WeAreCanadians.pdf
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I DEDICATE this brief history to my wife, Zsuzsanria,<br />
to my daughters, Valeria and !lonka, who are all and<br />
have been for the past six years, living in H unga ry , for<br />
their understanding which has made my work easier;<br />
to the younger generation of Hungarian-Canadians,<br />
who are destined to take over and who have already<br />
begun to take over the leadership from us;<br />
to all Canadians, who would like to know more about<br />
the original national and Canadian traditions and present<br />
problems of the national groups so as to be better able<br />
to work for working people's and patriotic unity - for<br />
peace, Canadian independence and democracy.<br />
1. Sz.
fiLET 'T BE A BLESSED BOUNTY . . . fI<br />
WE ARE CANADIANS, about seventy-five thousand of<br />
of Hungarian origin, part of the fift-een million people<br />
Canada.<br />
The people of Canada are recorded in the 1951 census<br />
being of the following origins: nearly 7 million from the Britis<br />
Isles (English, Scottish, Irish and others); over 4 millio<br />
French; 620,000 German; 395,000 Ukrainian; 283,000 Scand]<br />
navian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) ; 264,000 fro<br />
the Netherlands; 220,000 Polish; 182,000 Jewish; 166,000 In<br />
dian and Innuit ("Eskimo"); 152,000 Italian; 91,000 Russia<br />
64,000 Czechoslovakian : 60,000 Hungarian; 44,000 Finnis<br />
33,000 Chinese; 32,000 Austrian; 22,000 Japanese; nearly 19<br />
000 "others of Asiatic .or igin'"; 146,000 "others of Europea<br />
origin" and 188,000 "others".<br />
Although the official figure for Canadians of Hungaria<br />
origin is 60,460, many people of Hungarian origin who ha<br />
come to Canada from other countries were listed by the enu<br />
merators in other groups and so we say that the true number I<br />
between seventy and seventy-five thousand.<br />
We do not want to be called "immigrants" any more th31<br />
do the people of any other ethnic group making up the peop<br />
of Canada for, with the exception of the Indians and Innuit<br />
they, like us, were all immigrants at one time or another.<br />
Not only a second, but also a third generation of us is gro<br />
ing up here as Canadians. The first few of us came to Canad<br />
- as far as we know now - after the revolutionary War 0<br />
Independence in 1848-49, arriving after 1852. The firs<br />
thousands of us from 1885 on, settled down in Manitoba an<br />
mainly what was then called the North-\Nest Territories, heln<br />
ing to create the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. 'I'h<br />
largest group came after World War I; the newest of all sine<br />
the end of World War II.<br />
We have a great sympathy toward the native Indians an<br />
Innuits. We respect Canada's two n-ext oldest groups, those frp<br />
France and the British Isles. We feel like brothers toward thes<br />
and all other groups, who together make up the Canadia<br />
people. Together with them we are ready to work with ha<br />
and brain to make our Canada independent and great, h<br />
4
people free and happy.<br />
We are all Canadians. But each group of people has something<br />
special to contribute to the common treasury. Our customs,<br />
.our skills, our music, our rhythms of speech blend together<br />
to make our two Canadian nations (French- and English-speaking)<br />
and our Canadian people as a whole a stronger and richer<br />
unit in this part of the world.<br />
But no people can stand alone. And with our intimate connections<br />
with the history and culture of our former homelands,<br />
we can do much to broaden the outlook of the Canadian<br />
brotherhood of all people. Here, on behalf of Hungarian-Canadians,<br />
we should like to offer the spirit expressed over hundred<br />
years ago by Sandor Petofi -<br />
(hue 1IS peace! The world clamours,<br />
P eace! But not as a tyrant's sop,<br />
L et it be a bless ed bounty,<br />
From th e sacred hand of Freedom.<br />
5
FROM COAL THE DIAMOND<br />
Our many lords weren't lazy nor stupid<br />
In saving th eir estates from us ,<br />
To th e Ameri cas went tattering<br />
A million and a half of us.<br />
SO WAS STATED the reason for the mass immigration from Hun<br />
during the two main periods by Attila ]6zsef, the great poet<br />
Hungarian proletariat between the two World Wars. He was<br />
by misery, oppression, isolation<br />
persecution of the terrorist,<br />
fascist Horthy regime into contin<br />
nervous break-downs and finaH<br />
suicide on December 3, 1937, I<br />
period of which he said : "This is<br />
time of bankers and generals, the<br />
sent time", when<br />
Oppression in flocks is crowing,<br />
Sets on living heart as on carr<br />
And on the Globe misery is sel!<br />
As saliva on face of idiot.<br />
On the 10th anniversary Q<br />
zsef's tragic death, Marton Horvs<br />
the Szabad Nep (Budapest 's lea<br />
daily) said in a lecture: "As from<br />
the diamond, so was created tli<br />
letarian poetry of Attila ]6z:..':!f<br />
terrible pressure in our country.<br />
poetry of Attila ]6zsef are clean<br />
pressed all human relations a<br />
class, not only the struggle, but friendship and lov-s, too. The<br />
of the Hungarian land, the whole world are presented by him<br />
where by anyone in world literature ... He is not only one<br />
Hungarian classics, but a great poet of world litareture, the<br />
whom, with the exception of Mayakovsky, was not' born in th<br />
century."<br />
Sensing the approaching new attacks by fascism and war, IT<br />
6
wrote in January, 1937:<br />
And we ask with horror, what is to come yet,<br />
From where they will set on us new wolfish idees,<br />
Is new poison boiling to spread among us ...<br />
Returning from a couple of miserable, but enlightening years of<br />
study at the universities of Vienna and Paris, Jozsef Attila found his<br />
way into the illegal working class movement.<br />
He never had a decent home and hardly ever had enough to eat.<br />
He was three years old when his father, an industrial worker, was<br />
driven out of the country by unemployment and by the police - "to<br />
the Americas went tattering" with the "million and a half". Attila and<br />
his two sisters, their mother being confined to hospital, were taken to<br />
a home for waifs and later placed with a peasant family in the country.<br />
This was a stark orphan's life. Attila was seven years old, when his<br />
mother, temporarily recovered from her long illness, could take her<br />
children back.<br />
"My mother provided for us by doing laundry and house cleaning<br />
for other folk", Attila Jozsef wrote. "I helped her as best I could. I<br />
sold drinking water in the cinema, made coloured paper toys and sold<br />
Attlla and Mother.<br />
7
them to children whose life was better than mine. I earned money carr,<br />
ing baskets and parcels in th-s market . . . When I was nine years 0<br />
the world war began and our life became almost unbearable . . . "<br />
When Attila was 14, his mother died. He found employment on<br />
tugboat, "scrubbed and hauled pails of water and sacks" to earn ni<br />
keep and put aside enough for school. Amidst all his difficulties, Attn<br />
finished secondary school, though at times, he had to break off .<br />
studies; he worked as a keeper, agricultural labourer and teacher<br />
well-to-do children in order to go through school. When Attila was !1!<br />
the "Nyugut", (West), the then leading literary periodical of<br />
country, published his first poem. "They thought I was a child pro i<br />
although I was only an orphan," he recalled later this period with bi<br />
irony.<br />
But at the Szeged University, Professor Horger, the allpoweilF<br />
ruler of the counter-revolutionary university, "stated in front of<br />
witnesses ... that, as long as he was alive, I would never qualify s<br />
secondary-school teacher, because, he said, a man who writes po<br />
like these - showing me an issue of the newspaper "Szeged" - caan<br />
be entrusted with the education of the future generation."<br />
His poetry explains the love of the workers and the hatred of<br />
ruling class alike towards him. Whom are you sweating for? Who re<br />
the fruits of your labour? In the "Belled of Capital Profit," he replie<br />
r I<br />
8<br />
Whether you knead bread by gaslight's gloom,<br />
or bake red porous bricks,<br />
whether your palms get sore from the hoe<br />
or you seIl your body, while your skirt still swings,<br />
whether you lie on your back and scaffold the pit<br />
or drag heavy sacks in tbe marketplace,<br />
whether you learn a trade or whether you don't<br />
it's only the profiteer who gains.<br />
Or here is his revolutionary description of the "Slum Night":<br />
A cop in tho:! street, a muttering worker.<br />
A comrade with leaflets<br />
hastens by.<br />
Scenting ahead like a dog<br />
and pricking his ears like a cat,<br />
avoiding and shunning each lamp.<br />
The pub's mouth vomits its rotten light<br />
its window splutters a puddle,<br />
the lamp chokingly swings inside<br />
and the innkeeper dozes and breathes hard<br />
there, a labourer sits alone and awake,
and he, gnashing towards the bare dirty walls,<br />
hurries up on sultry stairs<br />
and cheers the revolution with a sob.<br />
He was the first Hungarian lyrical poet to use Marxist terminology<br />
in his poems. "Overthrow capital, don't whine!" he calls in the "Wood<br />
cutter". In the "Masses" the starving unemployed shout: "Work! Bread!<br />
Work! Bread!". He was fighting among the workers of Budapest during<br />
the great mass demonstration on September 1, 1930. He edited leafletn<br />
during the campaign to save the lives of Sallai and Furst, two Communist<br />
Party leaders facing the gallows in the 1930's. He had met<br />
Matyas Rakosi once and had a long discussion with him just before the<br />
arrest of the leader. He was working for the Red Aid and his powerful<br />
poem "Comrade Help Those Who Are Betrey-ed" was dedicated to the<br />
help of the political prisoners. He wrote a poem against Franco in 1936.<br />
He admired the Soviet Union with pride and was confident that a sue-<br />
The "Wood Cutter" monument, erected for the memory<br />
of Attila Jc>zsef at Balatonszarsz6 in 1948.<br />
.9
cessful revolution would liberate the Hungarian people as well. In on<br />
of his many poems, as if he was answering the banning of Professo<br />
Horger, he said:<br />
My entire people will revel<br />
And not on secondary level<br />
In my teachings!<br />
Already he had been confined in a sanatorium twice, but he stea<br />
fastly hoped for a new world to come to Hungary too. On a summe<br />
weekend excursion of young workers, to whom - after they shoke 0<br />
a stoolpigeon - he lectured on the Soviet Union, while they we e<br />
walking in the sunset homeward on the banks of the Danube, one e<br />
the girls recited his beautifully powerful poem, "Workers", which Q;<br />
picts the imperialist strivings abroad and the deep degradation at ho<br />
and finishes up with a call on the workers to see the dawn of the n<br />
world in making on the production line of history:<br />
where the workers will on the dark factory<br />
affix the red star of Man forever!<br />
One of the young workers slapped Jozsef on the shoulder as t<br />
walked and said: "You, Attila? this really . . . But, say, who will at<br />
the red star on the factories? Maybe, those, who will follow us?<br />
little son of brother Kovacs, when he grows up? "<br />
"You will! You, young workers!" answered Jozsef vehemently.<br />
"When?"<br />
"You will not be an old trade unionist yet ... "<br />
Attila Jozsef died in 1937, but in 1945 Liberation came by t<br />
Soviet Army, the "saved estates" of the "many lords" were distrfbuf<br />
by true Hungarian leadership to the poor peasantry and "the red star<br />
Man" was affixed on the facade of Hungarian factories - forever!<br />
10
Fallen, Wandering and Lasting Stars<br />
The period of Attila J6zsef, however, was not the beginning of the<br />
emigration of Magyars, but the climax of it.<br />
The Magyars, wandering for centuries from the north-western part<br />
of Europe, down south and then west, stopped in the middle of the yet<br />
very fluid Europe, right on the highway of people's wandering, in the<br />
mid-Danubian basin at the end of the 9th century. They had not fully<br />
developed their feudal state as yet, when in 1241 their new homeland<br />
was overrun by the devastating invasion of Genghis Khan's Tatar-Mongolian<br />
hordes and received their first territorial loss from the grabbing '<br />
Germans. Hardly coming into their own again, at the end of the 14th<br />
century, the Turks from the south-east, the Habsburg-Germans from<br />
the north-west began their attacks against the Magyars.<br />
For 150 years partly under Turkish, for over 400 years partly,<br />
later entirely under Habsburg rule, the Magyars were forced <br />
especially after a series of defeats in their struggles for independence<br />
- into various immigrations in almost every direction; they did not<br />
establish any colonies, but they found their way to every part of the<br />
known world - as toilers, travellers, adventurists, beggars as well as<br />
artists, scientists and freedom fighters.<br />
According to the early medieval Icelandic "Heimskrigla" chronicle,<br />
Lei! Erikson den Hepne - son of "Red Erik" -, the explorer, in 1001,<br />
found his way from Greenland to North America. Danish scientist<br />
Schjbningins was the first to claim that one of Erikson's men, a "Stuthmahr"<br />
named "Tyrker", was Hungarian. A Hungarian at "Helluland",<br />
"Markland" (New Foundland) and "Vinland" (Nova Scotia) almost a<br />
thousand years ago!<br />
A certain "Maximilianua Transylvanus" - Mike Erdelyi - wrote<br />
the history of the first trip around the earth, made by the expedition<br />
of Dom Fernando de Magellan and lasting from 1519 to 1522.<br />
A certain "Stephanus Budaeus Parmenius" - Istvan Pajzsos de<br />
Buda - who studied at Oxford, England, a friend of Dr. Richard Hakluyt,<br />
accompanied Sir Gilbert Humphrey, the explorer, in 1583, as his<br />
writer and poet to the hardly known New Foundland. Four of the five<br />
ships were lost on their way back, including the one with Parmenius<br />
on it. However, his saga about the trip of Sir Gilbert Humphrey was<br />
published by Dr. Hakluyt under the title "Epibainetikon", that is Advance.<br />
Sandor Csoma de Koras (1784-1842) went on foot from Transylvania<br />
to Tibet to locate the ancient relatives of the Magyars, but he<br />
took work from the government of England and for many years, under<br />
the most unusual conditions, he prepared the 40,000 word Tibetan<br />
dictionary and grammar. He established the science of Tibetan<br />
language and history, he began the scientific discovery of northern<br />
Buddhims, but he died of malaria on his way in the search in regions<br />
11
where he thought wrongly to find the relatives of the Magyars.<br />
From the beginning of the 18th century, the Magyar emigrations ill<br />
the main were directed to the West, especially to France and to th<br />
Americas.<br />
Here are some earlier and following leading examples:<br />
After the full-scale invasion of Hungary by the Turks in 1526,<br />
which was a direct consequance of the "Plague at Mohacs", J{mas Ga<br />
1~<br />
After Jacques Cartier, from 1534 on, had explored the Gulf<br />
of St. Lawrence and the river as far as the present Montreal,<br />
the most important explorer was Champlain (above),<br />
the "Father of New France", which once extended down to<br />
the mouth of the Mississippi. Champlain, in 1608, founded<br />
Quebec and in the next four years explored the Georgian<br />
Bay and Lake Ontario. La Salle in 1684 went down on the<br />
Mississippi. (The above drawing of Champlain was done by<br />
C. W. Jefferys, leading Canadian historical illustrator, who<br />
died not long ago.)
