Honourable Central District Court of Pest,
I,
Dr György Ádám (attorney-at-law, residing at 1118 Budapest, Alsóhegy u. 28.
fsz. 2.), as Plaintiff, hereby submit a
s t a t e m e n t o f
c l a i m
against Defendant Lóránt HEGEDÜS, Jr. (residing
at 1054 Budapest, Szabadság tér 2.).
I
hereby request the Honourable Court to establish on the basis of Section 84,
subsection (1), paragraph a) of the Civil Code that the Defendant has violated
my personal rights regarding discrimination against private individuals on the
grounds of their race, nationality or religious affiliation, as defined in the
first turn of phrase of Section 76 of the Civil Code, as well as my personal
rights attached to integrity and personal dignity as defined in the last turn
of phrase of the same Section. I hereby also request the Honourable Court to
oblige the Defendant to cease and desist the said breach of law and to prohibit
him from any further breach of law on the basis of Section 84, subsection (1),
paragraph b) of the Civil Code. I have no claim for legal costs.
R e a s o n i n g :
The
Defendant published an article under the title “Christian Hungarian State” on
page one of issue No. 3, 2001 of the journal entitled Ébresztő [Wake-Up Call] of the 16th district
organisation of MIÉP. A photocopy of the article is attached to my present
statement of claim under A.).
I
do not need to analyse the text of the article as it is about the “army of
Galician vagrants”, about whom he writes in a hostile, inciting and
inflammatory tone. The article is, beyond any doubt, about the Jews who are
referred to under the term cited above. It is out of the question that the
subject-matter of the article, the Jews, are “encoded” under the term “army of
Galician vagrants”. It is indisputable that this term in Europe solely refers
to the Jews. The term “Galician” alludes to the fact that some Jewish families
moved to the depopulated parts of Hungary from Galicia in the 18th and 19th
centuries. The term “vagrant” is a severely pejorative, negative and insulting
attributive noun. [1] The
Hungarian Dictionary (published by Akadémiai Kiadó, 1960, Volume III)
describes two meanings of the term “jöttment”. Both meanings are adverse. One of
definitions is “a person who turns up in different places but does not have a
permanent home”; the second definition is “a person who had moved in from a
different area but has not yet been accepted by the local community. The locals
do not even speak to vagrant families for a long time.” (page 683). That is,
the article uses the term “army of Galician vagrants” as a synonym for the word
“Jews”. The use of synonyms does not constitute “encoding”. It is not an
instance of encoding when we refer to sulphur as brimstone, a dog as pooch, a
prostitute as a lady of pleasure or a brothel as a bawdy-house, in spite of the
fact that a whole variety of ladies may give pleasure to men and there are many
different types of houses with a happy atmosphere; yet, the latter two terms
are clearly reserved in the language in reference to “sexual services”. They
cannot be construed in any other way. Therefore, the Defendant writes about
Jews in his article in a highly derogatory sense. The most serious, clearly
inflammatory, call of the article written by the Defendant is “So, Hungarian,
hear the only message of survival of the thousandth year of the Christian
Hungarian State based on the ancient rights and foundations of a thousand
years’ legal continuity: EXCLUDE THEM! BECAUSE IF YOU DO NOT, THEY WILL DO IT
TO YOU!”
The
intent and purpose of incitement, as cited from the article, is, in fact
irrelevant as the two passages of Section 76 of the Civil Code constitute an
objective obligation and Section 84, subsection (1), paragraphs a) and b)
prescribe objective sanctions, without the investigation of the intent or
purpose. This is well-known in the standing judicial practice.
Nonetheless,
I wish to prove in the following that the wording through the use of a general
subject concerns me directly as
an individual.
I.
In order to explain why
the Defendant’s call to exclude the Jews violates my personal rights, I
need briefly to describe the story of my personal life, that is, how in more
than 81 years I have been compelled to experience continual rejection.
I was born into a
wealthy bourgeois Budapest family on 27 September 1921. My father and mother
never once told me that we were Jews (Israelites) and that I myself, too, was,
in the opinion of others, Jewish. Religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.)
was never discussed in my family. Our family never observed any religious
holidays, Jewish or Christian, including Christmas. We never talked about God
of any kind.
