The Persecution of Hungarians in Romania
The Prosecution of the Hungarians in Romania
Before World War II the Hungarians language was no longer an official language in Romania. Many large-landowning Hungarians were having their land taken away. The Romanians were doing this to “Romanianize” Romania. They government had been inspired by Nazi Germany, introducing the anti-Jewish legislature. They made up several laws against Jews adding up to a total of eighty laws against them. The laws against them were made from 1941-1942. There were thirty two laws, thirty one decree laws, and seventeen government resolutions.
The Soviet Army forbid Jews to access higher education, and access to radios. They also didn’t allow the Jews in Romania to practice legal or artistic professions and they took away their right to hold public office.
In the summer of 1940 the Romanians were forced to give up a lot of their land. This loss angered them and they ordered the removal of Jews from the frontier areas. The Jews were blamed for syphilis, a deadly disease, prostitution, divorce, all inspired by the Nazis. The Romanians wanted to “sanitize” the Jews meaning exterminate. They did not want Jews around anymore because they believed that they caused all bad things at the time. This led them to being put in ghettos, leading to labor camps, usually leading to death.
There was a lasi program consisting of 100,000 people, half of them being Jewish. The members of the lasi program were ordered to search all of the Jewish homes. The Jewish people in the lasi program were believed by some to be “enemy allies”. The Jews that were rebelling were causing massacres’ so then they decided to ship them all off to the center of the country to the labor camps.
The genocide called the “Romanian Holocaust” was between the Hungarians and the Romanians. This was the first genocide of the twentieth century. Over 600,000 Hungarians were captured by the Soviet Army. About one third, 200,000 of them died in the Soviet Armies death camps. In the camps the Soviet Army didn’t have the technology that the Nazi’s did. They didn’t have crematoriums or gas chambers. They only had the weapons that they built themselves. The soldiers of the Soviet Army would beat a prisoner until he or she was weakened or dead. They would also lock the prisoners in carriages and close up the air holes and suffocate the Hungarians. Other ways that they would kill their prisoners was to starve or hang them. With the Hungarian Jews in the camp they were not close to the front and this made it easier for the officials to supervise. Underneath the German Jews, the Romanian Jews were most affected by the genocide. There were many other races being affected by this but the Hungarian Jews were the main focus. The Romanians felt that they needed to do this because they were inferior creatures that were making the Romanian race impure.
Most people are unaware of this genocide, even those living in Romania. Compared to the Nazi Holocaust it looks small comparing six million people to six hundred thousand but the lives of those who suffered in this cannot be forgotten. Most of this started before World War II, the discrimination against the Jews. They believed that the Jews were to blame for disease and starvation. There were laws formed against them without any other countries knowing. They were considered inferior creatures, even though they were human beings just like the Romanians. Just because they believed in something different they were considered creatures and the Romanians decided to blame the Hungarians Jews. The ideas were inspired by Hitler but the crimes were done by the Soviet Army. This genocide cannot be forgotten.