ay, a young nobleman who was attached to the Hungarian legation in<br />
Madrid, emigrated to Latin America; in 1571 he became the captaingeneral<br />
of Paraguay, in 1573 he founded the city of Santa Fe on the<br />
La Plata, in 1580 he refounded the devastated Buenos Aires.<br />
With the defeat of Ferenc Rakoczi's war of independence against<br />
the Habsburgs in 1711, tens of thousands of Hungarians emigrated to<br />
France, so that at one time there were four Hungarian Hussar regiments<br />
in the French army. In these years, Tamas Nedesdv, whose grandfather,<br />
a leading Hungarian lord was executed for his activities against the<br />
rule of the Habsburgs, emigrated to Chile and on the side of his Spanish<br />
brother-in-law, Francisco de Pahua Duque Alba, he became a leader of<br />
the rebellion against Spanish tyranny. Together with Alba, Nadasdy<br />
was beheaded in 1741 at Valparaiso.<br />
In the 1770's many hundreds of Hungarians from France fought<br />
for American independence on the side of George Washington. It is very<br />
likely, that earlier, in the 1750's, some of their comrades-in-arms participated<br />
in the Seven-Year-War in Eastern Canada.<br />
In 1831, a famous Hungarian traveller, Sandor Farkas de Bolon,<br />
This
visited Quebec, Montreal and Niagara Falls.<br />
In 1795, six leaders of the "Hungarian Jacobins" were beheaded by<br />
the Habsburgs. The son of one of the martyrs, Istvan Oz, emigrated to<br />
Brazil. He became the minister of agriculture of the Piratinin Republic.<br />
After the overthrow of this first democratic republic in Latin America,<br />
Oz was hanged at Rio de Janeiro in 1845.<br />
[enos Pregev, who in the last half of the 1848/49 war of independence<br />
led by Lajos Kossuth, under General Gyorgy Klapka, defended<br />
the Hungarian fortress of Komarom as the chief engineer at the side<br />
of Richard Guyon, the brave English general, in 1850 emigrated to<br />
America; in New Orleans he joined with a dozen or so of his comradesin-arms<br />
Narciso Lopez, leader of the revolutionary movement or<br />
Cuba and he became the military leader of the revolution in Cuba for<br />
a glorious eleven months. Defeated by the Spanish, Pragay shot himself<br />
on Aug. 13, 1851, but eight of the Hungarians were taken into the<br />
lead-mine of Ceuta in North Africa for 10 years forced labour. Pragay's<br />
' 0.<br />
Richard Defoubre Guyon<br />
(1803-1856), the "Hero of<br />
Branyiszk6", was an English<br />
general in Kossuth's<br />
army. This picture shows<br />
him as he led his troops<br />
to the capture of a mountain<br />
pass on Feb. 5, 1849.<br />
Later he joined the def.ence<br />
forces of the Fort<br />
of Komiirom. After capitulation<br />
he withdrew to<br />
Turkey with a s'mall<br />
force. Guyon fought<br />
against , the Tsarist Empire,<br />
but on April 13,<br />
1856, he died of cholera<br />
at Scutari and was buried<br />
there in the presence of<br />
a number of his comrades<br />
of the Hungarian campaign.<br />
14
statue stands on the remnants of the fort at Cienfuegos, built under his<br />
direction.<br />
The first telephone switchboard system was installed at Boston in<br />
1878, as an invention of Tivadar Puskas. After being neglected in Hungary,<br />
he sailed to America, where again even Edison was very sceptical<br />
of the workability of Puskas' invention. However, after Boston, switchboard<br />
were installed in Paris in 1879; and in Budapest in 1881.<br />
Lejos Kossuth, the great political leader of the 1848/49 revolutionary<br />
war of independence of Hungary, after the defeat arrived to<br />
New York in December, 1851 and for a- half year his cause and tour<br />
was the main issue in New England. From January 1st to June 3rd,<br />
1852, "The Globe" of Toronto and other Canadian papers were constantly<br />
praising Kossuth, while condemning the Washington government<br />
and the slave holders for not giving him the support the American<br />
workers and town people demanded. Kossuth visited Niagara Falls,<br />
Ont., in the middle of May, 1852. A few of Kossuth's "honveds" <br />
defenders of the country - at that time and later on settled down in<br />
Canada. One letter Kossuth wrote from Niagara ' Falls, Ont., among<br />
other relics is saved in Budapest.<br />
In the 1860's, some of the best military leaders of Kossuth, with<br />
many hundreds of other Hungarians, fought on the side of the great<br />
Lincoln, against the slave holders.<br />
In 1865, Hungarian workers organized the first Canadian local of<br />
the Cigarmakers in Montreal and led a successful strike for better<br />
wages, giving stimulus to organize another local in Toronto.<br />
Sinisterly enough, at the time of the Second Riel Rebellion in 1885,<br />
an attempt was being made to establish a Hungarian military settlement<br />
in Manitoba, by the Ottawa government, the C.P.R. and a Hungarian<br />
count from New York, but they didn't succeed with their plan.<br />
Next year, in 1886, in the south-east corner of the present Saskatchewan<br />
province, then just North-West Territories, the first permanent Hungarian<br />
farming settlement, Keposviir, began and in the following years<br />
many others in the West. In 1900, Bekever (Fort of Peace) was established<br />
near Kipling, Sask., and its two Hungarian schools were then<br />
and are today still named after the two greatest Hungarian leaders of<br />
independence - Rak6czi and Kossuth.<br />
The plans of the enemies of the people were defeated by the people's<br />
common strivings, united in the traditions of freedom of their<br />
different origins and their common interests to live. It was the beginning<br />
of that developing patriotic unity in which the Hungarian-Canad-<br />
. 15
Louis Riel, the leader of the French<br />
Indian breed lUetis, was the "Father<br />
of the West" of Canada. He led the<br />
Red River Rebellion in 1860, which<br />
- although suppressed - laid down<br />
the basis of Manitoba province.<br />
The Saskatchewan Rebellion in<br />
1885, led by Louis Riel and Gabriel<br />
Dumont, was also suppressed, but inevitably<br />
led to the establislunent of<br />
Saskatchewan and Alberta provinces.<br />
ians of the West and East join now with all Canadian patriots to<br />
about Louis Riel:<br />
Let us do him now full honor,<br />
For they hanged him for the crime,<br />
That of standing up for justice,<br />
As they do in our own time.<br />
And the men who called him traitor,<br />
Shouted down his honest name,<br />
Today are not remembered,<br />
But to Riel, a people's fame.<br />
They who hanged him from the scaffold,<br />
They are now forgotten men,<br />
But to those who fight for freedom,<br />
Louis Riel lives again.<br />
(Marti n Heath)<br />
· 16
TOA uFREE NEW WORLD"<br />
The Human Ballast<br />
ALMOST NO STATISTICS exist on the number of people coming<br />
from Hungary to this continent in the 1870's and '80's, because in<br />
those days no passport was needed; the Hungarian statistics dating<br />
from the end of the '80's are not reliable. The fact is that the Hungarian<br />
bourgeoisie, as part of the celebration of the one-thousand-year anniversary<br />
of the arrival of the Magyars in the Carpathian basin, fostered<br />
the nationalist iIlusion that the Magyar population was 20 millions <br />
whereas in reality it was only about 12 millions - and refused to reveal<br />
the truth about the number of citizens, both Magyar and non-Magyar,<br />
who were being forced by economic and social pressure to look for a<br />
new homeland. Official Hungarian statistics for the years 1899 to 1913,<br />
for instance, give the number of emigrants as 1,390,525, while American<br />
harbour statistics recorded the arrival of about 400,000 more.<br />
The reasons for emigration were quite simple. Although the greater<br />
part of Hungary had for 150 years been under Turkish rule, the power<br />
of the Habsburgs had not lapsed. By the end of the seventeenth century<br />
Austrian rule was extended over the whole of Hungary. Following<br />
the Revolutionary War of Independence in 1848/49, the victorious<br />
Habsburgs turned Hungary into their hinterland to produce food, raw<br />
materials and cannon fodder. Though some compromises were later<br />
made with the Hungarian bourgeoisie, in 1867, national-capitalist development<br />
in Hungary was badly retarded. Right up till 1945 Hungary<br />
was known as "the country of three miIlion beggars".<br />
About the time that many of the three million were being forced<br />
out, American propaganda agencies shifted their focus from Western<br />
Europe to the central and eastern areas. They painted rosy pictures of<br />
the "free new world" across the ocean. The shipping companies, faced<br />
with growing competition, were lowering their fares. The British Cunard<br />
Line -in the early 1900's ran two ships a week from Fiume on the Adriatic<br />
to New York. A few years later ships of the German Continental<br />
Pool cut into the business. This was the time when American wheat<br />
began to flood European markets. But Europe was sending few exports<br />
in exchange. So the German line offered to carry passengers to America<br />
for 50 Hungarian crowns - the price of 200 kilos (about 416 pounds)<br />
of wheat. The return trip of the grain ships was made with human<br />
baIlast.<br />
However, the United States was not the only part of the "free<br />
17
"On Board of an .I mmigra nt Ship in the Thirties" is the title of this drawing<br />
by C. W. Jefferys, taken from the "Picture Gallery of Canadian History" of<br />
the leading Canadian historical illustrator.<br />
18
new world" that needed more citizens. As -early as 1880 the Canadian<br />
government called the attention of its agents in Europe to the large<br />
movement from Austria-Hungary to the U.S.A., and in 1883 John Dyke,<br />
the European advisor to the Dominion in these matters, left for continental<br />
points to study the situation. In spite of under-cover arrangements<br />
with shipping agents, bonuses, printed propaganda, no settlers<br />
were at this time secured for Canada.<br />
The difficulty was that the young Canadian capitalism, anxious to<br />
develop and drive toward the Pacific, met heavy weather when it came<br />
into competition with the already powerful Western States. Their agents<br />
were solidly entrenched in Europe. And though Canada was anxious to<br />
have settlers for Manitoba, or the North-West Territories (as Saskatchewan<br />
and Alberta were then called) the government had nothing<br />
specific to offer; organizations to take care of the immigrants on their<br />
arrival and help them establish homes did not yet exist.<br />
Hun's Valley and Kaposvar<br />
Two years after Dyke's fiasco, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway<br />
came into the picture. Despairing of getting workers directly<br />
from Europe, the CPR and Ottawa accepted the offer of Count Paul<br />
Esterhazy, who was already settled in the United States, to form a<br />
It was on Nov. 7, 1887, that Sir Donald Smith drove the last spike that<br />
completed the trans-continental railway that linked Canada from sea' to sea.<br />
But U.S. interests, eager to grab Canada's wealth even then, said Canadians<br />
would take 100 years to build a nation-wide rail line.<br />
19
_.<br />
..<br />
-<br />
_._----<br />
Hungarian Legion tlsrre for them. These men were experienced farmers<br />
but they also had military training, and Esterhazy suggested that<br />
as well as being useful settlers they would come in handy for putting<br />
down rebellions. After receiving a promise of financial aid from Sir<br />
George Stephen, the CPR's president, Esterhazy went to the North<br />
West on a tour of inspection, mailed out enthusiastic circulars, and<br />
then personally recruited in the mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania,<br />
where wages for the Hungarian miners we.') low and livine conditions<br />
miserable. He had considerable success at first, but when he was personally<br />
attacked as a common swindler in the New' York Austrian<br />
American press, his supporters dwindled rapidly. In July 1885, thirtyfive<br />
families left for Manitoba under the leadership of EsterhiLzy's lieutenant,<br />
Geze Dory. With the help of the Manitoba and North-west Railway<br />
Land Company they homesteaded near the town of Minnedosa. By<br />
the end of the summer they were joined by a rccond groun, enough to<br />
form a settlement called Hungarten or Hun's VaHey. These people,<br />
mainly from upper Hungary, were of Magyar, Slovak, Carpatho-Ukrainian,<br />
Czech and South Slav origin.<br />
Esterhazy continued his recruiting trip that winter, travelling<br />
through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the bulk of Hungarian<br />
emigrants to the U.S.A. were living, but made little further<br />
headway. He was blacklisted and oppoeed not only by the press but<br />
also by the mine owners, who were threatened with the locs of their'<br />
cheap labour, the grocers and saloon keepers, who wanted to keep their<br />
customers, and the clergy, who vigorously herded their flocks. Deciding<br />
that proper organization was the only answer, he formed and became<br />
president of the Hungarian Immigration and Colonization Aid Society,<br />
with headquarters in Pennsylvania. Armed with a further $25,000 of<br />
CPR money he induced another 3S Pennsylvania Hungarian families to<br />
move to the banks of the Qu'Appelle River where they formed a settle<br />
ment named Ksposver,<br />
After he had gotten the Hungarian Colonization Aid Society in<br />
20
corporated in Canada, Esterhazy went on recruiting in Pennsylvania.<br />
From the mining towns of Phoenixville, Manch, Chunk, Hazelton, Yeddo,<br />
Schamokin, Mount Carmel and 'I'amayna, he gathered a group of<br />
130 men. When they reached Winnipeg, they received the bad news, that<br />
the Kaposvar colony where they intended to pass the winter, was partly<br />
burned down, partly deserted. A contract arranged by Esterhazy for<br />
jobs in Moore and Company's mine near Medicine Hat was never fulfilled.<br />
Half-starved and disgusted, the 130 returned from the mine to<br />
the immigrant shed at Medicine Hat, subsisted for a while on government<br />
hand-outs and, some of them, drifted back to the States. During<br />
the same winter (1886-7) a small party arrived at Montreal direct from<br />
Hungary, penniless, having been robbed of all they possessed in Hamburg,<br />
Germany. Following these fiascos, Esterbezy; was fired by the<br />
Canadian government and the CPR refused him any more money.<br />
The CPR had, however, by no means abandoned the idea of attrect-<br />
To replace the first modest log structure, this church of Kaposv8.r<br />
settlement was built in 1907-8. It required 1,600 loads of stones,<br />
hauled by sleighs in the winter by the settlers. The stone, beautiful<br />
in its natural state with its red brilliance, had to be cut. Mortar<br />
was made from sand and chalk.<br />
At the time of the 50th jubilee of the settlement in 1936, a stone<br />
cairn was erected honoring the Hungarian pioneer settlers.<br />
21
ing immigrants from Hungary. Combining forces with the Allan Shipping<br />
Line they sent another agent, Theodore Zboray, to Europe. Zboray's<br />
efforts were fruitless, for he was arrested for conducting emigration<br />
propaganda in his native country and returned to Canada with<br />
only one companion - his sister, whose fare was charged to Ottawa!<br />
In the meantime Esterhazy continued his work, unofficially, in the<br />
U.S.A., and through his efforts and those of other agents, combined<br />
with the growing economic and social pressure in Austria-Hungary, a<br />
steady flow of Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Carpatho-Ukrainians, Germans,<br />
Croats and people of other nationalities under the Habsburg domination<br />
crossed the Atlantic. Many of them made their way, both<br />
directly and indirectly, to the Canadian West.<br />
Bekevar Became Our Flag<br />
After Kaposvar, but before 1900, at least three larger Hungarian<br />
settlements were started in what is now Saskatchewan - Halmok, Otthon,<br />
and Plunkett. In 1900 Bekever (Fort of Peace) was established<br />
near Kipling; it soon grew large enough to have two school-houses,<br />
named after the Hungarian national leaders Rak6czi and Kossuth. Esterhazy's<br />
plan for a "Hungarian legion" was completely lost sight of.<br />
The new settlers had no interest in or stomach for "putting down rehellions",<br />
Fresh from oppression in their own former country, they felt<br />
Janos SzabO and his wife Eszter<br />
Molnar, were among the<br />
founders of Bekevar, Sask., in<br />
1900. This picture was taken in<br />
the 1980's.<br />
Whiie Kaposvar and Stockholm<br />
are cen.tres of Catholics,<br />
the Bekevar and Otthon settlements<br />
are Protestant centres.<br />
22
a kinship with the older Canadians, Metis, Indians, who had so recently<br />
fought under the leadership of Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont for the<br />
land, nationhood and democracy.<br />
This was a time, when, after the 1867 Confederation and 1885 Riel<br />
Rebellion, Emily Pauline Johnson, the great Canadian poet of Indian<br />
stock, saw the native Indian people as part of a great Canadian brotherhood,<br />
taking their place in the building of a huge country of many<br />
peoples. In a poem written for the unveiling of a monument for Joseph<br />
Brant, great Indian leader, she wrote:<br />
Young Canada with mighty force sweeps on,<br />
To gain in power and strength before the down<br />
Then meet we as one common brotherhood<br />
In peace and love with purpose understood,<br />
Monument to Emily Pauline Johnson (1862-1913)<br />
Stanley Park.<br />
in Vancouver's<br />
23
In the early 1900's other Hungarian settlements were established,<br />
those named Stockholm, Wakaw, Lestock, Cupar, Magyar, Zala and<br />
Prud'homme. But at the same time some Hungarians also moved into<br />
the already settled regions, swelling the population of Melville, Yorkton,<br />
Whitewood, Regina and Saskatoon. In and around Lethbridge,<br />
Alta., the first Hungarian Sick Benefit Society was established. Thus<br />
we may claim with truth and pride that Hungarian settlers had made<br />
a considerable contribution to the establishment of Saskatchewan and<br />
Alberta when, in 1905, they became Provinces.<br />
These early Hungarian agricultural settlements in the West later<br />
on, mainly after World War I, had spread out northward too, up to<br />
Mistatim and Spiritwood, Sask., and to the Peace River district of Alberta.<br />
Winnipeg, Man., was the oldest transition for Hungarian settlers,<br />
but in 1904 they al so established there a Hungarian sick benefit society.<br />
24
In the East, Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, WeIland, Brantford,<br />
Niagara Falls and Windsor all had their first Hungarian settlers in the<br />
early 1900's.<br />
The 1901 census listed 1,549 Hungarians. By 1911 this figure had<br />
grown to 11,658 (over half of whom were living in Saskatchewan) and<br />
by 1921 to 13,181. Many of these newcomers went into industrial centres,<br />
from Cape Breton right across to Vancouver Island; they worked<br />
in the mines and the logging camps; in Southern Ontario they raised<br />