My parents enrolled me
in the Deák tér Lutheran Primary School in 1927. It was there that I heard for
the first time that I was an “Israelite” and had to go to religious education
classes to a different place than the others. There were the two of us in the
class who were Israelites and we were taught religious education by a young
rabbi separately in a small room in the school.
I was in the third form
when we moved to Hermina út and attended the 3rd and 4th forms in the Hermina
út primary school. I was the only “Israelite” there and therefore had to go to
another school in Ajtósi Dürer sor for my religious education classes. The children
in the primary school liked me. I was the best pupil in my class, which our
teacher, Mr Árvay, often mentioned before the whole class. My schoolmates also
liked me because I was given big snacks for my elevenses much which I gave
away, and because I taught the less able pupils in our home. Many of my
classmates came to our flat and we played together a great deal. One day, the
classmate with whom I shared a desk demanded, pointing at the pendant crucifix
on his necklace, that I kiss the feet of Christ. I refused to do so, and he
then started shouting, “Ádám refuses to kiss the feet of Jesus Christ.”
Thereupon, 15-20 of my classmates attacked me, they beat and kicked me, threw
me on the floor, tore my clothes, wounded me on my face and legs, knocked one
of my teeth out and I was left bleeding from several wounds. When the teacher
came in after the break and saw me, he sent me home immediately, accompanied by
two children. My mother bathed me, called a doctor, put clean clothes on me but
did not ask what had happened to me (one of the children accompanying me
obviously had told my mother the story).
Following this
incident, as if nothing had happened, I continued to go to school with the same
classmates, distributed a great deal of packed elevenses among them, taught the
less-able ones and many children came to our house, which had a garden, to play
(including several of those who had beaten and kicked me).
After the four forms of
primary school, my mother enrolled me in the Kemény Zsigmond Secondary School
in Bujovszki utca (a street off Heroes’ Square). We took the No. 25 tram to
secondary school (including another 10 to 15 students). The Catholic religious
instruction teacher wearing a priest’s habit also travelled on the tram. All my
fellow-students, including myself, greeted him with “Praise be to our Lord
Jesus Christ”, as I understood that this was the way to address a reverend. He
greeted them all in turn with “For ever, Amen”, … except me; he never returned
my greetings. On one occasion, when we walked from the tram to the school, my
schoolmates gathered around me and told me not to greet the priest in the above
fashion because it was forbidden for me. After this, I greeted him with “Good
morning, Reverend”. He, however, did not return my greetings, did not even
acknowledge my presence, and I thought, as a twelve-year-old child, that the
Reverend was, perhaps, so engrossed in his sublime thoughts (about Divinity,
the Holy Spirit and the Son of God) that my greetings actually disturbed him.
Therefore, next time I was travelling on the tram, I stopped on the platform
next to the tram driver and did not enter the carriage where the Reverend sat.
I got off at the front, while the Reverend at the back of the tram, and we did
not even meet on the way. I thought this was the right solution. During the
nine o’clock break, the school janitor came into the classroom and announced,
“Ádám must go to the Principal’s office.” I immediately went to the office of
“Vitéz” Dr Aladár Pléch, Director General, school inspector and Principal of
the school, where, next to the Principal, there sat the Reverend as well. The
Principal then said, “This morning you did not greet the Reverend.” I tried to
explain the situation but the Reverend stood up, pulled my hair above both ears
with much force and slapped me in the face twice (my ears were buzzing for days
and my mother took me to an ear specialist). While doing so, the Reverend
shouted, “insolent, rotten Jew”, and then left. The principal then told me:
“slink back to your place, you insolent brat”. Thereafter, on my way to school,
I made sure that I did not get on the same No. 25 tram that the Reverend was
travelling on. Whenever possible, I took an earlier tram.
