutilated corpses. In the
Pullman car Számuelly sits in judgment. I heard this from a reliable
man, who had gone over with the Socialist party to the Communists to
save his own skin. He had to report to Számuelly in Szolnok, and it was
then that he saw the train.
Számuelly lives permanently in this train, and even in Budapest he
sleeps in it, being surrounded by thirty selected Terrorist guards. His
special executioner travels with him. The train consists of two parlour
cars, two first-class carriages in which the Terrorists travel, and two
third-class carriages for the victims. The executions take place in
these, and the floors of the cars are covered with blood-stains. The
corpses are thrown out of the windows, while Számuelly sits in his
Pullman car surrounded by tapestry walls, bevelled mirrors, and fragile
gilt Louis XVI. furniture covered with pink brocade, and seated before
his delicate, feminine writing table, he disposes of people’s lives.
Through every action of practical Marxism, through all its ordinances
and institutions, even through the communication of its news, there
grins cruelty—the repulsive, morbid cruelty of sensuality.
The brave kill, the cowards torture. The Hungarian people can be wild,
ruthless, coarse and even vindictive, but through all its history it has
never been cruel. It is not a sensual race. It expresses sensuality
neither in its ancestral religion, nor in the conception of its gods of
pagan times, nor in its legends, stories, folk-songs, humour or art. The
cruelty of the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, is imbued with the
sensuality of pathological aberration. Its origin is neither Slav nor
Turanian, but of another race living in our midst. The history of the
Hebrews, the Covenant, the Talmud and the Jewish literature of the
various languages of the world, everything that originates with Jews, is
overflowingly sensual. Cruelty finds its fantasy and energy in
sensuality. The bloody invasion of the Turks, the merciless oppression
of the Austrians, were incomparably milder than the cruelty of the
Bolsheviks.
Szâmuelly’s train races on without a stop, past trembling little guards’
houses, through torpid, insignificant stations, through plains and over
hills. It rushes through the country from end to end, to forge, with the
cruelty of the conquering race, permanent shackles round our ruined
country. No other sound is heard throughout the land; just the shriek of
a train.
* * * * *
_June 14th._
The town was smothered in a stifling white heat. Under the window the
little street basked lifelessly in the sun. As far as I could see from
my pillow nothing was happening. Our fate was as stifling and as
motionless as the street.
The first national congress of Soviets is meeting to-day in Budapest. On
the previous two days the Communist party held meetings in the Hungarian
House of Parliament. I began to read the report: “There was a red shine
in the eyes....” Then I stopped: a grimy old wall in Budapest came to my
mind, a glaring red poster sticking to it.... And under a blue sky a
giant labourer was furiously painting the House of Parliament red with a
brush that dripped....
[Illustration:
THE EXECUTIONERS OF SZÁMUELLY’S “DEATH TRAIN.” (Hanged 29 Dec., 1919.)
]
I continued to read the account of the Communists’ general meeting. The
reporter, with the traditional rapture for everything that is new,
gushed over the aspect of the altered assembly room in the House of
Parliament. The old frescoes have disappeared, and instead of the sacred
crown above the chairman’s seat, “a fierce-looking labourer with a
Phrygian cap is contemplating the place, with the Soviet’s five-pointed
star above his heart. On the wall there are no longer pictures of
‘historical celebrities,’ nor of ‘glorious battles,’—new strokes of the
brush have transformed them into symbolical, grandiose decorations.”
How they hurry to cover and efface everything that was ours! Yet even
while they are painting their ordinances with our blood, every
successive beat of the country’s heart is louder and louder, more and
more threatening. “What have you done with our country? With our
language, our honour, the purity of our children, the memory of our
greatness? The throbbing of the Hungarian blood bodes ill, but they hear
it not, though the anger of a deeply insulted nation is boiling up
around them. They will not hear, they plunder and murder as before and
hold meetings in the stolen house of our stolen country. Their newspaper
chroniclers record with satisfied racial self-consciousness the arrival
of the delegates: “They entered without the slightest embarrassment,
without emotion, without fuss.”