vegetables, tobacco, sugar beets, grew fruit, bred livestock as did many<br />
of their compatriots in Alberta and British Columbia.<br />
The census figures grew steadily. Between 1926 and 1930 over 26,<br />
000 Hungarian immigrants entered Canada. By 1941 the figure was<br />
54,598. By 1951, with the addition of Hungarians from the D. P. camps<br />
in Germany and Austria (but excluding about a thousand who were<br />
repatriated from Canada to the new Hungary after the liberation), it<br />
was over 60,000. However, as people of Hungarian origin who had come<br />
from Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia often were not included<br />
in the census figure, the true total is nearer to 70 or 75 thousand.<br />
The official distribution of the Hungarian-Canadians by Provinces<br />
is as follows: Maritimes 580, Quebec 4,127, Ontario 28,182, Manitoba<br />
2,326, Saskatchewan 12,470, Alberta, 7,794, British Columbia 4,948, Yukon<br />
and Northwest Territories 33. From these figures the shift away<br />
from the early pattern of settlement may be seen: during World War<br />
II many thousands of Hungarian-Canadians left the prairies for the cities<br />
of Ontario and the West Coast. Now more than half of them are<br />
classified as urban dwellers. This is the more surprising since the overwhelming<br />
majority of them came to Canada as poor peasants or landless<br />
agricultural workers. Now only about a third of them work on the<br />
land. With the wartime prosperity and the new group of about 10,000<br />
since 1945, the very small percentage of workshop-owners, merchants,<br />
priests and other professionals has grown to some extent.<br />
However, life is a great teacher and members of all three emigrations<br />
are getting evermore integrated with each other and with the<br />
Canadian people and life as a whole. So the vision of J. S. Wallace in his<br />
"All My Brothers Are Beautiful" is in sight:<br />
They were robbed wherever they went<br />
Stand and deliver, profit and rent<br />
Eating the ashes of discontent<br />
Still for all their bitterness<br />
All my brothers are beautiful.<br />
. 20
MYTH AND HISTORY<br />
WHAT ARE the Magyars? The name of "H un' s Valley" , the Latin<br />
"Hungaria" and "Hungaricus", the German "Ungarn", the English<br />
"Hungarian" are all based on the false assumption of a close Magyar<br />
Hun racial, blood-relation. In the Magyar literature the poetical term<br />
of "Hunnia", meaning the Carpathian basin, the land where in the 5th<br />
century A.D. the Hun's emperor Attila, "God's whip" ruled over<br />
much of Western and Eastern Europe, and many so-called people's legends<br />
about the Huns as an early "brother people" of the Magyars were<br />
made up not so much by the people's imagination, as by the mostly<br />
foreign-originated ruling classes of the Magyars to make themselves feel<br />
"great" as followers of the "great" Hun people, and especially by the<br />
feudal-capitalist lords' literary agents 1,000 years after the Magyars<br />
came into the Carpathian basin, in 896 A. D . This myth has served in<br />
the oppression of the Hungarian people and national minorities in the<br />
. country all along and irredentist-imperialist aims after the dismembering<br />
Trianon treaty of 1920-21, against neighbouring countries.<br />
The ancient home of the Hun tribes was in Mongolia<br />
around 500 B.C. , and the Chinese Wall was built as a defense against<br />
them. The much fewer Magyar tribes at that time were grazing their<br />
herds - close to the Finns and other members of the Finn-Ugorian<br />
language family - on what later become the north-eastern part of<br />
European Russia. During the people's wandering they both were driven<br />
west, but the Huns came into the Carpathian basin around the beginning<br />
of the 5th century A.D., and after the death of Attila in 453, the<br />
Hun Empire of slaveholders was broken up ; the Huns were dispersed<br />
east and south-east, the Germans and others went north and west. (The<br />
German settlements in Hungary were established during the close to<br />
1,000 years of the Hungarian state, established about 500 years later.)<br />
The Magyars may have met with some remnants of the Huns 400 years<br />
later on their way down south to the Kuban Land and from there to<br />
north-west on the northern shores of the Black Sea into the Carpathian<br />
basin; there is nothing to prove or disprove this, but there is proo<br />
that they met on their way with Turks, Kazars, Bulgars and becam<br />
mixed mainly with Slavs and this developed even further with th<br />
Slovaks, who were already living in the northern mountainous part 0<br />
the basin when the Magyars came in under the leadership of Prine<br />
Arpad in 896.<br />
26
"Honfoglalas", seizure of a new, permanent homeland by the nomad Magyars<br />
under the leadership of Prince Arplid in the Carpathian basin in 896,<br />
was painted by Mihaly MUllklicsy (1844-1900), who was one of the most<br />
talented painters of his time. He made many historical paintings, especially<br />
in connection with 1848-49, however he was greatest in portraying the life<br />
and lot of the Hungarian working people.<br />
The Birth of Hungary<br />
At the time of their arrival in the Carpathian basin - where<br />
besides the Slovaks in the northern part, there was no population in<br />
the mostly swampy central plains, some Bulgars in the south, some<br />
Franconians and other remnants of the Roman Empire in the hilly<br />
Transdanubia in the west (province of Pannonia) and some in the<br />
mountainous Transylvania in the east (province of Dacia)-the Magyars<br />
were in a transitory stage from their ancient nomad communal society<br />
to a society of slaveholders and slaves.<br />
After many terrifying adventures against their neighbours, especially<br />
to the west and south-west, and after suffering some serious defeats,<br />
the nomad Magyars finally settled down to develop agriculture, stabilized<br />
animal-raising and artisanship and their first state. In 1001, Prince<br />
Istvan of the Arpad dynasty became the first crowned king (Stephanus<br />
I) of the country and the development of the Christian feudal state<br />
was furthered with· western help and the influx of foreign elements<br />
(German, Italian, Slav) into the growing ruling class - . beginning<br />
around 900, with bishops, priests, monks, some artisans and knights <br />
was increased.<br />
Magna Charta and Tatars .<br />
Later, Laszlo the Brave (Ladislaus I) and Kalman the Book-lover<br />
(Coloman, who strictly banned the much-cultivated witchhunting around<br />
1100) consolidated the structure of the developing feudal state. However,<br />
there was no rest: from the south the Turks, from west the Habsburg-Germans<br />
soon began their attacks; the Pope, who donated part of<br />
the crown, demanded certain rights and fees; feudal lords (including<br />
27
the bishops), these "little kings" were weakening the structure from<br />
inside by their individual class greediness. The petty nobility and free<br />
peasantry (who had to serve in the king's army) and the serfs (who<br />
had to till the lands and serve in the small armies of the feudal lords<br />
and bishops, many times fighting against each other and sometimes<br />
also against the king) were revolting against the burden.<br />
(It was under Endre II, that in his absence in 1213, Biink the Bsn,<br />
one of the richest lords of Hungary, became the leader of the discontented<br />
elements and they killed the treacherous Queen Gertrudis, who<br />
was a Meranian. In the revolutionary atmosphere in the middle of the<br />
19th century, this "plot" became the theme of one of the first Hungarian<br />
national dramas by [ozse! Katona and one of the best Hungarian<br />
national operas by Ferenc Erkel. The problem of the oppressed peasantry,<br />
the tragedy of a disgraced husband, the love of the country, the<br />
Hungarian language and folk music was put in this opera against the<br />
Germanizing Habsburg tyranny. The film "Erkel", on the life of the<br />
great Hungarian composer, powerfully depicts this historical struggle.)<br />
In 1222, Endre (Andrew) II, was forced to ensure the rights of<br />
the petty nobility in a Bill of Rights, called "Golden Bulla" - just few<br />
years after King John of England signed the Magna Charta.<br />
However, when the Mongolian Tatar hordes broke into the country in<br />
1241 and dispersed the small army of Bela (William) IV, neither the<br />
28<br />
A scene from the fibn "Erkel": The troubled Ban Bank and his wife<br />
Melinda, ravished by the brother of Queer-. Gertrudis, in the opera<br />
"Ban Bank".
landlords and bishops, nor t he western Christian leaders offered any<br />
help to repell the invading hordes, rather the Habsburgs took the opportunity<br />
to grab three western counties. Bourgeois historians are trying<br />
to hide the fact, that it was in ellienoe with the Polish and Russian<br />
princes that Bela IV began to build towns and forts in the scourched<br />
country after the withdrawal of the in vaders, and that a second invasion<br />
was avarted only by the Russian people freeing themselves of the Mongolian<br />
yoke.<br />
Anjous, Luxemburgs, Habsburgs, J agellos<br />
After the death of Bela IV, in 1270, a feudal anarchy developed<br />
by the feudal "little kings" like Mate Csak and many others, under the<br />
last members of the Arpad dynasty; and a-fter the death of Andrew III,<br />
in 1301, the last of the dynasty, the class rule itself was threatened by<br />
the inner and outside conflicts. Finally in 1308, with the support of the<br />
Pope a nd Italian bankers, Robert Karoly (Char les) of the Franconian<br />
Anjou dynasty was accepted to the throne. He and his son, Lajos<br />
(Louis) the Great, reorganized the feudal system, including the introduction<br />
of the institute of Knights. For the time being the anarchy was<br />
ended, mining and commerce began to develop.<br />
(This was the period from which the heroic story of Mik16s Toldi,<br />
the home-kept" and neglected younger brother of a feudal family is taken<br />
by a friend of Petofi, Janos Arany, the great epic poet at the first<br />
half of the 19th century. )<br />
Under the daughter of Lajos I, Maria (1382-1387) anarchy set in<br />
again and even her husband, Sigmund of Luxemburg (1387-1437) <br />
who became the king of Rome and emperor of the declining Roman<br />
German Empire - could not consolidate his rule, while the attacks of<br />
the Turks in the sout h became more and more continuous. Sigmund<br />
played a double game with Popes, as well as with the followers of John<br />
Huss, the great Czech religious and social reformer. It was und-er the<br />
stimulation of the Hussitism, that the peasants and petty nobility of<br />
Transylvania went into an unsuccessful revolt in 1437 against the feudal<br />
lords led by inquisitor Bishop Gyorgy Lepes.<br />
After Sigmund, his brother-in-law, Albrecht Habsburg became the<br />
king of Hungary (1437-39) - this was the beginning of the rule of<br />
the Habsburgs over Hungary, which lasted for 400 years, interrupted<br />
here and there at its beginning, running paraIIel for 150 years with tlre<br />
domination of the Turks over parts of the country, then becoming the<br />
sole rulers of Hungary up to 1918. Meanwhile, however, out of the<br />
common defense of Poland and Hungary against the Turks, in 1440,<br />
the Polish king of the [egello dynasty was called on the throne of Hungary<br />
- Ulasz16 (1440-1444) .<br />
The Hunyadis<br />
But the landlords and western rulers did not learn, and when the<br />
29
Turks renewed their attacks in force against Hungary, it was the noble<br />
Janos Hunyadi, who without any help from the lords and foreign rulers<br />
mobilized the peasantry and in campaign after campaign repulsed and<br />
drove the Turks far away into the Balkan Peninsula.<br />
Albrecht's son was crowned as Ladislaus V in 1440 yet, but became<br />
the ruler only in 1452, under the patronage of the anti-Hunyadi lords<br />
led by Ulrik Cillei, In a counterplot, the followers of Hunyadi's older<br />
30<br />
A scene from the film "Erkel": Erzsebet Szilagyi, widow of Turkbeater<br />
Janos Hunyadl, mother of L8.szl6 and Matyas, in the opera<br />
''lAsz16 Bunyadi".
son, LaszlO, killed the treacherous Cillei. The Habsburg king then gave<br />
his word by oath that he would not punish LaszlO Hunyadi, but called<br />
him to Buda and renewing the old anti-Hunyadi plot - he beheaded the<br />
son of the great anti-Turk hero of the Magyars. (This treachery of the<br />
Habsburg king became the theme of poems by Janos Arany and Sandor<br />
Petbii, and a powerful opera by Ferenc Erkel in the middle of the 19th<br />
century.) However, the younger son of Janos Hunyadi became a ruler<br />
by a proclamation of revolt on the ice of the Danube in 1458, as the<br />
first freely selected king of Hungary. This last Hunyadi, the humanist<br />
Matyas I (1458- 90) , became one of the most popular rulers of the<br />
country, being a great supporter of the Rennaisance and defender of<br />
the people against official bureaucracy and other injustices. Under his<br />
rule the population of the country grew to 4 millions. Even recently the<br />
old saying was still common among the Hungarian people: "King<br />
Mathias died, so did Justice."<br />
"Andras Hess in the Court of King MAtyas", a wallpainting by M6r Than<br />
(1828-1899). Vice-chancellor Gereb introduces Andras Hess, the first Hungarian<br />
printer to MAtyas.<br />
The Peasant War and Mohacs<br />
Under the weak UlaszlO II (1490-1516) feudal anarchy set in<br />
again, which combined with the adventurist plan of Primate Tamas Bakocz<br />
to become the head of the church in Constantinople and with the<br />
connivance of the West to make the Hungarian forces victims of<br />
the invading Turks - provoked the great Hungarian peasant revolt in<br />
1514 under the leadership of Gyorgy Dozse, a Transylvanian, who previously<br />
became a famous military leader against the Turks. All the<br />
lords and bishops, even the Pope joined hands against the revolt while<br />
the Habsburgs were just waiting for their chance to become the permanent<br />
rulers of Hungary. After many victories of the peasant army<br />
31
One of the "1514" DOzsaseries<br />
of eleven woodcuts<br />
made by GyuIa Derkovlts<br />
(1894-1934) in 1928-29.<br />
of Dozsa, the unity and trickery of the ruling class defeated them:<br />
20,000 peasants were killed; Dozs« was burned on a red-hot fiery<br />
throne as a "peasant king"; many participants (the first "Kurutzes";<br />
named after their emblem the Cross, "crux" in Latin, because they<br />
were intended to be thrown against the Turks untrained and withou<br />
arms in a Crux-campaign to liberate the Holy Land) were marked witli<br />
hot iron, and among the many severe new laws the free migration 0<br />
the serfs from one bad lord to the other - was abolished. Some 10<br />
years later, in 1526, the army of Lajos II, who was left alone by mos<br />
of the lords, bishops, and all foreign rulers, was dispersed by the huge<br />
army of the Turks on August 29 at Mohacs in Southern Hungary.<br />
"Between Two Heathen"<br />
From this time on - despite the heroic defenders of some fort ,<br />
like Miklos Zrinyi of Szigetvar, Miklos [urisics of Kfiszeg, Istvan Do ~<br />
of Eger, etc. - the south-centre part of the country was invaded an<br />
became subjected to the robbing rule of the Turks for 150 years. Toe<br />
western, sometime the northern parts too, were under even worse ru<br />
of the Habsburgs, who now invaded to "help" the Magyars against t<br />
Turks; the lords and bishops almost without exception sided with tB<br />
Habsburgs. For most of these 150 years, however, the eastern pa<br />
Transylvania, remained under Magyar rule, and most of her prine<br />
(the Bocskays, Bethlens, Rakoczis, etc.) were the leaders' of many.u<br />
32
successful liberating campaigns and defenders, supporters of the Reformation,<br />
with some social betterments of the people's lot. A song of<br />
the "Kurutzes" (volunteers of the liberating campaigns) reflects very<br />
characteristically the situation under the rule of the Turks and Habsburgs:<br />
"The Magyars are bleeding away between two heathen in the<br />
one homeland".<br />
The Stars of Eger<br />
(The Hungarian People's Republic and its people in 1952, celebrated<br />
the 400th anniversary of the heroic struggle of the defenders of<br />
the Fort of Eger. Gez« Giudonyi's - 1863-1922 - excellent historical<br />
novel in two volumes, "Stars of Eger", deals with this siege on the wide<br />
background of this period. Under the leadership of Istvan Dobo, 3,000<br />
poorly armed defenders of the mainly earthen fort on the hill, on the<br />
southern slopes of the mountainous Upper Hungary were bleeding<br />
away against a twenty-times larger and better equipped Turkish army,<br />
but inflicted on them wounds so deep that they had to give up the<br />
siege after hardly anything was left of the isolated fort and of its<br />
heroic defenders. A wonderful example of initiative, resourcefulness<br />
and heroism by a handful of patriots - peasants, tradesmen and some<br />
soldiers who loved their country, their families and home - even if<br />
their hope for the much needed help from the Habsburg Emperor was<br />
entirely illusory and proved to be in vain.)<br />
"The Women of Eger" were immortalized<br />
in this painting by<br />
Bertalan Szekiely (1885-1910),<br />
whose art represent a landmark<br />
in Hungarian national<br />
painting. The women of Eger<br />
laid claim to great fame for<br />
bravely and resourcefully fighting<br />
shoulder to shoulder with<br />
the men agaif\St the Turks in<br />
1554.<br />
33
Rak6czi's War of Independence<br />
With the weakening of the Turkish Empire of slaveholders, to<br />
which the brave Kurutzes contributed greatly, the Habsburgs and their<br />
Magyar stooges - with the help of the real Magyar patriots - quite<br />
easily pushed out the Turks in the 1680-90's, but it did not bring liberation<br />
for the Magyars, only a change to a more merciless rul-e, with all<br />
the attempts at Germanization. And for this reason some Magyar<br />
leaders, like Istvan Thokoly, sided with the Turks in these struggles.<br />
In 1687, after the recapture of Buda from the Turks, the feudalist<br />
assembly of Hungary accepted "in gratis" the Habsburg dynasty's<br />
right of succession to the throne. But in 1703, something unique happened<br />
in Hungary's history: Ferenc Rekoczi, a descendent of the Kurutz<br />
leaders, the son of the heroic Ilona Zrinyi, married second time to<br />
Istvan Th6k6ly, and the biggest landlord of Hungary - accepted the<br />
leadership of the barefooted peasant movement of liberation. Rakoczi<br />
(who 27 years of age had just escaped from the prison of the<br />
Habsburgs) became the leader of an eight years long war of independence.<br />
Unlike other landlords, he remained loyal to the cause until his<br />
death. He won many victories with his peasant armies so that in a few<br />
years almost the whole country was liberated. He met a few times Peter<br />
Ferenc RakOczi meets Tamas Esze, leader of the barefooted serfs,<br />
in a forest on Hungarian-Polish border in the spring of 1703. (Painting<br />
by Gyorgy Konecsny, IV. National Art Exhibition in BUdapest,<br />
1954.)