I was preparing for my
final examinations when the Darányi Government [2]
submitted the first anti-Jewish law, Act XV, to the Civil Law and Justice
Committee of Parliament on 8 April 1938. The bill reflected the general
attitude of the population. In April 1938, Cardinal Pachelly (a few months
later he would become Pope under the name Pius XII) and Cardinal Prince-Primate
Justinián Serédy celebrated holy mass at Heroes’ Square, attended by thousands
of Catholic believers. Law and order were maintained by policemen in silver
helmets. On my way home from school, I walked past Heroes’ Square, on the
pavement next to the Museum of Fine Arts. Walking past, I heard the Cardinal’s
sermon which was translated into Hungarian via loudspeakers. When I got there,
I heard that, according to the Cardinal, Hitler was doing the right thing in
persecuting the Jews by any means possible as the sin of the Jews was
unforgivable, in that they had crucified Jesus Christ. As I walked past, a
young boy cried out, “there’s another Jew”. Following this, some 15 young men
attacked me, beat me, pushed me to the ground, kicked me and I ended up with
serious injuries. The policemen in silver helmets, seeing the incident, did not
intervene but let them beat me until I was bleeding. At home my mother called
for a doctor once again and I had to be treated as I had sustained injuries
which would take more than eight days to heal.
I was going in for
sports in the thirties of the last century and was a particularly good tennis
player. As a first-class tennis player, I was persuaded to enrol in a tennis
umpire course. I completed the fifteen-hour course and passed the tennis umpire
examination. When the chairman of the panel of umpires handed out the tennis
umpire certificates and I did not receive one, he told me that Jews were not
allowed to become tennis umpires in Hungary. This happened in 1940 when Act IV
of 1939 on the restriction of the participation of Jews in public life and
business had already been promulgated.
I did not gain
admission to university due to the 6% numerus clausus Jewish Laws and
therefore worked as an unskilled worker for 52 fillérs [3] an hour in the Frich and Doktor woodenware factory in Bulcsú
utca until March 1940. Following this, I obtained my driving licence and then
drove one of the trucks of my grandfather, who was a factory owner, until 4
October 1942.
On 5 October 1942, I was called up for “yellow
arm-band” military forced labour service in the 9th Military Forced
Labour Company [4] in Galánta,
from where, in a few days’ time, the company was taken in cargo wagons to
Turja-Remete (Turyi Remety) near Ungvár (Uzhorod). As members of the
military forced labour unit, we lived in harsh circumstances, in cavities
called “huts” which we ourselves had dug into the hill-side (18 of us in each
of them). As we had to wear our own clothes, the boots of one of the captive
servicemen, a boy who had come from a very poor family, fell to pieces and he
tied rags around his feet in which he walked for days in winter in 20 degrees
below zero centigrade. One day, he could not take it any more and absconded
from the camp to find some boots somewhere. He was caught by military gendarmes
somewhere near Budapest and was court-martialled as a deserter before the
Military Tribunal in Margit körút. He was sentenced to death by firing squad
and was executed before the company by a detail of guardsmen. The last wish of
the military forced labourer, before he was shot, was a bowl of poppy seed
pasta (on that day, we had poppy seed pasta for lunch). The other captive
servicemen had to walk past the dead body and everyone had to take a look at
his bleeding skull. Those who did not look were hit with a cane by Lance
Sergeant Szántó several times.
At the end of August,
we were transported from Turja-Remete (Turyi Remety) to Esztergom-tábor for
winter accommodation. Here, Lance Sergeant Szántó asked me to teach him because
he himself realised how uneducated he was. I agreed to do so and every day,
after work (digging ditches), I taught him for an hour (grammar, literature,
history, arithmetic and geography). Every class began by his reciting what I
had taught him the day before, and I then presented the new material. I taught
him in his quarters, in a separated section of a military hut. On each occasion
he told me, time and time again, that he only trusted one man, His Serene
Highness “Vitéz” Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya. When the "Horthy Proclamation" [5]
was read on 15 October 1944 but Szálasi [6]
took over a few hours later, my “pupil” told me that we were quitting. He took
me out of the camp and I travelled to Budapest with a false pass which I issued
to myself as I was company clerk at the time. My parents were already in the
ghetto at that time and lived in a building marked with a yellow star of David
in Amerikai út. I learnt from them that my brother István Ádám, who was 18
years old then but had taught at the Department of Mathematics at Pázmány Péter
University from the age of 15 as the assistant of the mathematics professor
Lipót Fejér, had been deported, and my brother András Ádám (who was a cello
artist), too, had been taken away to a synagogue in Visegrádi utca. I sneaked
into the synagogue and found my brother András. From the synagogue, Arrow Cross
guards and gendarmes took us to the Óbuda brick factory, and a few days later,
once again Arrow Cross guards and gendarmes marched us to Józsefváros Railway
Station with their guns pointing at us where we were ordered into cargo wagons
(there were 90 persons to each wagon). The doors were locked from outside and
we “travelled” for three days to Kőszeg. When someone had to respond to the
call of nature, they were raised to a small window where they could “relieve”
themselves. We were given some watery broth and a piece of dry bread once a
day. In the Kőszeg brewery, in spite of the winter weather, we “lived” in
cylinder-shaped, papier mache tents, some twenty of us in each “tent”. Our
“job” was to dig ditches 14 hours a day, “supervised” by SA soldiers
(brown-shirt party servicemen) and Arrow Cross guards. The soldiers and the
Arrow Cross party servicemen regularly stuck at those who did not work
“industriously” enough, and my younger brother, too, was often beaten.