The strength and misfortune of the Jewish race are that it is surprised
by nothing and does not believe in the aims which it professes.
I thought of the great hall where once the noble figure of Stephen Tisza
dominated so many storms, and I thought also of those who could never
have invaded the place had they not passed over his dead body. They do
not know it, but they are going to their ordeal, for even as they speak
the blood begins to ooze out of the country’s open wound.[4]
“As they passed before the red draperies their faces showed up against
the red background.” Many of the People’s Commissaries have escaped from
gaols and lunatic asylums: is the background of these faces a fitting
place for the Hungarian labourer, painted above the presidential stand
with a Phrygian cap and a Soviet star? If this labourer could
articulate, his cry would sound the knell of this ‘assembly.’ I have
spoken with many real Hungarian labourers during the last few weeks, on
shaky, springless carts, near railway embankments, in the fields, near
the hills, on the main roads, and how many of them have cursed those who
deliberate this day over our ruins. But they were not there in the great
hall among the speakers. It was Béla Kohn, Richard Schwarz, and William
Böhm who spoke. The committee is composed of: Moritz Heller, Rabinovits,
Vera Singer, William Lefkovits, Elias Brandstein, and Arpád Schwarz.
What did they discuss during the two days? Did they raise the question
whether it was fitting to shed blood in order to accomplish their
universal brotherhood or whether they should attain their aim by
starvation? Did they mention that round the green table in Paris foreign
hands are squeezing our thousand years old frontier, while others are
standing by eager to tear off such parts as have not yet been
distributed?
Not they! The Dictators discussed a proposed change of name of their
party and debated the expediency of tightening or relaxing the pressure
of the Dictatorship. In this the hand of Lenin appears, for a few days
ago the Russian tyrants sent a message to their Budapest branch that
henceforth it must call itself ‘the United Communist party of Hungary.’
Many members obeyed, but the more cunning ones advocated the advantages
of the ‘Socialist’ sign. They look ahead and hope that should Communism
collapse somehow in Hungary it might be possible to save the Jewish
domination by returning to the old conditions. That is the only thing
that matters to them; everything else is of secondary importance—the
school books, the gallows, the prisons, the keys of the safe deposits,
the fresh soldiers’ graves, the new casualties, the recent mutilations.
Henceforth it will be unnecessary to characterise the Dictatorship and
its tyrants; their deliberations have disclosed their nature.
“The power of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is now in the hands of
an active minority,” said Béla Kun. In giving the list of the delegates’
names ‘The Red Newspaper’ and ‘The People’s Voice’ show what this active
minority is. Practically every member of it belongs to the foreign race.
In his programme, Béla Kun clamours for the application of merciless
violence. “The quotation of pacificism has suffered a slump, and the
quotation, not of the imperialistic war but of the revolutionary class
war, is soaring.... The army is nothing but the armed Proletariat. It is
a class army ... this does not mean that we intend to limit our
recruiting to the industrial Proletariat of the towns. It would be rank
folly to expose to the risk of death none but the _élite_ of the
Proletariat. The self-conscious Proletarians must be distributed among
the Proletarians who possess self-consciousness in a lesser degree. We
must be sparing with the class-conscious Proletarians.”
This is meant for the educated classes, the manufacturers and
agriculturists. Never have words contained more calculated iniquity. The
Israelites have redeemed their blood with that of the Canaanites. Let
him bear the cross who is about to be crucified on it.
Béla Kun continued to outline his programme. He had but a few words for
the land question: “That my programme does not say much about it is
quite natural. It is a question concerning which we are still groping in
the dark. I admit that.”
They will talk about it later, when the peasant has paid the blood tax.
Till that is done, let him live in the illusion that his land is his own
and is not appropriated by the Co-operatives of Production belonging to
the Government.
“The Dictatorship must apply stricter measures!” Pogány exclaimed. He
spoke of the Counter-revolution in West Hungary. “There is only one road
open for us: Forward, to the left!”