the Great of Russia and made an alliance with him; unfortunately Peter<br />
was hard pressed from Swedish, later Turkish attack, while on the<br />
other hand the Habsburgs won the Spanish war of succession over the<br />
"Ilona Zrinyi Before Her Judges", a painting by Viktor Mada.n\sz (1880-1917).<br />
Ilona Zrinyi was a descendant of MiklOs Zrinyi, captain of Szigeuw, a heroic<br />
leader against the Turks, who died in the last out-stonning from the besieged<br />
Szigetvar in 1566. The father of Ilona, Peter Zrinyi, poet and military leader,<br />
was beheaded together with her uncle by the Habsburgs in 1670. Ilona, as<br />
the widow of ;Prince Ferenc Rii.k6czi I of Transylvania, led the defense of<br />
Mu~ for three years against overwhelming Habsburg forces until she<br />
was forced to capitulate by a betrayal, Before the Babsburg judges we see<br />
her with her son and daughter, Ferenc and Julianna Rii.koczi. After escaping<br />
from a Habsburg prison, Ferenc became the leader of the War of Independence<br />
in 1708-11.<br />
35
Prince Ferenc RAk6czi II of Hungary (1676-1735).<br />
French and were able to put all their strength against Rakoczi, In 1711,<br />
while Rakoczi was on his way again to Peter, the treacherous landlord<br />
leaders of the army, Count Karolyi and others, capitulated to the Habsburgs.<br />
The rule of the Habsburgs over parts of Hungary was now<br />
extended to the whole of Hungary. The lands of Rakoczi and other-loyal<br />
leaders were given to the Scbonborn, Festetich, Batthyimy, Konigs,tgg,<br />
Herruckern, Wenckheim, Karolyi and other families of German overlords<br />
and Hungarian traitors, while Rakoczi himself - after getting<br />
nothing but nice promises from his formal ally, the King of France <br />
was exiled to Turkey with few loyal Kurutzes and died in 1730, at<br />
Rodosto by the Marmara Sea.<br />
After this many thousands of Hungarians emigrated to Turkey,<br />
Poland and especially to France, from where many hundreds of them<br />
or their sons sailed to America to participate in the War of Independence<br />
under George Washington.<br />
36
(From Rakoczi'a War of Independence is taken the theme of the<br />
new film, "Rekoczi'« Lieutenant", which deals with the heroic deeds<br />
and love of the peasant hero, ] anos Bornemissza, who served under<br />
Bottyen the Blind, a peasant general of legendary fame. In a daring<br />
raid with ten of his cavalrymen, Bornemissza captures the new commander-in-chief<br />
of the Austrian army in Hungary. Bottyan sends him<br />
with the high prisoner to Prince Rakoczi, who promotes the peasant<br />
hero to lieutenancy and sends him back with an order of attack, which<br />
leads Janos to the liberation of his village and sweethart. The battle<br />
scenes in the open terrain of this film mark a turning point in the new<br />
Hungarian film art.)<br />
Jaqos Bomemissza, the peasant hero of the film "RAk6czi's Lieutenant",<br />
arrives from left to join the' cavalrymen of Bottyan the<br />
Blind (in centre), a Kurutz general of legendary fame.<br />
Jacobins, Reformers, Revolution<br />
After many unsuccessful revolts in Hungary and under the influence<br />
of the Great French Revolution, in 1789, the first Hungarian<br />
republican movement came into being in 1794, led by a monk, university<br />
professor Igruu: Martinovics, and some enlightened noblemen. In 1795,<br />
Martinovics and five of his comrades - the Hungarian ]acobins <br />
were executed by the Habsburgs.<br />
37
History, however, demanded a change in the structure of society.<br />
At the beginning of the 19th century the Reiorm movement was born,<br />
led by pauperized petty nobles and supported by some landlords whose<br />
economy was ruined by its backwardness and Habsburg exploitation.<br />
There was a literary renaissance and debates on social problems<br />
intruded into the floor of the feudal House. The Hungarian Academy<br />
of Sciences was established. This was the time when the fighting theatrical<br />
national movement depicted in the fine film "Mrs. Dery", was born<br />
at the head of a cultural revolution basing itself on the peasantry,<br />
tradesmen and students against Germanization. The Magyar language,<br />
which was pushed aside from the time of the first kings by Latin<br />
and later on by German - and became unknown even for many of the<br />
lords and for 800 years was saved mainly by the peasants, tradesman<br />
and enlightened nobles - became a big issue. Against the German<br />
Theatre, in Pest, the new developing city across the Danube, opposite<br />
to the fort-town of Buda, the Magyar National Theatre was established<br />
just before the 1848 revolution.<br />
38<br />
K!I:i.ry Tolnay, twice Kossuth prize-winner, as Mrs. Dery sings "Cse·<br />
rebogar, siirga cserebogar" to peasants in an inn on the night before<br />
market day. (From the film "Mrs. Dery")
Perofi among peasants in a Transdanubian inn, in February 1848,<br />
just before the revolution. (A painting by Imre Revesz, 1859-1933).<br />
Petofi and Kossuth<br />
On March 15, 1848, with the help of the peasantry, tradesmen and<br />
already some workers, the students led by the great revolutionary poet,<br />
Sandor Petbil, moved the bourgeoisie of Pest to act and forced the<br />
feudal House (with some enlightened members, who had travelled much<br />
in the West of Europe) sitting in Pozsony, near the Austrian border,<br />
from debates to deeds for a program based on the slogan "Equality,<br />
Fraternity, Liberty". The Paris, Vienna and other revolutions in Western<br />
and Eastern Europe, forced the Habsburg court to agree to the<br />
demands of the Hungarian House by this time already led by Lajos<br />
Kossuth, who after many years of fighting for reforms had used the<br />
pressure of the Pest revolution to transform the ieudel House and<br />
accept in the main the demands of the revolution. The Hungarian deputation<br />
led by Kossuth to the Emperor in the revolutionary Vienna<br />
was a. great success. However, the trickery of the Habsburgs and their<br />
Metternich, and some Hungarian stooges working in Vienna, sabotaged<br />
the sanctioning of the new laws, provoked the nationalities to revolts<br />
and all this, including the hesitation of the first responsible government<br />
of Hungary, soon led to open War of Independence in September<br />
1848. Kossuth and his Honveds (defenders of the homeland) wrote the<br />
most glorious pages into Hungarian history, but they became the<br />
isolated and last European fighters for democracy and independence of<br />
this period against the combined forces of the so-called Sacred Com-<br />
39
A sc e.ie from the film "The Sea Has Rlsen": on March 15, 1818,<br />
SAndorPetofi recites from the stairs of the National Museum of<br />
Budapest, his famous National Song written the night before that<br />
day of the Revolution. Its first stanza is:<br />
Rise, Magyar! for this, thy Land,<br />
Calls to thee - the hour's at hand!<br />
AI18 we slaves or are we free?<br />
This to ask - the choice to thee!<br />
By the God, of the Magyar,<br />
Do we swear,<br />
Do we swear, chains no longer<br />
Will we wear!<br />
pact of the Habsburgs, the Czar of Russia and European reaction as a<br />
whole, and amid much inner troubles, on August 13, 1849, the treacherous<br />
General Arthur Giirgey ordered the army to lay down its arms at<br />
Vi/agos, before the commander of the Czar. Petofi, the adjutant of the<br />
Transylvanian commander, Polish General Bern, the world famous and<br />
beloved internationalist, died in the battle of Segesver on July 31;<br />
Kossuth after August 13 fled the country for a long and heroically<br />
active emigration in Turkey, England, America, France and Italy, where<br />
he died in 1894, in Turin.<br />
(This historical period of glorious struggle - Kossuth and the<br />
fighting Hungarian people was highly praised by Marx and Engels<br />
is depicted in the excellent new Hungarian double film "The Sea Ha<br />
Risen". The title is taken from PetOfi's poem with the same title. Her<br />
40
Lajos Kossuth appeals in film "The Sea Has Risen" to the first<br />
parliament of Hungary to raise a people's army to defend the revolution<br />
against invading mercenary troops of the Habsburgs.<br />
An attack by the P eople's Army of Hungary in 1848-49. (Contemporary<br />
engj-avlng)<br />
41
is another version of translation of the poem:<br />
Rebellion rides the ocean<br />
The ocean of mankind<br />
Affrighting earth and heaven,<br />
The maddened waves a leaven<br />
To terrify the mind.<br />
That carmagnole, you see it?<br />
You hear that roundelay?<br />
For you who might not know it,<br />
The time is ripe to show it:<br />
The way the people play!<br />
The ocean howls, it rages,<br />
The ships are flung about,<br />
Till naught but hell avail or<br />
The masthead and the sailor<br />
Be brought to utter rout.<br />
Roar out your rage, you deluge,<br />
Roar out your raging fume,<br />
Show low your deepest fathom,<br />
Throw high on clouds at random<br />
The fury of your spume.<br />
Inscribe upon the heavens<br />
For all eternity:<br />
"Above, though rides the galley <br />
Below, though waters rally <br />
The sovereign is the sea!"<br />
The film, as the poem, shows that although the torn boat, thrown<br />
here and there, up and down by the waves, is still on the top - the<br />
ocean of mankind is becoming the master. )<br />
42<br />
General J6zsef Bern ("Grandpa' B ern") and Sandor Pet6fi in the.<br />
battle. (Painting by Sandor 1:k, IV. National Art Exhibition in Budapest,<br />
1945.)
MihAly TMCsis, a revolutionary writer<br />
of Hungary, had travelled widely In<br />
western Europe and had made conneetions<br />
there with the socialist movements<br />
durtng the 1840's. He was not only<br />
blamed, but also jailed, for trying to<br />
'bri ng into feudal, Habsburg ruled Hungary<br />
"the ugliest form of liberalism,<br />
that is communism". He was released<br />
from the Fort of Buda by the forces of<br />
the Pest Revolution on March 15, 1848.<br />
He was called the "Apostle of the<br />
peasants", while during the Revolution<br />
he edited and published the "Munk8s0k<br />
Ujsagsagja", first working class journal<br />
in Hungary.<br />
Class Struggle vs, c.ompromise<br />
After the dark period of Habsburg revenge, came the 1867 compromise,<br />
when the Hungarian feudal-bourgeois ruling classes had agreed<br />
to the continuation of Habsburg rule over Hungary "in gratis" to the<br />
very feeble givings of the Habsburgs.<br />
The freed serfs of 1848 were only part of the peasantry waiting for<br />
liberation, and even most of them could not stay on "their" former<br />
serf-lands because they were unable to pay the set reparation fees for<br />
it; hundreds of thousands of peasants remained serfs in a modified form<br />
as agrarian and court servants of the landlords, and of the bishops.<br />
Half of the population had to live on the one-sixteenth of the arable<br />
land. After the development of sheepraising before 1848, now Austria's<br />
other main demand was wheat and competitive industrialization was<br />
kept back. Under such circumstances, the growing masses of agrarian<br />
and industrial workers had little chance to earn a living, wages were<br />
kept at the lowest level. This situation had given impetus to the development<br />
of the agrarian-socialist movement and to the creation of tbe<br />
first workers' party in Hungary, but also to the beginning of the ma~s<br />
43
Last heroic resistance of the iParisian communards in the Pere Laehalse<br />
cemetery in 1871 against mercenaries of bourgeois betrayers of France.<br />
emigration of nearly 2 million Hungarians, mostly to the "promisedland"<br />
of the Americas, including Canada.<br />
Leo Frankel was the Hungarian-born minister of labour and com-<br />
''Panem! 1899." Painting by Imre Revesz (1859-1988), pj-otessor at the Art<br />
College in Budapest. Jobless Hungarian agrarian proletars demand bread.<br />
44
merce of the Paris Commune in 1871. At the second congress of the<br />
International in London, Frankel, a member of the General Council of<br />
the International in London, instructed by Marx - proposed the declaration<br />
of the necessity of political struggle. He travelled all over Europe<br />
and had been arrested many times. After returning home, he succeeded<br />
in forcing from the lords of Hungary the right to organize the "General<br />
Workers' Party of Hungary". In a libel suit he was sentenced to 18<br />
months imprisonment, in 1883 he was set free and joined Engels in<br />
creating the II. International.<br />
In 1891 at Orosheze in South Hungary the first May Day was<br />
celebrated and in 1894 at H6dmezovilsilrhely in the centre of Hungary,<br />
the first shooting occured by the gendarme and soldiery at the masses.<br />
The Social Democratic Party of Hungary not only put the brake on the<br />
struggle of the workers, most of them already organized in trade unions,<br />
but it also treacherously turned away from the cause of the poor peasantry.<br />
In the summer of 1897 tens of thousands of harvesting workers<br />
What was the yearly average number of immigrants<br />
who left Hungary in different periods from 1880 to<br />
19181
went on strike on the Great Hungarian Plain, there were many bloody<br />
clashes. Slovak, Rumanian and Serbian harvesters were brought in and<br />
a severe agricultural law was enacted. In 1905 about 10,000 agricultural<br />
workers and servants went on strike, in 1906 over 100 ,000, and about<br />
5,000 agricultural workers were put in jail. The landlords in the fall of<br />
1906 agreed that for the next harvest they would bring in harvesters<br />
Irom Russia, Galicia, Poland and Rumania. One of them even proposed<br />
that they should bring in 100,000 coolies from China, but others argued<br />
that the travelling expenses would be too high ...<br />
Endre Ady (1877-1919) , by chronology the second of the Big Three<br />
lyrical poets of Hungary - (Sandor Petofi, Endre Ady, Attila J6zsef)<br />
- claimed himself to be "the grandson 01 Gyorgy Dozss", leader of<br />
the Peasant War in 1514, who was executed<br />
on a red-hot iron throne.<br />
He was worth more than eighty abbots,<br />
More sacred lord has not lived yet,<br />
He sat on that red-hot throne burning,<br />
As God up in the heaven sits.<br />
Ady deeply loved the "three million<br />
beggars" of agricultural Hungary<br />
betrayed by the 1867 Compromise and<br />
later by the leaders of the Social Democratic<br />
Party, but he also recognized<br />
the historical role 01 the then lastly de<br />
veloping industrial working class and in<br />
his seemingly hopeless period he passionately<br />
urged a "new Dozse" to come<br />
up with the "lazy Red Sun" - as if he<br />
was sensing that its arrival will be too<br />
late for him. (He died physically broken<br />
just two months before the Socialist Revolution<br />
in March, 1919, broke out.) His<br />
contempt of the MiJ.te Cssks, the "little<br />
kings" and their out-lived rule was as great as his love of the working<br />
people whose free and rich future he restlessly longed for. He put all<br />
this very powerfully into many of his poems from which here is the<br />
one entitled "On Lands 01 MiJ.te Cssk":<br />
46<br />
On your necks set wild, bourgeoise Teters,<br />
Sti11 lilted so proud are your heads.<br />
You are great in your laith and Iresh in blood,<br />
On the lands 01 MiJ.te Csak you are the God.<br />
Forward, Hungarian proleters.<br />
A11 that is beauty and lu11 01 hope, laith,
You around the Tisza are all that.<br />
There is not as much sorrow in the world,<br />
Not as many in chains elsewhere in the world,<br />
As here, and there isn't hunger as great.<br />
The hunger of bread, hunger for Culture,<br />
Hunger for Beauty is driving you.<br />
Never had a people a truth greater,<br />
Never lived anywhere yet Netos meaner.<br />
You are: the Present, you're: the Future.<br />
My being sickly, waiting only am I,<br />
Valiant fighter I cannot be.<br />
Oh but I have earned the love of your heart,<br />
My soul along with yours storms, exults and fights:<br />
My blood, Hungarian proleter,<br />
Imperialist War, Fascism, Liberation<br />
The last deed of the agrarian-socialists was the plan to erect the<br />
statue of Gyorgy Dozsa in 1914, to commemorate the 400 anniversary<br />
of the Great Peasant Revolt. The outbreak of World War I prevented<br />
this plan from being realized. (In the new Hungary a group statue of<br />
Dozsa is under realization now in Budapest.)<br />
At the end of the war, after the bourgeois-republican revolution in<br />
1918, came the proletarian revolution in the spring of 1919, the last<br />
"Idyd on the Banks of the Danube" is the No.1 of 20 drawings by Mih8.ly<br />
Biro, whose album on Dorthy terror was published in Vienna, 1920. Among<br />
many hundreds of victims, counterrevolutionary bandits in July of 1919 killed<br />
two editors of the "Szegedi Naplo" and threw them into the Tisza river; at<br />
the beginning of 1920 they kidnapped and killed editors Bela BacsO and Pal<br />
Somogyi of the Budapest "Nepszava" and drowned them in the Danube.<br />
47
Hungarian revolution and war of independence to be crushed by the<br />
combined forces of European reaction (this time also with the help of<br />
the Hoover Committee of the U.S.A.). Then came into the much reduced<br />
Hungary, after Trianon, the bloody revenge of the semi-fascistirredentist<br />
Horthy regime, which forced into emigration new tens of<br />
thousands of Hungarians, and this was climaxed by dragging Hungary<br />
into the Hitlerite war to almost complete national catastrophe, from<br />
which the Soviet Army liberated Hungary in 1944-45 to begin a free<br />
life in the enlarged camp of socialist reconstruction.<br />
History Made It Possible<br />
In 1953, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the beginning of<br />
Rakoczi's Independence War, the present leader of the liberated Hungarian<br />
people was widely quoted:<br />
"The Hungarian people lost a war of independence in every century",<br />
said Matyas Rakosi. "Rekoczi's Independence War, whose<br />
banner bore the slogan 'pro Libertate' - 'For Freedom' - was defated.<br />
The War of Independence of 1848-49 was defeated. The Revolution of<br />
1919 was defeated. All these defeats were due in the main to foreign reactionary<br />
forces which came to the assistance of the internal enemies of<br />
the Hungarian people from abroad. It was not primarily its internal<br />
weakness but the unfavourable turn of the international balance of<br />
48
forces which defeated th-e Hungarian fight for freedom throughout three<br />
centuries,"<br />
Matyas Rakosi also pointed out that for the first time in many<br />
centuries there is now a historic situation in which the advance of the<br />
Hungarian people is not impeded, but assisted by her neighbours and<br />
the international situation. On the side of the Soviet Union, liberator<br />
of Hungary, and of the other peace and freedom-loving peoples, Hungary<br />
upholds and realizes the national traditions of the fight for freedom."The<br />
realization of the aims, for which the Kurutz soldiers of RiJ.<br />
koczi, the Honveds of Kossuth and the red army men of the 1919 Revolution<br />
fought in vain, has now been made possible by history."<br />
And the Hungarian people is now successfully striving towards the<br />
goals visualized already over hundred years ago by Sandor PetOfi in his<br />
beautiful poem "To the XIX Century Poets" -<br />
When onc-e the horn of plenty holds<br />
For everyone his equal share;<br />
When once around the desk of rights<br />
Each one will take his equal chair;<br />
When once the sun of Spirit shines<br />
On every dwelIing's windowpane:<br />
Then we can say that we can stay,<br />
For here is Canaan Land again!<br />
49
WITH CANADA'S PEOPLE<br />
T IS LIKELY, that in the 1750's some Hungarians directly from<br />
I France, or from New England just before the American Revolution,<br />
participated in the Canadian seven-year-war on the side of<br />
the French against the British, but it is still a job to find some traces<br />
50<br />
Laura Secord, Canadian heroine of the War of 1812, picture by C.<br />
W. Jefferys, relating her warntn of the U.S. invasion to Col. Fitzgibbon,<br />
above, was a woman of wit and courage. Here is one of the<br />
stories told about her and how the Canadians saved this country<br />
from U.S. invasion:<br />
"Three Americans called at her house in QueeI¥!ton to ask for<br />
water. One of them said, 'When we come for good to this country<br />
we'll divide the land, and I'll take this here for my share.' Mrs.<br />
Secord was 80 nettled by the thought expressed that, although the<br />
men were respectful, she replied sharply, 'You scroundel, ail you'll<br />
ever get here will be six feet of earth! When they were gone her<br />
heart reproached her for her heat, because the men had not molested<br />
her property. To days later two of the men returned. They sald to<br />
Mrs. Secord, 'You were right about the six feet of earth, missus.'<br />
The third man has been killed."
