After yesterday's post, I received a very kind e-mail from Manuela which, due to it being a personal communication, I'm not going to post here. However, I think it's safe to say that she spoke of some of her experiences living under a repressive Communist regime. It got me to thinking of how my family's past shaped my own attitude towards the oppressive acts perpetrated by those who have become inebriated by the power of their positions.
My personal memories are not of actual events in my own life, but of the stories I grew up with all throughout my youth. Anyone who knows my father also knows that he fought in the Hungarian Revolution, although he was only 15 at the time, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of my family's history.
My maternal grandfather was a newspaper editor during World War II and came very close to being caught and executed by the Arrow Cross Party (the Hungarian Nazis) for his statements against them in his editorials. Luckily, the Arrow Cross was only in power for about 3 months and he was able to avoid that fate. Then, during the beginning of the Soviet occupation, when Hungary was supposedly still a democracy, he got into hot water for criticizing the Communists, just as he had the Nazis. As a result, he, my grandmother and my mother (who was 3 at the time) had to leave Hungary and spent the next several years in German refugee camps before emigrating to the U.S.
My paternal grandfather died in the war when the Soviets came to invade Hungary. My widowed grandmother worked to help her Jewish acquaintances escape during the brief period of Nazi dictatorship in 1945. At one point, a Jewish neighbor lady was hiding in her closet when the secret police came. She sat my 4 year old father on the potty in front of the closet door and told him to scream and cry with all his might. The police never checked that closet. If they had, not only would the Jewish woman have gone to the concentration camps, my grandmother would likely have been shot on the spot.
My father left Hungary not in 1956 but in 1957. There is an old Hungarian folk song about a soldier leaving his love to fight in a war. One line in the song goes "Oh, my darling, God be with you. I must leave you now." The Communists forbade this song from being sung as it had been for centuries because it contained the word "God". They changed the words to "Oh, my darling, for the homeland, I must leave you now." My father and his classmates sang the original - in school - as a protest against the crackdown on revolutionaries after the 1956. The school was quickly surrounded by military and secret police and the students arrested.
My father was released because his last name was the same as that of a local Communist Party official and my grandmother was head teller at the local National Bank branch. He was told he had to appear before a court to determine his fate. The night of his release, my grandmother (who had recently been widowed for the third time), my father and his 2 and 4 year old brothers crossed a minefield to get into Yugoslavia, where they spent the next year in refugee camps before ending up in Belgium and, eventually, the U.S.
My father-in-law is from Transylvania (which is part of Romania - the same country Manuela and Jon come from). He was the head of telephone operations in Hargita county. One night, the Securitate (Romanian secret police) came and took him away on suspicion of "disloyalty to the State". The family did not know what was happening to him for well over a week, when he was returned, very badly beaten.
While I thank God that I've never had the experiences my parents and Manuela and Jon had to live through, the stories I grew up with left an indelible mark on my spirit. The only reason the things which happened to Manuela, her family, my family, my wife's family, the Jews and Gypsies in Nazi Germany, the people living under Soviet terror for almost half a century in Eastern Europe and so many others could happen is that people who should have known better refused to stand up for someone else's rights, for someone else's life.
I, for one, decided long ago that I would never stand by and do nothing as someone else was being trampled by those in power. The fact that I consider Manuela and Jon to be close friends makes it all the more important for me to do what I can to fight this terrible, evil thing which is being done to them. More to the point, it is vital that we all stand up and do our part.
The one silver lining this very dark cloud has is the outpouring of love, camaraderie and solidarity Manuela and Jon have been blessed to receive from so many of their neighbors, our neighbors. The Board and its supporters and backers wanted to hit Jon and Manuela with something so terrible that they would forever be crippled by it. Instead, they provided the two of them with a community of people who will stand by them, fight for them and strengthen them every step of the way.
Our opponents have miscalculated Manuela's strength and the support those around her are eager to lend her. There's a very old Latin saying "Non Illegitimi Carborundum" (literally "don't let the bastards wear you down.") We will fight them and we will defeat them. There will be no greater punishment for their misdeeds than to take from them the power they worship.
God bless all of you and God bless our Town. With His Guidance, we will prevail.
My personal memories are not of actual events in my own life, but of the stories I grew up with all throughout my youth. Anyone who knows my father also knows that he fought in the Hungarian Revolution, although he was only 15 at the time, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of my family's history.
My maternal grandfather was a newspaper editor during World War II and came very close to being caught and executed by the Arrow Cross Party (the Hungarian Nazis) for his statements against them in his editorials. Luckily, the Arrow Cross was only in power for about 3 months and he was able to avoid that fate. Then, during the beginning of the Soviet occupation, when Hungary was supposedly still a democracy, he got into hot water for criticizing the Communists, just as he had the Nazis. As a result, he, my grandmother and my mother (who was 3 at the time) had to leave Hungary and spent the next several years in German refugee camps before emigrating to the U.S.