There were many in the camp that died of hypothermia,
starvation, incurable wounds and the complete loss of their mental balance. At
the end of February 1945, two “gas chambers” were set up in the Kőszeg
deportation camp (these were tents, the openings of which were blocked and
sealed). Those who were dying were gassed in the gas chambers, and the
deportees whose job it was to collect the dead threw them into the “pits for
the dead” which were always full of dead bodies.
When the front came very close to Kőszeg (one could
hear the shooting on the front line), we were arranged into marching files and
began our march to Mauthausen. I constantly supported my brother András, who
had by then already lost all ten of his toes through frostbite and they had
become detached from his feet. As he could not walk any more, he was tossed
onto a horse cart. I found out the following day that he had been shot.
Then we arrived in Graz where we were held in Lager
Libenau. As, due to my brother’s death, it no longer made sense for me to stay
in the camp, I crawled through under the fence and escaped. I met a company of
Hungarian infantrymen where the soldiers, secretly, hidden from the officers,
gave me an infantry uniform covered in lice, and I kept on marching with the
company. I then contracted fleck-typhoid and ran a temperature of 41.5oC.
I was put on a hospital train which took me to a hospital in Bad-Ischl. This
was where I learnt that Hitler had died and the war was over (on 2 May 1945).
American soldiers entered Bad-Ischl, and I got better
and contacted the resident commander of the US armed forces who spoke good
German. He offered to take me on as a major of the US Army. I did not accept
the offer, but, as my fever had subsided, decided to go back to Budapest. I sat
on a bench in a park in Bad-Ischl when a German military jeep drew up near me.
The soldier left the ignition key in the car and went inside to see a woman. I
then sat in the car, having had plenty of experience in driving, and drove home
to Sopron (I filled the tank free of charge several times at military filling
stations). In Sopron, I had another attack of fleck-typhoid and lay in hospital
for one more month, following which I travelled to Budapest, met my parents and
learnt that my brother, István Ádám, had been beaten to death in a German
deportation camp.
While my “exclusion” from Hungarian society had come
to an end at that point, there are now renewed calls to “exclude me”, such as
the one in the Defendant’s article attached hereto under “A”. He does not state
the type of exclusion that he has in mind. Yet, I have just described in my
story above how the Galician vagrants had been “excluded”. History provided an established
and actually implemented “timetable” for that exclusion in Hungary. In other
words, “exclusion” started in Hungary before World War II with the restrictions
on the number of Jews admitted to higher education as a result of inflammatory
writings and speeches, followed by the specific designation of those to be
excluded, and eventually resulting in physical abuse, ghettos and the killing
of hundreds of thousands. This is the historically proven “timetable” of
EXCLUSION. This is what the Defendant invites his readers to do, whether he
actually intends or not, as Section 76 of the Civil Code is not subject to the
attainment of a result. The “argument” that this cannot happen again in Europe
in the third millennium is an illogical claim. This is what the most educated
claimed also at the beginning of the ‘40s of the 20th century, including my
father’s good friends, Frigyes Karinthy, Milán Füst and Dezső Kosztolányi. Yet,
incitement aimed at “exclusion” of this kind degenerated into the most
barbarous tragedy.