of them, if any remained here.<br />
We don't know yet, whether in 1812-14, any Hungarians participated<br />
in the heroic struggles on and along the Great Lakes, the St.<br />
Lawrence River or in the Maritimes, against the much bigger Yankee<br />
Monument at Stoney<br />
Creek, near Hamilton,<br />
Ont., of smashing Canadian<br />
victory over Yankee<br />
invading troops in 1813.<br />
The Invasion, started in<br />
1812, overtook the Niagara<br />
Peninsula. Then General<br />
Vincent, commanding<br />
the British - Canadian<br />
troops and militia at Burlington,<br />
decided on a daring<br />
stroke. On June 6th,<br />
with his small force, outnumbered<br />
five to one,<br />
only 90 rounds of ammunition<br />
to each gun,<br />
marched by way of what<br />
are now York and Main<br />
Streets, Hamilton, and at<br />
2:00 a.m. stormed the<br />
enemy encampent at<br />
Stoney Creek. In utter<br />
confusion of the enemy,<br />
four guns and a hundred<br />
prisoners were taken, including<br />
two generals.<br />
Harrassed later by Indian<br />
fighters, the Americans<br />
retreated all the way back<br />
to Fort George. Electrified<br />
by the victory, the<br />
Canadians by the years<br />
end retook Fort George,<br />
captured Fort Niagara<br />
across from it on the U.<br />
S. side of the river, and<br />
swept as far as Black<br />
Rock.<br />
51
It was Samuel Lount who led the rebels down Yonge Street of Toronto<br />
(York) in December of 1887. Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were hanged<br />
on April 12, 1888, because they fought under the leadership of William Lyon<br />
Mackenzie for responsible government against the tyranny of the Family'<br />
Compact.<br />
Samuel Lount was a blacksmith on Lot No. 108 on the west side of<br />
Yonge St. The Indians "loved him and came long distances to get his axes".<br />
One of his axes is at the Sharon Temple Museum north of Newmarket.<br />
Peter Matthews was a well-to-do and highly respected farmer in Pickering<br />
township, a veteran of the War of 1812 in which "he fought with conspicious<br />
bravery".<br />
invasion forces.<br />
We don't know yet, whether the famous Hungarian traveller Sandor<br />
Farkas de Bolon, visiting here in 1831, noticed something of<br />
the Canadian struggles, which under the leadership of William Lyon<br />
Mackenzie of York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada (now Ontario) and<br />
Louis Joseph Papineau of Montreal in Lower Canada (now Quebec)<br />
became the democratic revolution against the colonial Family Compact<br />
in 1837-38.<br />
We don't know, whether any Hungarians were here to greet and<br />
help English-French national unity in action again when, against the<br />
Family Compact in 1841, the Lower Canadian Patriot Leader Louis<br />
Hyppolite Lafontaine after being defeated in Terrebone by Lord Syden-<br />
5~
Sir John A. Macdonald, leader<br />
of the Confederation.<br />
ham's "machine", was elected to the House by the voters of North<br />
York, and when later Robert Baldwin, the Upper Canadian Reform leader,<br />
being defeated in Hastings County, was elected to the House by<br />
t he French-Canadians of Rimouski on the lower St. Lawrence.<br />
We know, that at least 40-50 Hungarians were here in 1867, when<br />
a great step was made toward independent Canadian nationhood by the<br />
Confederation, uniting the eastern provinces into the Canadian state.<br />
And we can be certain, that in 1885, in Montreal the Hungarian<br />
cigarmakers were among the thousands who protested against the death<br />
sentence of Louis Riel, the Father of the West, and that Lejos Kossuth<br />
during his West-European exile had joined with other leaders of the<br />
emigres in protesting the death sentence of Louis Riel and in demanding<br />
clemency, fully in support of the brave stand of Wilfred Laurier,<br />
that great Canadian liberal: "Had I been born on the banks of the Sask<br />
atchewan, I would myself have shouldered a musket to fight against<br />
the neglect of the government and shameless greed of tbe speculators."<br />
* * *<br />
Most likely the first Hungarians to come to Canada to stay were a<br />
few former soldiers of Kossuth. After the defeat in 1849, the Habsburg<br />
re venge began. When the Italian War of Independence was lost in 1849,<br />
General Haynau, "the hyene of Brescia," began his career as executioner<br />
in Hungary when on October 6, 1849, he ordered the execution of the<br />
fi rst Prime Minister of Hungary, Count Lejos Batthyany, and of 13<br />
53
Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894)
Lajos Kossuth received by the people of New York city in December<br />
of 1851. (Contemporary engraving.)<br />
leading generals of the Hungarian War of Independence.<br />
Many hundreds of leaders and thousands of Honveds, escaped from<br />
Hungary to Turkey, western Europe and England and I more to what<br />
they thought the "free" country of George Washington. Kossuth, himself,<br />
until his death in Turin, Italy, on March 20, 1894, always planned<br />
to return to liberate his country so that: "In the arms of sacred peace,<br />
the free land of Hungary will, within a few years, become a paradise."<br />
Kossuth in USA and Canada<br />
In the autmun of 1851, Kossuth arrived in New York with some<br />
of his closest friends and was welcomed by the people throughout the<br />
United States as few had been welcomed before. But the American ruling<br />
class - of which the southern slaveholders especially hated him <br />
was very active in Europe in pursuing future economic advantages and<br />
embarrassed Kossuth to the point that when he left America in 1852, it<br />
was under the pseudonym of "Smith".<br />
"The Globe" of Toronto, which, like the rest of the Canadian liberal<br />
press of that time, paid very sympathetic attention to Kossuth's visit<br />
on this continent, in its long editorial on May 18, 1852, outspokenly denounced<br />
U.S. officialdom, which boasted about freedom in the U.S.,<br />
while it coolly neglected, even opposed Kossuth, the symbol of European<br />
freedom. "Can we say", wrote the Globe, "that Liberty is to be found<br />
in the United States while 'Columbia's sons are bought and sold', while<br />
they are ruled over by a slave-catching President, a slave-holding
Senate, and a slave-holding Congress? ... Before you weep over the<br />
wrongs of Hungary, and the serfs of Ireland, go wash the gore out of<br />
your national shambles .. . Then and not until then, may you boast<br />
of perfect freedom.<br />
"To think that man, thou just and gentle God,<br />
Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod,<br />
O'er creature, like himself, with souls from thee,<br />
Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty!<br />
Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck<br />
By doubtful tenure from Satan's beck,<br />
In climes where liberty has scarce been named<br />
Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd,<br />
Than thus to live where boasted freedom waves<br />
Her fustain flag in mockery over SLAVES."<br />
The thrice-weekly Globe on January 22, 1852, thus begins its editorial<br />
entitled "Kossut h" : "The Buffalo Express, ' a free soil paper ...<br />
accounts for the caution with which Kossuth has been received at Washington<br />
by the President and by Congress . . . Slavery might be attacked!<br />
... "<br />
On February 26, an item of The Globe from the "London Daily<br />
News" under the title "Political prosp-ects of Kossuth" says: "Louis<br />
Kossuth will have received a hard and unwelcome lesson" in the U.S.A.<br />
On May 6, in the column "News by the Niagara" we read: "Severel<br />
young men were arrested a short time ago, at Pesth, in Hungary, for<br />
having worn tricolour ribbons, and cried "Long live Kossuth!" - Two<br />
toy dealers were also arrested for having exposed for sale dolls and<br />
toys ornamented with the national colours."<br />
On May 29, in a news item "Austria" we read: "The authorities of<br />
Austria are harmlessly amusing themselves by 'ex ecuting the effigies of<br />
the exiled Hungarians." It wasn't so "harmless", we can see it from a<br />
news item dated May 20 : "Emigration in general seems to be still inreasing.<br />
Hundreds of respectable families are leaving Hungary, Bohemia,<br />
Moravia . . . Such emigration from Austria was never Sf/en before .<br />
One day, (the 16th inst.), 6,000 emigrants left the single port of<br />
Bremen . . . "<br />
Kossuth visited Niagara Falls, Ontario, briefly in May, 1852. Before<br />
and after this visit, perhaps a dozen of his Honveds families, in<br />
the United States, came to Canada and traces of them may still be<br />
found in the Niagara peninsula, near Hamilton and in British Columbia.<br />
More research concerning these first families is needed before a history<br />
of Hungarian-Canadians can be written. We also have to find out,<br />
how and when the Kossuth village near Kitchener, Onto gat its name,<br />
etc. .<br />
56
Zii.gonyi's "Death Riding" at Springfield, Missouri, 01\ Oct. 25, 1861. KAroly<br />
Zagonyi was an officer of the Kossuth Hussars and became the commander<br />
of the Fremont Guards in the American Civil War. From the Kossuth-immigration<br />
2 major-generals, 5 generals, 17 colonels, 14 majors, 15 eaptalns and<br />
many other smaUer officers served on the side of Lincoln against slavery<br />
with many hundreds of Hungarians in the ranks.<br />
A Group 'of Workers<br />
In some contrast with the mostly agricultural Hungarian immigrat<br />
ions into Canada, the first group historically recorded 'w as of industrial<br />
workers. H. A. Logan's "Trade Unions in Canada" (MacMillans,<br />
Toronto, 1948) in dealing with the cigarmakers says: " A local was<br />
established at Montreal in 1865 at the instance of Hungarian workers<br />
who had come from the United States in search of work. It seems to<br />
have commanded a goodly number of adherents and to have done much<br />
'to better the numerous evils of the trade'." (Souvenir de la Fete du<br />
Trava il, Montreal, 1906. ) Then it goes on: "A second branch of the<br />
sam e union was founded at Toronto in 1869 and staged an unsuccessful<br />
st rik e for an advance in wages." (Ont ar io Workman, Oct. 10, 1872. )<br />
The "Ontario Workman" weekly, in the first days of October 1872,<br />
published a "Note addressed to the Employers" by the Cigarmakers,<br />
dated Toronto, Oct. 1st:<br />
"GENTLEMEN, - In presenting this matter for your consideration<br />
and approval, we wish it to be understood that we do so from actual<br />
57
necessity, and not from any desire to disturb the amicable relation now<br />
existing between us as employers and employees.<br />
Please note the inequality that exists in the price for our labor and<br />
the rate we have to pay for necessaries of life - provisions, fuel, house<br />
rent, etc. - you wiII find that we can barely make both ends meet,<br />
leaving no margin in case of sickness or any casuality.<br />
,Y ou wiII also observe that whereas the price of the necessaries we<br />
consume have increased in many cases twenty per cent., in our request<br />
we ask for an increase of ten, and in some cases only-Live.<br />
Trusting that you will give the above your earliest consideration,<br />
and confer a favor by returning an answer by the Sth inst.,<br />
We remain, respectfuIly, on behalf of our<br />
Shopemates and Union,<br />
O. REINHOLD.<br />
H. SIMON.<br />
P. KEARNEY.<br />
Cigarmakers' Committee Rooms,<br />
Trades' Assembly Hell:"<br />
There is some support to believe that one of the undersigned,<br />
Simon, was a Hungarian, although that family name can be found with<br />
other nationalities too.<br />
The reference of Professor Logan is very brief and while Canadian<br />
sources might reveal more details, fortunately. we have managed to<br />
obtain a few facts from Hungarian historian Dezsb Lang, who is doing<br />
some research on Hungarian-Canadian traditions from sources available<br />
in Hungary.<br />
The defeat of the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence<br />
in 1848--49, is the background of the organizers and leaders of the<br />
How Toronto (York) looked 100 years ago when first locomotive was built<br />
there.<br />
58
Montreal and Toronto locals of the Cigarmakers in the 1860-70's.<br />
(In the Oct. 31, 1872 edition of the "Ontario Workman" (page 1 ) we<br />
find under the heading of "Labor Notes": "The cigar makers of this<br />
city are still out on strike, and the employers, with the exception of<br />
Messrs. Drouillard and Schuch, who give the advance, still show opposition<br />
to the demand of the men.") In a letter dated at Salt Lake<br />
City in 1870, Hungarian emigre, Imre Gorzo, says that Mark Szalatnay,<br />
a second lieutenant in 1848-49, was the secretary of the Toronto local<br />
and in connection with a lost strike, he was sentenced to four months<br />
imprisonment, later was deported back to the U.S.A. He died in Los<br />
Angeles, in 1875, when as a functionary of the National Labor Union<br />
-e-r- he was killed with others by a blast of gunfire from the police force<br />
during a famous breadfactory strike.<br />
Karoly Lasz16, in his diary on the Hungarian-Canadian cigarmakers<br />
noted on Nov. 7, 1864: "Younger Ihesz writes in a lett-er, that Mariassy<br />
(Tasszil6 Marhissy was a captain of the Hussars at the Fort of Komarom<br />
in Hungary, a comrade in arms of Szalatnay) and his 37 men, who<br />
were occupied as cigarmakers in Maryland, after their industry was<br />
cut by a recession as a result of the civil war, met a travelling Canadian<br />
cigarmanufacturer and on his offer they went across to Montreal<br />
to settle down there. However it became 'evident that they were cheated<br />
in regards to wages, so our outrobbed comrades - who were thrown<br />
out on the street by that crook when they dared to protest - talked<br />
things over with local cigarmakers to establish a trade union to defend<br />
their rights."<br />
From a letter of Szalatnay to Kamel Fornet, dated Nov. 30, 1868,<br />
Toronto, we know that Szalatnay, a seventh child of a Presbyterian<br />
t eacher , was expelled from the University of Budapest in 1836, because<br />
he advocated revolutionary ideas on the basis "of banned works of<br />
French and American authors". In 1838, at the time of the big flood of<br />
t he Danube, he delivered an agitational speech at the Livestock Market<br />
Squar e to the flood victims in Pest, charging that the officials spent<br />
the money expropriated for dam-works on the reception of the visiting<br />
Queen Ludovica Maria and in fact, were decorated for it. For his speech<br />
Szalat nay spent four years in prison, where he studied French and<br />
E nglish and wrote his only work that remained in print, entitled<br />
" Treditiones communes Hungarorum et populorum Balcanicorum"<br />
(Common Traditions of the Hungarians and Balkan Peoples). Later<br />
in France and Holland he was in contact with revolutionary movements<br />
brewing before the Revolution. Some claim that he was the author of<br />
the pamphlet "Les [ucobins" confiscated in Paris in 1845. After studying<br />
at the Leyden University, he received his B. A. diploma at Dodrecht<br />
.<br />
'W hen the War of Independence in Hungary to defend the victorious<br />
revolution was provoked by the treacherous Habsburgs in Septem-<br />
59
er, 1848, Szalatnay returned to Hungary via Poland and until the time<br />
of capitulation he served with the defence forces at the Fort of Komarom<br />
as a second lieutenant. After capitulation he went to England,<br />
where he made connections with leeders of the Chartists, the first workingclass<br />
political movement in England. For six years he worked as the<br />
secretary of the Miners Union of South Wales, participated "in seven<br />
successful and twenty-four unsuccessful strikes and in thirty-four trials<br />
as a defendant". In 1855, he proposed to the trade union movement of<br />
England to endorse the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels, but<br />
he was turned down, consequently lost his secretaryship and as an "unwished<br />
alien" was deported by authorities from England.<br />
In the United States, after much frustration, he joined the Cigarmakers<br />
Union of Baltimore, led by his comrade Tasszi16 Mariassy. In<br />
1860, when in protest to a demonstration of slaveholders he tried to<br />
organize a counter-demonstration, a southern "gentleman" fired at him<br />
- he was wounded in the lung and a couple of his ribs were brok-en.<br />
Szalatnay came to Canada with his comrades, although he was<br />
unable to do any more physical work. After being deported from Canada,<br />
the sad news that he was shot by the police of Los Angeles during<br />
a strike in 1875, was reported in Budapest papers on the basis of a<br />
60<br />
Unemployed on the labor market in one of Hungary's<br />
country towns in the 1920-80's.