My paternal grandfather died in the war when the Soviets came to invade Hungary. My widowed grandmother worked to help her Jewish acquaintances escape during the brief period of Nazi dictatorship in 1945. At one point, a Jewish neighbor lady was hiding in her closet when the secret police came. She sat my 4 year old father on the potty in front of the closet door and told him to scream and cry with all his might. The police never checked that closet. If they had, not only would the Jewish woman have gone to the concentration camps, my grandmother would likely have been shot on the spot.
My father left Hungary not in 1956 but in 1957. There is an old Hungarian folk song about a soldier leaving his love to fight in a war. One line in the song goes "Oh, my darling, God be with you. I must leave you now." The Communists forbade this song from being sung as it had been for centuries because it contained the word "God". They changed the words to "Oh, my darling, for the homeland, I must leave you now." My father and his classmates sang the original - in school - as a protest against the crackdown on revolutionaries after the 1956. The school was quickly surrounded by military and secret police and the students arrested.
My father was released because his last name was the same as that of a local Communist Party official and my grandmother was head teller at the local National Bank branch. He was told he had to appear before a court to determine his fate. The night of his release, my grandmother (who had recently been widowed for the third time), my father and his 2 and 4 year old brothers crossed a minefield to get into Yugoslavia, where they spent the next year in refugee camps before ending up in Belgium and, eventually, the U.S.
My father-in-law is from Transylvania (which is part of Romania - the same country Manuela and Jon come from). He was the head of telephone operations in Hargita county. One night, the Securitate (Romanian secret police) came and took him away on suspicion of "disloyalty to the State". The family did not know what was happening to him for well over a week, when he was returned, very badly beaten.
While I thank God that I've never had the experiences my parents and Manuela and Jon had to live through, the stories I grew up with left an indelible mark on my spirit. The only reason the things which happened to Manuela, her family, my family, my wife's family, the Jews and Gypsies in Nazi Germany, the people living under Soviet terror for almost half a century in Eastern Europe and so many others could happen is that people who should have known better refused to stand up for someone else's rights, for someone else's life.
I, for one, decided long ago that I would never stand by and do nothing as someone else was being trampled by those in power. The fact that I consider Manuela and Jon to be close friends makes it all the more important for me to do what I can to fight this terrible, evil thing which is being done to them. More to the point, it is vital that we all stand up and do our part.
The one silver lining this very dark cloud has is the outpouring of love, camaraderie and solidarity Manuela and Jon have been blessed to receive from so many of their neighbors, our neighbors. The Board and its supporters and backers wanted to hit Jon and Manuela with something so terrible that they would forever be crippled by it. Instead, they provided the two of them with a community of people who will stand by them, fight for them and strengthen them every step of the way.
Our opponents have miscalculated Manuela's strength and the support those around her are eager to lend her. There's a very old Latin saying "Non Illegitimi Carborundum" (literally "don't let the bastards wear you down.") We will fight them and we will defeat them. There will be no greater punishment for their misdeeds than to take from them the power they worship.
God bless all of you and God bless our Town. With His Guidance, we will prevail.
1 comment:
"Learning from History" is very well written and appropriate. Many Americans whose families have been here for many generations take for granted the freedoms that we enjoy under the protection of the U.S. Constitution. They forget that those freedoms that have been afforded to us were won and protected with the blood, sweat, and tears of our forefathers and foremothers. The experiences of Imre's family as well those of Manuela Mihailescu and Jon Dogar Marinesco, and also of our other neighbors (especially those from the Ukraine) who came here to escape from socialist totalitarian regimes serve as reminders of what will happen if we are not eternally vigilant in protecting our precious freedoms. We must never drop our guard lest it will allow "Big Brother's" government enforcers to knock on our doors and take us away in the middle of the night.
The way Manuela Mihailescu's rights were trampled by the Rochester Town Board is disgraceful. Subsequent contemptable actions by that body such as locking out the very citizens that they were elected to represent out of a public meeting show just how little they value individual rights. We must continue our support for Manuela until the guilty parties are removed from office either by legal remedies or by the ballot box in November. This is not a question of partisan politics but of right and wrong. Who knows who will be next and by what means?
We all must share the responsibilty of protecting the individual freedoms that we enjoy in this great country in which we live. Democracy does not work without individual involvement and participation. Not getting involved and hoping the person next to you will step up in your place only opens the door for others to take control of your reality. That is all it takes for a vocal few to take control. That's how it happened in Hitler's Germany and in Stalin's Soviet Union. It can also happen here if we do not remeber history's lessons. So please stay vigilant and be involved.
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