Comrade Horváth, of whom it is common knowledge that he has stolen his
clothes from Count Joseph Károlyi’s castle, declared that the prestige
of the Dictatorship ought to be improved and expressed himself
disparagingly of the Soviet delegates: “I declare and am ready to prove
that in Székesfehérvár one evening there were sixty political delegates
in the coffee-house whose Polish-Jewish origin was unmistakably written
on their faces.”
Vágó-Weiss, a People’s Delegate, interrupted: “How dare you talk like
that?” and Számuelly banged his desk with his fist. How hurt they are if
we touch anything belonging to them; but if we express pain when they
destroy our God and our country they hang us.
All references to gallows, all threatening and bloodthirsty speeches
were suppressed by the newspapers, out of consideration for foreign
countries. The meeting was concluded by a speech by Béla Kun in which
Hungary’s Dictator furnished some further characteristic details about
himself and his order.
“First of all I want to deal with Comrade Schwarz’s interruption,” the
Commissary for Foreign Affairs said, and then proceeded to answer the
comrade who had proposed: “if our party’s old programme contained the
abolition of capital punishment, its present programme ought to contain
it too.” In his answer Béla Kun made some humorous remarks concerning
capital punishment and said that the old Socialist programme had claimed
the right for everyone to install and operate small stills (loud
laughter). Richard Schwarz interrupted: “I was not joking!” Béla Kun
continued: “I know full well that Comrade Schwarz was not joking, for he
is not a humorous man (laughter), and yet there was some unconscious
humour in his proposal (hear, hear). When a programme like ours is under
consideration ... a programme which forms the foundation of the
Dictatorship ... it is unseemly to discuss such trifles. This settles,
as far as I am concerned, the proposal made by Comrade Schwarz, and I
propose its rejection. (Signs of approval.)”
Finally, to complete his self-characterisation, he expressed his ideas
on intellectual production:
“It is in the nature of things that the Dictatorship is not
over-favourable for the development of personal liberties, it is not
propitious to the assertion of individuality; but if our intellectual
life has declined, bear in mind that it is not _our_ intellectual life
but the remnant of the bourgeoisie’s organisation of physical tyranny
which it was pleased to call literature.”
(Shades of Goethe, Arany, Shelley, Andersen, Flaubert, Dostoyevski,
masters of your art, know you all that you are naught but that part of
‘the bourgeois organisation of physical tyranny which is called
literature.’)
The window near my bed is open. The birds twitter and I can hear the
concert of frogs by the Ipoly. A dog barks. Birds, frogs and dogs all
speak their own language: why do not the Budapest Communists debate in
Hebrew?
* * * * *
_June 16th._
The Soviet assembled yesterday in Budapest and meetings were held from
morning till night. The national delegates of our county’s Soviet
attended. The Red newspapers this morning are bursting with pride, with
ecstasy over the opening festivities.
“The labouring people of Hungary have gone to Budapest to lay the
foundations of a new Constitution which will create a new atmosphere and
bring happiness in its wake.”
As a matter of fact the labourers of Balassagyarmat are indifferent and
miserable. Nobody bothers about the Soviets. They have no part in it.
The whole thing is strange and distant to them.
“The will of the millions,” say the newspapers. And there it meets, this
curious assembly, elected by orders of the People’s Commissaries, by the
privileged fraction of the population, with lists prepared in advance,
under the supervision of soldiers with fixed bayonets.
A theatre was the scene of the opening ceremony. The First National
Assembly of Hungarian Soviets met in a suburban theatre in the
neighbourhood of the old clothes’ market. “Red walls and wreaths,
arranged by inspiring, artistic hands,” the Red chronicler reports.