Where to move now? A scene under the Horthy regime.<br />
let t er from Kslmen Ihesz: In the periodical " N eue Zeit" of the internat<br />
iona l worgingclass movement at that time, an article in appraisal of<br />
hi m appeared on Oct. 7, 1889, from the pen of Mary Fergusson, a leading<br />
American feminist fighter - this brave woman was his life-mate<br />
fo r the 20 year s he lived in the "new world" .<br />
Settlements in the West<br />
In 1885, the Hungarten in Manitoba, in 1886 the Kaposvar settlement<br />
a nd following many other settlements were established in what<br />
became the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.<br />
. By 1911, there were, according to the census, 11,648 Hungarians in<br />
Cana da , more than half of them in Saskatchewan, and practically all<br />
imm igra nt s from the United States after 1885. Many more came, but<br />
many, baffled by the hardships of western pioneering, of the severe<br />
wint er , returned to the United States.<br />
Latterly , there was slightly more direct migration from Hungary<br />
and in 1921, the Canadian population of Hungarian ancestry was 13 ,181.<br />
This migration included many more family groups than in later years<br />
and it sought a permanent homeland, with little hope that early change<br />
would abolish Habsburg rule, or institute revolutionary land reform, or<br />
ex t ensive industrialization in Hungary.<br />
The Meaning of Second Immigration<br />
After the defeat of the 1919 Socialist revolution in Hungary, a<br />
per iod of large direct migration to Canada began. Immediately, there<br />
was a large, political exodus from Hungary to Vienna, Paris, Berlin<br />
and Moscow. This was followed by a lar ger and more continuous mig-<br />
61
ation from Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to almost<br />
every west-European country and to the Americas. Of these, Canada<br />
received the most. A set quota limited immigration into the United<br />
States and many came to Canada hoping to enter the United States,<br />
legally, or illegally. But from Cuba, Argentina, from almost every Latin-American<br />
country and from most west-European countries, Hungarians<br />
found their way to Canada.<br />
This immigration was greatest between 1926 and 1930 when more<br />
then 26,000 Hungarians entered Canada. The 1941 census shows 54,598<br />
Hungarian-Canadians, but it is likely the total was some 60,000 to 65,<br />
000.<br />
These immigrants were mostly single men in the 20 to 30 age group,<br />
or married men of similar age who in most cases had left a wife and<br />
children in Hungary. Their ambition was to save a few thousand dollars<br />
in a few years so that they might renovate their shabby house or<br />
barn in Hungary, or buy land and equipment, or a small business, and<br />
hoping that by that time, the reactionary-fascist regimes in Central<br />
and South-Eastern Europe would be overthrown.<br />
62<br />
Winter Wonderland in West-Canada.
A picket on the Trans-Canada railway in a strike of 125,000 railway<br />
workers.<br />
These immigrants for purposes of entry, officially were "farmers",<br />
or "farm-laborers", in reality, 60 or 70 per cent of them were peasants,<br />
but their objectives were different from those of the first wave of Hungarians.<br />
The first group had fewer opportunities, but they grasped the<br />
one that existed, that of free western homesteads, and become farmers.<br />
They built many schools and churches, in their rural communities but<br />
in very few cities did they establish their communal organizations of a<br />
class character. Something of this sort took place at Lethbridge in 1901;<br />
Winnipeg in 1904; Hamilton in 1907 and Brantford in 1913. Traces of<br />
the Socialist Labor Party with which they had been associated in the<br />
ear ly 1900's in the United States, are to be found in the Hungarian<br />
community in and around Lestock, Sask.<br />
But their centre of interest was agricultural and especially in Saskatchewan.<br />
Unfortunately, two-dollar wheat during the 1914-18 war,<br />
led many into the unwise purchase of more land and equipment which<br />
t hey subsequently lost.<br />
Of the second immigration, many did not even go to Western Canada,<br />
but remained in eastern industrial centres; others returned to the<br />
east after their first harvest experience; some went west only for the<br />
annual harvest; others were employed on western farms for several<br />
years, but there was a constant flow to the cities, mining towns and<br />
lumber camps. There was much wandering in search of the original<br />
short-time, money-saving illusion.<br />
More Class-conscious Organizat~on<br />
The depression of the 30's ended these dreams of a short stay in<br />
Canada and, with the worsening of the political situation in Europe, resulted<br />
in many wives and children joining their husbands. Even before<br />
· 63
Seven miners died in a fil'le> of nosco mine in Glace Bay, N. S.<br />
the economic crisis fully developed, a movement toward more c1assconscious<br />
organization had been initiated by the later immigrants and<br />
extended to the first immigrants, not only in the industrial cities and<br />
towns, but in the country districts as well.<br />
Some of the second flow of immigration had working class organizational<br />
experience. With the leadership of these, many hundreds of<br />
Hungarian immigrants, soon after their arrival, joined hands with their<br />
Canadian-born brothers and other immigrants in struggles for better<br />
wages and conditions of work and health.<br />
These took place wherever Hungarians worked - in the coal mines<br />
and steel mills of Cape Breton; in the factories of Montreal and Toronto<br />
and other cities of Ontario; in the mines and lumber and pulpwood<br />
camps of Northern Ontario; in Winnipeg, with veterans of the<br />
1919 strike; in Flin Flon; in the Estevan-Bienfait coal mines; in Regina,<br />
Saskatoon, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Edmonton; at Crew's Nest<br />
Pass, Drumheller Valley coal mines and mills and the Taber-Lethbridge<br />
sugar beet fields in Alberta; at the Trail, B. C., mines and mills, on the<br />
fruit, vegetables and animal raising fields of B. C., and at the logging<br />
camps an coal mines of Vancouver Island, in the railroad building and<br />
building trades throughout the country.<br />
During the later 20's, many hundreds of Hungarian immigrants<br />
worked at the construction of the Welland Canal.<br />
64
The older, western Hungarian wheat farmers, had scarcely recovered<br />
from the decline in the price of wheat after World War I, when<br />
they were caught by the debacle of North American economy in 1929,<br />
the first economic, over-production crisis in the general crisis of the<br />
capitalist world. It was fortunate that by this time, many Hungarian<br />
Canadians, through trade union and similar experience, were prepared,<br />
in some measure for the struggles of the 30's for relief, unemployment<br />
insurance, public works and against discriminations and evictions.<br />
Not only this, but they had begun to develop community organizations<br />
such as a sick benefit society, their own language weekly newspaper<br />
and won were to organize cultural clubs for class conscious education<br />
of workers and farmers alike.<br />
I.M.B.F. -<br />
KOSSUTH SOCIETY<br />
At this time, Hungarian-Canadian mutual benefit, social or cultural<br />
organizations were extremely limited. What little existed, was likely<br />
to be dominated by petty-bourgeois elements, mostly associated with<br />
local leaders of the Liberal or Conservative parties, or with the Horthyite<br />
consulates in Montreal and Winnipeg, or Horthyite, or Habsburgist<br />
publications in Canada, or the United States.<br />
Canadian Seamen Union pickets and HeMP's on the banks of the WeIland<br />
Canal during the famous strike which received world-wide support.<br />
-65
Some of the more experienced Hungarians of the second immigration<br />
in Ontario saw the need for a progressive organization to serve<br />
the interests of Hungarian-Canadian working people, and to give protection<br />
against misfortunes at a cost they could afford to pay. It was<br />
against this background that the Canadian Hungarian Mutual Benefit<br />
Federation was initiated and from it the present Independent Mutual<br />
Benefit Federation with its language sections developed.<br />
In the fall of 1927, a group of Hungarians in Hamilton organized<br />
a sick benefit society. Hungarian reactionaries in Canada, members of<br />
the Horthyite consulates, careerist elements and, unfortunately, some<br />
66<br />
Jozsef KrIU, first President of the Mutual Benefit Federation.
clergymen, opposed this project and denounced it to the federal and<br />
provincial governments.<br />
In January, 1928, however, it was chartered by the department of<br />
ins urance of Ontario under t he name of Canadian Hungarian Mutual<br />
Beneiit Federation and from the beginning issued its monthly bulletin,<br />
"Ut tiirb", The Pioneer. joseph Krsl, a tool and die maker, was first<br />
president and played a leading part in the inception a nd growth of the<br />
orga niza t ion. Many branches, alt hough relatively weak, were founded<br />
dur ing the first few years on the initiative of Miklos Pesztor, now a<br />
Guelph shoemaker, as its western organizer and general secretary. He<br />
was succeeded by Domonkos Ferenczi, Saskatoon, joseph Magyar, Winnipeg,<br />
joseph Blasko, Hamilton. Many others helped.<br />
In 1933, at the depth of the depression, a decision was made to<br />
ex tend the society to those in other language fields and in 1934, Slovak,<br />
Ger ma n, and later, Polish, Carpatho-Russian and English branches were<br />
organized on a. national scale. The Hungarian section still remains the<br />
lar gest . In keeping with this policy the name was changed to Independent<br />
Mutual Benefit Federation. During the first ten years, membership<br />
remained small, but it increased substantially during the succeeding<br />
15 years. During 2S years, members have received more than $600,<br />
000 in aid.<br />
The 1944 convention of the Federation amended the constituton to<br />
per mit the language sections to select a name to identify themselves<br />
a nd to elect national committees for cultural and social purposes. These<br />
were named Kossuth Sick Benefit Society (H ungar ian); Slovak Benefit<br />
Society ; and Maple Leaf Mutual Society (E nglish-spea king), with some<br />
Germa ns and others in the branches.<br />
Federation of Clubs<br />
During the first years of the sick benefit organization, almost<br />
pa rallel federation of workers' and farmers' cultural clubs had grown.<br />
In addition to their cultural, social and educational program, they<br />
hel ped to organize the participation of Hungarians in activities common<br />
to Canadian working people, such as the reliei struggles, hunger<br />
m arches and the "On-to-Ottawa Trek" during the depression in the<br />
"Hungry Thirties". One of the greatest campaigns was that to "Save<br />
R ek osi" in 1936 when 11,000 signatures were collected. A world protest<br />
alone saved Matyas Rakosi from execution by the Horthy regime.<br />
Delegations presented the petitions to the consul-general in Montreal<br />
and the vice-consulate in Winnipeg for transmission to Budapest.<br />
More than 400 sympathizers picketed the offices of the Horthyite journal<br />
"K anadai Magyar UjsiJ.g" in Winnipeg until its editor promised to<br />
wit hdraw statements he had made against the campaign. Characteristically,<br />
he published his recantation only in the Winnipeg copies of his<br />
pa per.<br />
67
The federation of the clubs for cultural purposes was dissolved<br />
after the war. By this time, the Hungarian section of the LM.B.F., the<br />
Kossuth Society, had developed its own cultural, social and 'educational<br />
programs. The last great affair in which the clubs participated, was<br />
jointly with the Kossuth Society in 1948 - a great festival in Kossuth<br />
Park, near Hamilton, to commemorate the lOOth anniversary of the<br />
"Save R:i.kosi" pickets, above, at<br />
the front of the! Hungarian Vice<br />
Consulate in \Vinnipeg, while 400<br />
others demonstrate against the<br />
Horthyite "Kanadai Magyar Ujsag"<br />
(top left) in 1936.<br />
To the left we see unemployed<br />
workers on top of a freight train,<br />
a mush used way to get around<br />
the country in the 1930's.<br />
68
1848-49 War of Independence of the Hungarian people. Half a year<br />
of preparation resulted in 300 Hungarian-Canadian yout h playing leading<br />
roles.<br />
Scenes of the 1848-1948 Festival at the Kossuth Park near Hamilton, Onto<br />
For the night performance of the operette "Janos the Hero" the bushy hillside<br />
was cleared out and transformed to be an amphitheatrum for the<br />
audience.<br />
69
Literature Association<br />
After the dissolution of the clubs, the Hungarian Literature Association<br />
was established to distribute progressive literature and to publish<br />
annually the Hungarian-Canadian Year Book. Its local committees<br />
work jointly with the committees of the progressive Hungarian-Canadian<br />
paper, "Munkas".<br />
The last general secretary of the clubs, ]6zsef Balogh, in 1947, was<br />
selected to be the general secretary of the World Federation of Hungarians<br />
in Budapest, a few years later he went to work to the ministry<br />
of agriculture in Hungary. The management of the Hungarian Literature<br />
Association in Toronto, from Adam Magyar, this year was taken<br />
over by Istvan Markos. The activity of the Association had lately well<br />
advanced the distributing of historical and other novels by Hungarian<br />
and other classical and contemporary writers, especially of Gerdonyi,<br />
MikszfJ.th, ]6kai, Moricz, PM Szabo, Peter Veres, etc. Beside marxist<br />
literature and fiction, the distribution of the fine picturial magazine<br />
"Hungary" and musical records from Hungary is advancing too.<br />
A Book Fair of the Literature Association in 1953.<br />
Kossuth Society in the Front<br />
Before the dissolving of the clubs, but more especially after, the<br />
Kossuth Society stepped up its cultural activities so that it has made<br />
and is making a marked contribution to the welfare of its members and<br />
their families, as well as 'enriching the general culture of the Canadian<br />
70
The Toronto Ady Youth Club performed a great job in 1947, when during<br />
four rainy week-ends with picks and shovels they cut across a loop of Duffin<br />
Creek running through the Ady camp of the Toronto Kossuth branch near<br />
Pickering. This new deep bed of the creek was christened "Ady Canal" at a<br />
festival held on June 22, 1947.<br />
people.<br />
The Kossuth Society and the Slovak Society are the larger sections<br />
of the I.M.B.F., and through their branches, they have set up language<br />
and musical schools for their children. Choirs, dance and gymnastic<br />
groups, and concerts and plays are a part of the very life of their members.<br />
In addition to the original sick beneiits and group life insurance,<br />
the LM.B.F. latterly had added medical and hospitalization facilities to<br />
its program. Lectures are being given and publications issued on health<br />
and education. It has helped the Kossuth and Slovak Societies to build<br />
three summer camps where, not only adults and youth, but all children<br />
are welcome to spend healthy, country holidays with the best of supervision.<br />
The I.M.B.F. now has 74 branches in Canada and of these the<br />
Kossuth Society has 34, namely at the following places: Toronto, Hamilton,<br />
St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, WeIland, Port Colborne, Brantford,<br />
Tillsonburg, Mount Brydges, Chatham, Kingsville, Leamington,<br />
Harrow, Windsor, Oshawa, Galt, Sudbury, Fort William in Ontario;<br />
New Waterford, Nova Scotia; Montreal, Que.; Winnipeg, Man.; Regina,<br />
Sask. ; Taber, Lethbridge, Shaughnessy, Picture Butte, Calgary, New-<br />
71
Finishing touches were applied on cabins at Lake Erie Children Camp of the<br />
Kossuth Society before opening in 1952.<br />
castle, East Coulee, Rosedale, Nacmine, Midlandvale, Hillcrest, Alta.;<br />
and Osoyoos, B.C.<br />
The I.M.B.F. has attained some financial strength with a membership<br />
of 5,500 and assets in securities and real estate of a million dolIars.<br />
Youth in Hungary and Here<br />
A score of youth members of the Kossuth Society went to Hungary
The Kossuth branch of the IMBF took first prize with this float at the annual<br />
Cherry Festival in Osoyoos, B. C., in recent years.<br />
in 1948, after the great Centennial Festival, to continue their studies.<br />
Under People's Democracy, they have all the free opportunities and<br />
most of them are now finishing or already have finished their university<br />
or art courses. There is a job for everyone. Many of them already<br />
made a career and some of them have been highly decorated. Zolten<br />
Mrazik from Montreal, for example, is now a decorated chief engineer<br />
at the head of the tractor stations in Bacs county. Irma Rosso, who for<br />
some time was on the staff of the "Munkas", Hungarian-Canadian<br />
progressive weekly, before she repatriated, is still studying to be an<br />
opera singer, but already appears on stage and we can enjoy her fine<br />
voice on the short wave broadcasts of Radio Budapest.<br />
With Canadian delegations to World Youth Festivals, the Kossuth<br />
regular ly sends a youth delegate of its own. Some of the Kossuth Youth<br />
have participated this year in the program of the Ontario Youth Festival<br />
for a Greater Canada. Beside participation in organized forms at occasional<br />
exchange affairs, individual members of the Kossuth Youth are<br />
taking part in many other progressive movements, events and affairs.<br />
In the summer of 1953, I.M.B.F. celebrated its 25th anniversary<br />
with a festival at the Slovak Camp at Sts-eetsville, Onto The progressive<br />
progra m was enriched by the participation of the Ukrainian and Jewish<br />
frat er nal organizations in a collective production, just preceding'<br />
Canada Day, of one of the most remarkable all-Canadian pageants. The<br />
yout h played the major role in it.<br />
73
The Canadiall delegation at the World Youth Festival in Budapest. 1949. In<br />
the parade some Hungarian-Canadians, who went to Hungary to study, joined<br />
the Canadian delegation or acted as interpreters at conferences,<br />
There is a developing ambition among the younger members of<br />
these organizations to establish parallel English-speaking branches beside<br />
the older branches. This is especially true in the Kossuth and<br />
The Kossuth dancers of Toronto performed the "Verbunkos", a recruiting<br />
dance from the time of RAk6czi's War of Independence, at the Ontario<br />
Youth Festival for a Greater Canada, June, 1954.<br />
74
Toront o's Slovak dance group on the program of the 25th Jubilee Festival of<br />
the IMBF, at the Slovak camp near StreetsvIlle, Ont., 1953.<br />
Slova k Societies in southern Ontario. This can rejuvenate the whole<br />
I.M.B. F., particularly the Hungarian and Slovak groups, lead to their<br />
greater integration in Canadian life and make a greater contribution,<br />
more directly to its progressive trend.<br />
That this growing trend of Canadianization is in no contradiction<br />
what ever with increased cultivation of progressive Hungarian traditions<br />
and use of progressive cultural materials from the People's Republic of<br />
Hungary or from other countries, is being recognized more and more.<br />
The new 16 mm films from Hungary, distributed by Hungarian Film<br />
Distributors, like "Mrs. Dery", "Erkel", or even such a film as the<br />
"Soil Under Your Sole" and "Liberated Land" are bringing the youth<br />
to a better understanding of the freedom struggles, traditions and culture<br />
of the Hungarian people and of the meaning of Liberation in their<br />
struggle for a better life, and through this they are helping to create a<br />
better understanding between the younger and older generation and of<br />
the Canadian problems of today. The national costumes sent by the<br />
Inst it ute for Cultural Relations of Hungary as a present to the Kossuth<br />
Society, were used by the Kossuth youth dancers of Toronto to per-<br />
75
form the "Verbunkos", a recruiting dance of the Rakoczi period, to<br />
wide audiences, thus helping to arouse Canadian national consciousness<br />
for the very urgent fight for Canadian independence and peace.<br />
Such things, at the same time, help to further integrate the older generation<br />
into Canadian life and struggles for a better future for Canada<br />
and for mankind as a whole.<br />
John W. Hill, a machinist in Toronto, and active trade unionist, is<br />
now national president of the I.M.B.F. The national secretary-treasurer<br />
since the middle 1930's is Joseph Miller who is also secretary general<br />
of the Kossuth Society and its representative on the National Council of<br />
the Canadian Peace Congress. The National Committee of the Kossuth<br />
Society was enlarged by adding two youth members in the fall of 1953,<br />
and a Youth Council of 15 members was established.<br />
76<br />
The world-wide famous Hungarian soccer champion, Ferenc Puskas,<br />
among enthusiastic youngsters.
"KANADAI MAGYAR MUNKAS"<br />
(Canadian Hungar-ian Worker)<br />
Even before the progressive Hungarian-Canadian organization was<br />
esta blished, the necessity for a progressive Hungarian newspaper was<br />
fe lt , at least by the more experienced, class-conscious immigrants in<br />
Ontario. At first, the progressive Hungarian-American newspaper, "Uj<br />
Elbre" (New Forward) served the need, but this need was only emphasized<br />
when the Canadian government banned "Uj ElOre" and, at the<br />
same time prompted the establishment of a Hungarian-Canadian leftwing<br />
newspaper.<br />
A drawing by Avrom, leading Canadian working class cartoonist, on the role<br />
of the 25-years-old K. M. Munkas.<br />
77
The "Verbunkos" by the Toronto Kossuth dancers at the 25th Jubilee Festival<br />
of the K. M. Munkas, July, 19M.<br />
The "Kanadai Magyar Munkas" (Ca nadia n Hungarian Worker)<br />
was first published on July 16, 1929, at Hamilton, with some help from<br />
American friends, and later transferred to Toronto. The "Munkas"<br />
started out under the editorship of [ozsei Dohany and under the<br />
management of Ferenc Kristoff, with the help of others like Istvan<br />
Botos, Ferenc Bezso, Samuel Balogh, Bela Janosik, Gyorgy Princz and<br />
others, later Gyula Nyerki and many others.<br />
Only great sacrifice and devotion on the part of its supporters<br />
carried this newspaper forward against the machinations of Hungarian<br />
reactionary cliques; in spite of lack of experienced staff and with few<br />
readers, many of whom were penniless during the depression. Only<br />
relief pennies and contributions from meagre earnings kept it alive.<br />
Many hundreds of Hungarians were losing their farms and their homes<br />
while at the same time, many thousands of miles of roads in Canada,<br />
railroads, bridges, factories, mines, logging camps, hundreds of cleared<br />
and cultivated homesteads, the Welland Canal, the Royal York Hotel in<br />
Toronto, gave evidence of their contribution to the Canadian scene.<br />
Even on relief they helped to create the beautiful Rock Gerden at the<br />
north-west entrance to Hamilton and the Craw's Nest Pass highway<br />
on Iron Heel Bennett's 20 cents-a-day plan.<br />
Under these most difficult conditions, the "Munkas" became a<br />
78
Together with others in the struggles for jobs, wages, democratic rights and<br />
collective agreements.<br />
success because of its policies. It warned and defended Hungarian-Canadians<br />
against unscrupulous exploitation and against reactionary<br />
blandishments and intimidation. It burst the bubble of the theory that<br />
to escape discrimination and even deportation, to have steady work, the<br />
wor ker must isolate himself from any progressive organization or<br />
action; must vote only for conventional parties; must be a sycophantic<br />
flatterer of bosses and a servile truckler to any authority.<br />
The "Munkas" demonstrated that to better their lot, Hungarian<br />
Canadians must organize, join trade unions and join in any and every<br />
place with the progressive efforts of all Canadians, because their special<br />
in terests cannot be separated from the common interests of the Canadian<br />
working people as a whole.<br />
As in Canada, the brotherhood of all ethnic groups is necessary to<br />
their common interests, so in the international field, the brotherhood<br />
of Canadian, Soviet, Hungarian and all peoples is required for their<br />
Together with others in the breadline of the unemployed.<br />
79
general advantage - for peace, instead of war planned against the<br />
Soviet Union and now also the People's Democracies; for democracy,<br />
instead of the fascism developed in some and advocated in every capitalist<br />
country; for social progress, stopped in many. and hindered in every<br />
capitalist country.<br />
The "Munkas" became the educator, organizer, and political leader<br />
of the Hungarian-Canadians in the hungry thirties; to its call close to<br />
100 Hungarian-Canadians went with<br />
other ' hundreds of Canadians in international<br />
aid to democratic Spain against<br />
domestic and foreign fascist aggression<br />
and western imperialist non-intervention,<br />
and for "the cause of humanity"<br />
many Hungarian-Canadians give their<br />
lives there. (J6zsef Csernyi, Regina;<br />
Sandor Csizmer, East Coulee; Csodur<br />
Mihiily, Port Colborne; Janos Ferencz,<br />
Taber; Imre Filkohezi, Drumheller;<br />
Andras Gilisn, Driftwood; Gabor [onei,<br />
Hamilton; jiinos K6re, Toronto; Mihiily<br />
Michna, Montreal; Adam Pretz, Delhi;<br />
Janos Regvecs, Toronto, Imre Recz,<br />
Delhi, and others.) The "Munkas" at<br />
the time of Munich, took up the slogan<br />
of the patriotic underground in Hungary,<br />
that, "To defend Prague means to<br />
defend Budepest, too", when the Horthy<br />
regime, in accord with Hitler and Mussolini,<br />
helped to make Czechoslovakia<br />
capitulate without fighting.<br />
All western, including Canadian imperialist<br />
intrigues to turn the Hitlerite<br />
80<br />
Gabor Jenel, member of the Hamilton<br />
Kossuth branch of the<br />
IMBF, died on the battle field 10<br />
Spain in 1987.<br />
war - even with "poor little Finnish<br />
democracy" of Mannerheim - against the Soviet Union, were revealed<br />
in the "Munkas", It sympathized with the betrayed and trumpled upon<br />
peoples of Europe, Ethipia and China. It hailed the defenders of Warsaw<br />
and the resistance fighters throughout Europe. The world anti<br />
Hitlerite alliance created by the "unexpected" power of the Soviet<br />
Union, was saluted by the "Munkas".<br />
It stimulated the war effort abroad and in Canada; asked for a<br />
European Second Front by the West; helped to develop outside Hungary<br />
the Hungarian movement "For a free and independent Hungary", and<br />
kindled the Hungarian-Canadian relief movement to Hungary after<br />
the liberation of Hungary by the Soviet Army. Istvan Szoke, present<br />
editor-chairman of the "Munkas" staff since 1937, was the co-leader
The statue of Sandor Petofi, leader of Revolution ill 1848, "greets" from<br />
Pest side of Danube the Liberation monument of 1945, erected on top of Gellert<br />
Mountain on Buda side of Danube. ' .<br />
81
with Rev. Dr. Ambro Czako (Hungarian United Church in Toronto) ot<br />
the "For a free and independent Hungary" movement in Canada before<br />
the Liberation; he was co-chairman with Rev. Karoly Steinmetz (First<br />
Hungarian Presbyterian Church of Toronto) of the aid-movement after<br />
Liberation. Until 1947, in this aid movement, every cultural, benefit,<br />
social and church organization of Hungarian-Canadians participated<br />
with a comradeship and unity never before achieved.<br />
The present manager of the "Munkas" is Sandor Medgyesi, fulfilling<br />
that job since 1937. Andras Durovecz, an editor since 1946, just<br />
headed a visiting group to Hungary.<br />
One of the editors of the "Munkas" in the later 30's and early 40's,<br />
Julius Nyerki now is with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hungary.<br />
While employed in Hamilton, during the first, "phony" part of the war,<br />
Nyerki was interned with other left-wing leaders. During internment,<br />
a foot infection, aggravated by the cold, resulted in his release and his<br />
foot was amputated. Several democratic people from among Hungarian<br />
sailors who escaped to Canada from Horthyite death ships, also were<br />
political internees for some time. Another former editor of the "Munkas"<br />
in the middle 30's, Adam Roy Schaeffer, - after military service<br />
during the war - became a leader of the United Electrical, Radio and<br />
Machine Workers' Union in Welland and the Niagara Peninsula, but a<br />
serious accident in the Page-Hersey pipe mills last fall knocked him out<br />
of regular activity for the time being.<br />
Sandor Vass of Toronto, for many<br />
years linotypist of the "Munkas"<br />
and a leader of the youth, was killed<br />
as German prisoner of war in Austria,<br />
after he was parachuted into Hungary<br />
for special service during World<br />
War II. Istvan Mate of Fort William was<br />
crushed to death while being trained for<br />
special service in England. Andras Durovecz,<br />
one of the present editors of the<br />
"Munkas" and former organizer in Saskatchewan;<br />
Mihaly Turk, former leader<br />
of the clubs and now a leader of state<br />
farm in Hungary; Istvan Markos, a former<br />
member of the editorial staff of the<br />
"Munkas" and now the manager of the<br />
Literature Association; and some others<br />
- all were sent into Hungary on special<br />
service against hitlerism during the war.<br />
Ferenc Spirnyek. and [ozse! Blasko, [r.,<br />
both of Toronto, and some other Hungarian-Canadian<br />
youth were killed in the<br />
war against fascism.<br />
sandor Vass<br />
82
Zsuzsa Kossuth was<br />
worthy of her brother,<br />
Lajos Kossuth, leader of<br />
the VVar of Independence<br />
1848-49. She was the organizer<br />
of military hospitals<br />
and director of<br />
health. After capitulation<br />
she was arrested twice<br />
and finally evicted from<br />
Hungary. She died in New<br />
York on June 29, 1954 . .<br />
Woman's Magazine, "A NO"<br />
While the "Children's Corner" and "Youth Corner" of the "Munkas"<br />
in last couple of years have grown to a full Youth Page; and<br />
while the "Uttbrb", official publication of the Kossuth Society, IMBF,<br />
appea rs periodically as an insert in the "Munkas", it was increasingly<br />
felt, that a separate woman's publication was needed to satisfy the<br />
special interests in this field. Therefore, since 1940, "A No" a. monthly<br />
woman's magazine is being published in association with the "Munkas",<br />
In this situation, while there is much need to improvement in regard<br />
to all progressive Hungarian-Canadian publications, at the same<br />
time they offer wide possibilities to widen and strengthen the service in<br />
the best interests of the Hungarian-Canadians and in the cause of Canada<br />
and its people as a whole:<br />
Over a Dozen Skeletons<br />
The quarter century history of the "Munkas", the anniversary of<br />
the founding which was celebrated this year, is strewn with the skeleton<br />
s of more than a dozen reactionary-fascist Hungarian-Canadian<br />
83
newspapers and periodicals which have disappeared.<br />
The "Kanadai Magyar Neplap", and the "Kanadai Magyarsag" in<br />
the West were united by the Horthyite "Defence Office of Hungarian<br />
Emigrants" in 1924 at Winnipeg to create the "Kanadai Magyar Ujsag"<br />
which was directed largely at western farmers, business people<br />
and unorganized workers. Soon, it had to be bought and subsidized by<br />
the Horthyite government.<br />
Since 1931, its editor has been Gusztiiv Nemes, a, former Horthyite<br />
guards officer of the murderous 1919-20 counterrevolution, who until<br />
1939 was paid by the Horthyite vice-consulate in Winnipeg. Since then,<br />
the method of subsidization is not clear.<br />
The "Kanadai Magyar Hirlap" was founded in WeIland, but moved<br />
to Toronto where it ceased publication in 1929. Its demise was reported<br />
in the first issue of the "Munkas",<br />
Other papers that have ceased publication are: "Kanadai Magyar<br />
Nepszeve" in 1930 in Hamilton; "Hirad6" in 1937 in Toronto; "Magyarsag"<br />
in Hamilton and later Toronto; "Kis U jsag" in WeIland; "Kanadai<br />
Dohenyvidek" in Delhi in 1939-40; the "Egyetertes' in Montreal;<br />
"Otthon" in Saskatoon; "Vilegosseg" in Toronto; "Figyelii" in Hamilton<br />
and "T'erogeto" in Toronto.<br />
»Grat ulAlu nk. gratllh\lunk 10" gratlll:.\lunk epl<br />
UUnknck, tArnogatolnknak! - ~,. hood foJtogassa<br />
l\ tehetetlen dUh. cg)'e a proofs"! a .Iupunk<br />
h a derek kanadal mag)'arsdg He-lulu)' hlt\,{u"v<br />
el1erllwg~t. az Idegen esoldban h1\zudozo. rugal·<br />
maz.6 h »ljes z lgeUic keneeeleket, babanyeczeket,<br />
nemeseket, "ag)' akAr a nadAu)'l-palikat Is! ••. .,<br />
84<br />
A cartoon by Avrom on the success of the Munklis 25th Jubilee<br />
campaign.