“Silence dominates the audience of thousands, the crowded boxes, when
the curtain is raised.” On the stage there is a red tribune ornamented
with artificial red flowers and a long table where the People’s
Commissaries assemble. “A historical, grandiose gathering,” says the
reporter of ‘The People’s Voice.’ “The stage is inundated with a flood
of light. The strains of the Internationale rise. Everyone feels that
this is the beginning of the second thousand of Hungary’s historical
years.” (A pity it’s begun on the stage, though.) “You are burying
to-day this country’s thousand years old Constitution,” said Alexander
Garbai, the President of the Council, in his opening speech. But a
People’s Constitution grows from its soil, like the crops, and no
executioners can kill the soil. To-day the soil is suffering in silence:
it is the apotheosis of Béla Kun. “The Congress rose for him and
applauded him madly for several minutes.” His will is done. He imposes
the ‘Constitution’ he likes, and the Soviet joins the Third
International. Its leader then produced a message from Red Russia’s
leader: “Every Proletarian will fight like a tiger; we shall win or
die!” The factory workers swore fidelity: “We will be the pillars of the
Soviet Republic.”
Steps came along the quiet street and somebody said “good day”: it was
Mrs. Huszár speaking through the window. The local schoolmaster was
outside and wanted to borrow a copy of Marx’s works. He has to give a
lecture on the Communist Declaration. He doesn’t want to, but what is he
to do? He will get two hundred crowns for it, and if he disobeys he will
be dismissed; besides, he has so many children....
I remembered a tale of the country where the hunchbacks lived. Once upon
a time there was a country which was inhabited exclusively by
hunchbacks. If by any chance anyone with a straight back happened to
enter the country he was at once put to death. Everything went on all
right till one day it pleased God to give an exceptional year for wine.
Hills and vales resounded with the music of the grape harvest, and it so
happened that many people got drunk on the new wine. In the land of
hunchbacks the ground was shaking with dancing and the air was filled
with songs. Then it happened that a drunken young fellow snatched the
hump from his back and waved it with joyful shouts above his head.
Others imitated him—all had regained their courage. So they shook their
false humps from their backs and finally it turned out that there was
only one genuine hunchback in the whole of the hunchbacks’ country.
The steps receded from the window: the teacher went off with Marx’s
writings under his arm.
Wait till the grape harvest, land of Hunchbacks!
* * * * *
_June 19th._
This is Corpus Christi but I know it only by the distant sound of the
bells. Now the procession is passing with doffed hats, gravely,
silently, under the church banners. The villagers have come to town,
there is a sea of people and the organ sounds in the distance. In a
cloud of incense the Host is floating down the church, out under the
open sky, and it glitters in the sun. As it passes the people kneel.
Christ walks among His people. He walks everywhere in the country and
they dare not interfere with him. Only when the procession had returned
to church did little Jew boys rush up and throw thousands of handbills
among the people. One of them flew to me through the window.
“Proletarians of the world, unite! Read this and pass it on! The
Revolution cannot indulge in sentimentality and must not know pity.
_Gallows or bullets!_ It will be wise for the bourgeois and hooligans
not to try to attack the Revolution, because at the first attempt iron
fists will stifle their souls in them with unrelenting deadliness. The
Revolution is prepared for everything, all means will be employed by her
to preserve her glorious purity as an eternal purity. Woe to those who
attack her treacherously!”
* * * * *
_June 20th._
In Budapest, too, the victors made preparations for Corpus Christi day.
It happened in Buda, in front of St. Matthias’ church during the
procession. I have it from an eye witness. Round the banners thousands
of children were thronging, among crowds of their elders. A motor-car
came racing down Tárnok Street, a Commissary’s car, the son of a
political delegate sitting in it. His sweetheart, a waitress, stood in
front of a shop and waved her hand to him. The young Jew wanted to show
off his power, so he shouted to the chauffeur: “Run them down!” The car
made straight for the procession, which fled in panic. When the car
reached the Host the Jew boy spat on It. The crowd raised a shout and
would have lynched the blasphemous wretch if Red soldiers had not
rescued him, dragging him under a doorway. The crowd attacked the door,
but before the Terror Boys could arrive the soldiers themselves had
settled the aggressors with their bayonets.
And at the same time a similar incident took place at the bottom of the
castle hill near St. Christina’s church. A Jew drove through the
multitude and before he could be prevented spat on the Host. In this
case the crowd fell on him and beat him to death. Later on shots were
fired into the church. News of this kind comes from all quarters.