In addition to some stillborn efforts, lately the disappearance from<br />
pu blicat ion have included the Toronto "Sporthirlap" and the Montreal<br />
"Eszak i Fetty", both edited by former DP's.<br />
Two reactionary dailies, a few weeklies and some periodicals now<br />
come from the United States, while in Canada, retrogressive and outright<br />
fascist war propaganda is conducted by the old Winnipeg "Ujsag"<br />
and the newer "Kanadai Magyarsag" weekly in Toronto and "U] Magyar<br />
Hirlap" weekly in Montreal, both edited by former DP's.<br />
The Entry pf the Third Immigration<br />
With the end of the war in 1945, with the development of the cold<br />
w ar and with its application to Hungary, with the influx of thousands<br />
of former DP's, and deserters from people's Hungary, the problems of<br />
the Hungarian-Canadians and especially of those who are progressive,<br />
became more acute. At the same time, the Canadian government began<br />
its collaboration with United States imperialism and permitted United<br />
States interference and even occupation and sale of Canadian natural<br />
re sources, so that the wartime and postwar prosperity for a time being<br />
created some false illusions even within the progressive movement.<br />
The cold war and differences about bringing Hungarian DP's from<br />
wes t er n Europe, dissolved the unity among Hungarian-Canadians that<br />
ex isted during the "aid-movement" to Hungary. The plans concerning<br />
repatriation to Hungary that ran high in Canada, immediately<br />
after the liberation of Hungary by the Soviet Army, were discouraged<br />
by at least three factors: the tensions of the international situation,<br />
creat ed by the United States and other western imperialists, ended the<br />
opport unit ies for any mass migration; economic dificulties in war-ruined<br />
Hunga ry and the sharpening class struggle for socialist transformation,<br />
induced a wait-and-see attitude in many Hungarian-Canadians; and<br />
many of the second generation, often married to non-Hungarians and<br />
the third generation were unwilling to leave Canada for what they<br />
considered an uncertain future. The older generation realized that the<br />
problems were more complicated than they had thought.<br />
These are some of the reasons why only about a thousand Hunga<br />
r ian-Ca nadians have returned to Hungary since the war and istead<br />
of the many thousands who spoke of going, only a few have returned<br />
to Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and before the Tito debacle to Yugoslavia.<br />
The immigration of former DP's and deserters from Hungary added<br />
new problems in Canada. Many were merely seeking economic fantasies<br />
they had been promised before their arrival, but others were acting<br />
under the instructions of terrorist-fascist commanders who came with<br />
them from Hitlerized Hungary, and DP camps, or later deserted from<br />
liberat ed Hungary. This latter group of former DP's, still organized in<br />
milit ar y discipline under their old, or new commanders, infiltrated the<br />
ch urch and social organizations under petty-bourgeois leadership,<br />
,85
Over 8,000 Munkli.s supporters were listening to the greetings by Dr. Emil<br />
W,eil, minister of the Hungarian Legation in Washington, at the annual<br />
MunkAs picnic in the Kossuth Park, Hamilton, on June 15, 1952.<br />
throughout Canada. Their successes in this infiltration made their leaders<br />
over-confident, so that they dared to begin attacks on the progressive<br />
movement in Canada.<br />
Against Our Traditions<br />
The A.B.N. (Ant i-Bolshevist Bloc of Nations) made its debut in<br />
New York on May 4, 1952. It was supported by the infamous Senator<br />
McCarthy and like persons and President Eisenhower's Connecticut<br />
booster, ex-Governor John Davis Lodge, sent a message of encouragement<br />
to their anti-democratic efforts. In Canada, it has the support of<br />
many Liberal and Conservative leaders, and "inspired" by the A.B.N.,<br />
international bandits of Hungarian origin organized special attacks<br />
against the Hungarian-Canadian progressive movement, its meetings<br />
and individuals.<br />
On October 1, 1950, arsonists broke into the Hungarian Home of<br />
the Brantford branch of the I.M.B.F. and attempted to set fire to the<br />
building in seven places. A sprinkler system alone saved the building.<br />
Reports to the city and provincial police brought no results in any<br />
arrests. This happened 10 months after the formation of the "Canadian<br />
Hungarian Anti-Bolshevist League", which has its headquarters in<br />
86
Brantford.<br />
On Saturday, June 14th, 1952, on the weekly program of the<br />
" Le a gue" over radio station, CKPC, Brantford, comment ator Frank<br />
Ba banyecz of Delhi, Ont., called for an attack on Dr. Emil Weil, at that<br />
ti me minister of the Hungarian legation in Washington who was to<br />
spea k next day at the annual picnic of the " Munkas" in Kossuth Park<br />
near Hamilton. Babanyecz openly asked former DP's to attend the picnic<br />
and call Dr. Wei! to account for Cardinal Mindszenty and other<br />
"victimr.." .<br />
That same night, two members of the picnic committee, acting as<br />
watchmen at Kossuth Park, were beaten and left bleeding by six hoodlum<br />
s. Next day, when Dr. Wei! spoke, some 75 former DP's ar r ived in<br />
a specia l bus and cars, began to demonstrate, but the 3,000 disciplined<br />
suppor ter s of the "Munkas" made their plans abortive.<br />
Less than a month later, just before midnight, the buildings at<br />
Ko ssuth Park, a large pavilion for dancing and a kitchen, were completely<br />
destroyed by iii-e. No arrest s have been made by the local or<br />
provinc ial police.<br />
After the kitchen and large dance pavilon was burnt down in<br />
Kossuth Park, Hamilton.<br />
Counter-Action Developed<br />
However, these excesses, changed the attitude of Hungarian-Canadians<br />
generally toward the former DP's and their Hitlerite-Horthyite<br />
87
leaders. During the 30 years that Hungarians have lived together in<br />
the larger cities in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, despite differences<br />
concerning religious and political trends, never has there been an act ot<br />
violence. Discussions and friendship alone resolved discords. The Hungarian-Canadian<br />
communities were astounded by the facts of these new<br />
bandits who caused the first difficulties in the church and social organizations<br />
into which they had infiltrated with some help from within.<br />
Members and popular leaders resented the frequent arrogance of the<br />
intruders who often challanged long-time leadership.<br />
But the Hitlerite-Horthyite, McCarthy-inspired leaders, the "commanders"<br />
among the former DP's went further, to establish a so-called<br />
"Canadian Hungarian National Federation", later changed to "Canadian<br />
Hungarian Federation". This was done with the aid of some of the<br />
older reactionary leaders in the Hungarian organizations who, during<br />
some 30 years, had made many unsuccessful attempts at creating a<br />
national top organ of Hungarian reaction for their own selfish purposes.<br />
From the very beginning, much of the membership of the church<br />
and social organizations, even though some leaders joined, avoided the<br />
Federation. After the terrorist actions of the newly-arrived, fascistminded<br />
immigrants, the Federation disintegrated, and in many places,<br />
the former DP's, were relieved of office in other organizations.<br />
Now, the impact of conditions in Canada has changed the thinking<br />
of many of the recent immigrants and they are making honest efforts<br />
to integrate themselves into Canadian life, often in the cultural field.<br />
This effort, however, is not always made by the worthier immigrants,<br />
nor by those with the best intentions toward Canadian democracy.<br />
This later trend is examplified by the "Hungarian Helikon" of Toronto<br />
constituted by a group of would-he-intellectual newcomers. This<br />
"Helikon" already twice invited Tibor Eckhardt from the U.S. to lecture<br />
on democracy. This notorious "democrat" is a member of the selected<br />
"National Commission" supported as a government-in-exile by the State<br />
Department. Eckhardt's career started with the blody counterrevolution<br />
of Horthy in 1919, he served in many crimes of that regime, he helped<br />
to reactionize the leadership of the Small-Holders Party and as its<br />
leader supported the introduction of the Hitlerite anti-Semitic laws in<br />
Hungary. In 1940, he was sent to the U.S., as Rudolph Hess was to<br />
England, to help to make Hitler's dream come true in trying to turn<br />
the Western powers to attack the Soviet Union. Such stooges are sponsored<br />
by the so-called Helikon.<br />
In addition to the "Canadian-Hungarian Anti-Bolshevist League",<br />
some others are organized, like the "Canadian Group" of the "Hungarian<br />
Veterans' Association" with headquarters in Munich, Germany.<br />
Their "arch-groupleader" in Canada until lately was General Eugene<br />
Tiimiiry, Toronto, . a former member of the Hungarian Hitlerite army.<br />
On November 28, 1951, in his first public recruiting speech, he. said that<br />
88
A drawing by Avrom (Tin6di his penname in the Munkas), leading<br />
Canadian working class cartoonist, on the role of Tibor Eckhardt.<br />
"three Hungarian divisions" are being organized in Canada. Their<br />
paper, "Kanadai Magy"arsag", (Canadia n-Hungarian) under the editorship<br />
of LaszlO Kenesei, Toronto, a former Hitlerite officer, on June 28,<br />
1952, quoted Dobroslav ]avdjevic's speech at Niagara Falls, in which<br />
this fascist lieutenant of the executed General Mihajlovich, boasted that<br />
he " had kiIIed 30,000 Red partisans." To this, Kenesei commented:<br />
"From the bottom of our hearts we congratulate you, Mr. ]evdjevic and<br />
wish that God may bless your good habits here on the soil of Canada.<br />
Som e day it may be needed."<br />
The leader of the "Hungarian Veterans' Association" in Germany<br />
is Ma jor-General Zak6, a war criminal sought by the government of<br />
the Hungarian People's Republic; formerly he was head of Department<br />
II of the general staff of the Szalasi fascist Arrow-Cross army and his<br />
staff ca pt ain was MiklOs Korponay. This Korponay who now lives in<br />
Toronto, is secretary of the "Hungarian Aid Committee" formed in Toronto<br />
in 1952.<br />
There are many Hungarian newcomers who seek integration into<br />
Canadian life to the advantage of Canada as well as themselves, but<br />
there a re also mercenaries whose motives in any Canadian association<br />
are inimical to the interest of Canada.<br />
The majority of the newcomers, however, are former workers and<br />
after their first years in Canada the trend to associate themselves and<br />
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their interests with the Canadian working people is growing<br />
stronger. Many of them - realizing more and more, that they have<br />
been forced from trap to trap by their fascist leaders - as have many<br />
of the older generations of the earlier immigration, would like to repatriate<br />
to Hungary; the understanding is growing among them, that<br />
the possibility to freely choose their permanent home and be able to<br />
find satisfaction depends on the creation of a peaceful and prosperous<br />
world.<br />
Caught in the blind man's buff of war<br />
They died and they didn't know what for<br />
For God and country the gangsters swore<br />
None of my brothers are blindfolded now<br />
All my brothers are beautiful.<br />
FOR PEACE, INDEPENDENCE<br />
The effects of the cold war, including in Canada, the effects of recently<br />
imported reaction, are becoming weaker in the test of life. The<br />
exposing and enlightening teaching of the progressive movement, as in<br />
the "Munkas" and the first shocks of a developing economic crisis, are<br />
destroying the "North American prosperity forever" illusion.<br />
The Hungarian-Canadians, again, are beginning to find their common<br />
interest among themselves, as well as among the Canadian people<br />
as a whole - and with all the peoples of the world.<br />
Together with all Canadians, the Hungarian-Canadians, of all three<br />
immigrations, largely are beginning to realize that their first and most<br />
important duty is toward themselves and everything and everybody<br />
they love in Canada, now.<br />
For the good life, they see that they must help to ease international<br />
tensions, insure peace, regain Canadian independence, restore the United<br />
Nations Organization to its original mission of peace and negotiated<br />
democratic communication within the world community; to abandon<br />
NATO, SEATO and the like. To achieve this, the Hungarian-Canadians<br />
must all unite with Canadian peace forces in the greatest united front<br />
in history - the world peace movement.<br />
The Hungarian-Canadians, all of them, as an integral part of the<br />
Canadian people, have been depressed by the threat of war, they detest<br />
the threat of economic crisis. But by averting war, the possibility of'<br />
restoring a world market is offered Canadians; fighting for peace make<br />
possible immense markets now oiieted for Canadian farm and industrial<br />
products; and makes possible new employment. This rich prospect can<br />
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Part of the large delegation of the Kossuth Society that attended Canadian<br />
Peace Congress held in Toronto in 1950.<br />
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e widened by de/ending and enlarging democracy in Canada so that its<br />
profuse resources may further be developed and so that its trade with<br />
all the countries of the world may be increased to make Canada ever<br />
greater and its people happier.<br />
This means that Hungarian-Canadians while furthering peace and<br />
democracy at home and abroad, must associate themselves with all<br />
Canadian patriots to honour Canadian sovereignty and secure the supremacy<br />
0/ its parliament.<br />
Before the Hungarian-Canadians are some basic and specific tasks:<br />
to work for a united and independent trade union movement in<br />
Canada; to work for strong and democratic farm organizations; to<br />
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Ford workers in Windsor voted 96.6 percent for strike action<br />
in balloting shown above and walked out Oct. 10, 1954. "We<br />
licked them in 1945, and we're going to do it in 1954", said<br />
they.
support all progressive measures at the municipal, provincial and federal<br />
levels; to strengthen their own progressive mass organizations, the<br />
Kossuth Society, the LM.B.F.; to develop the planned English-speaking<br />
branches parallel to the older ones; to correctly direct the progressive<br />
cultural activities to stimulate the joy in life and progress of all Hungarian-Canadians;<br />
to integrate further through exchanges and joint<br />
programs, the progressive Hungarian cultural contributions with the<br />
democratic stream of Canadian national culture, etc.<br />
To these aims, together with political leadership, we dedicate the<br />
25 year old K. M. Munkas.<br />
The 70-year history of Hungarian-Canadians should be an InSpiration<br />
to achieve these objectives. .<br />
The evil plans of Count Esterhazy and his sponsors did not prevail.<br />
They were defeated by the common traditions and interests of the<br />
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Hungarian immigrants and the Canadian people. People of Hungari<br />
ancestry have helped to create and build Canada; they have foug<br />
many battles for democracy and progress, for the friendship of<br />
two Canadian nations and the many national groups in Canada; the<br />
have fought and given their lives for the brotherhood of the peoples 8Jl'l<br />
nations of the world.<br />
Hungarian-Canadians will continue in their progressive role on t<br />
basis of Canadian democracy and independence, on the basic princi<br />
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peeceiul co-existence of different social systems.<br />
On a world scale, after the defeat of U.S. aggression in Korea, the<br />
eneva agreement established peace in Indo-China and opened the way<br />
~o consolidate Asian peace by giving China its rightful place in the<br />
UNO; the resounding defeat of the EDC by the national assembly of<br />
France has opened the way to establish European collective security,<br />
t o bring about democratic German unity and give Hungary and other<br />
"'Count ries their rightful place in the UNO so that it will be able to ful<br />
:l!ill its original role for peace and international co-operation.<br />
In Canada, the working class, over a million of it in trade unions, is<br />
moving into the leadership of the country; a "rebellion rides the ocean"<br />
- a rising Canadian patriotism against U.S. imp-erialist enroachments<br />
and their apologists. The fight against developing economic crisis is<br />
fusing with the fight for peace, Canadian independence, democracy and<br />
national culture. A national democratic front of all patriots is<br />
steadily developing around the demand of an exclusively Canadian St.<br />
Lawrence Seaway; an all-inclusive upsurge of Canadian national feelings<br />
aroused high and wide by the marvelous achievement of Marilyn<br />
BeIl in her 40-miles swimi across Lake Ontario, against the anti-Canadian,<br />
pro-Yankee blockade of the CNE commission, is showing the<br />
boundless possibilities that the Canadian people can and mill achieve<br />
for the good of Canada and her people and in co-operation with all<br />
peace-loving peoples - including the people of the U.S., and the peoples<br />
of all the Americas - for all the peoples of the world.<br />
With determined will to contribute our full share to this historic<br />
struggle for peace, for an independent, bountiful and free Canada and<br />
for a free morld, we Hungarian-Canadians meaningfully and resolutely<br />
join with all Canadian patriots in singing:<br />
o Canada! Our home and native land!<br />
True patriot love in all thy sons command.<br />
With glowing hearts, we see thee rise,<br />
The true North strong and free;<br />
And stand on guard, 0 Canada,<br />
We stand on guard for thee.<br />
o Canada! Glorious and free!<br />
o Canada, we stand on guard for thee,<br />
o Canada! We stand on guard for thee.<br />
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