This process is again triggered in our country by the
Defendant’s attached article; at least, this is what we who have already
experienced it fear. This terrifying concern is an individual and realistic
breach of my personal rights.
II.
The Defendant’s article is typically the part
of a process which, if triggered once, is unstoppable. Incitement against the
Galician vagrants has a history of thousands of years, and hundreds in Hungary.
A notorious case is the Tiszaeszlár lawsuit in which, according to the
prosecution, the vagrant Jews from Galicia drank the blood of Eszter Solymosi
and, according to some anti-Semites, the only reason why the killers of
housemaid Eszter Solymosi were not convicted of the “blood libel” was that
attorney Count Dr Károly Eötvös, a friend of Ferenc Deák, defended the accused
who were acquitted on 3 August 1883. The Tiszaeszlár “blood libel”, as typical
Jewish mentality, has since been described in the theses of several
anti-Semites as “fact”.
Anti-Semitism flooded the whole of Europe in
the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of such incitement demanding
“exclusion”. One of the best-known cases in France was the Dreyfus Affair. While of Jewish extraction,
Alfred Dreyfus was an officer of the French general staff. A lawsuit was
brought against him on the charges of espionage and treason. The crown witness
was Walsin-Esterházy, a man of Hungarian origin. The whole of the
justice-loving population of France, led by the world-famous author Emil Zola,
lined up in a united front in defence of Dreyfus. The charges were then refuted
in 1906 and Dreyfus’s innocence was proved. While, with this case, a
significant period in the history of anti-Semitism in France had come to an
end, it continued in other countries of Europe, in particular, in Italy,
Germany and Hungary.
The first anti-Jewish law came into force in
Hungary in 1920 as a result of inflammatory speeches of this kind demanding
exclusion. I only wish to quote two extracts from speeches delivered in 1918
and 1919 as examples.
Ottokár Prohászka, the Bishop of
Székesfehérvár, made the following statement in 1918 in the Upper House of
Parliament:
“The immorality and
unscrupulousness of the Jews is the depravity which has no law, the degenerate
spirit which only has distorted conceptions of good, beauty and virtue and
which may only be conceived of as a perversion of Christian thought; it is the
immoral cruelty which regards the Christian people as its enemy and
consequently finds every means and method of competition by which it may
strangulate Christianity as appropriate and honest — I am telling you that it
has been this moral turpitude that had, from the beginning, given rise to the
damning and stigmatising judgement of Christianity against the Jews.
Christian Socialism intends to prevent Hungary from turning into a
Jewish country. The economic frustration of the Christian middle classes and
the increasing ratio of Jews within the Hungarian intelligentsia clearly
indicate this process.
The main problem is not that the gentry is being destroyed by Hungarian
apathy, Hungarian indifference, negligence and indolence, Hungarian laziness
and Hungarian conceit but that its place is filled by the Jews and not
primarily by the Hungarian middle classes absorbed from the Hungarian
peasantry. This national defence does not constitute anti-Semitism but simple
self-defence which cannot be denied to any nation. If there were a Jewish
country and another, non-Jewish, people filtered through the gaps and pushed
the Jews out of their position, would the Jews not do the same?
I am not anti-Semitic, and neither am I
anti-German, anti-French or anti-English. However, I do not wish to sacrifice
my Hungarian nation to another powerful race and its strength over-abundant in
violence or intelligence.” (Loud approval) 1918. Upper House of Parliament.
Count Pál Teleki [7]
declared in 1919 before members of the Szeged Christian National Unity Party:
“The decline of the national and Christian idea and the collapse of the
country were due to the destruction which was primarily represented by the
Jewish population of Hungary before the World War. This destruction obliterated
patriotic sentiment and sucked Christian morals out of Hungarian society.”
(Speech in Szeged at the Christian National Unity Party, 1919)
“Liberal politics during the era of dualism permitted Jewish
immigration of such magnitude which created a Jewish ethnicity in Hungary. The
Hungarian anti-Semitic movement has always been proud of the fact that it
preceded countries such as Fascist Italy or Nazi Hitlerite Germany in passing
laws on the exclusion of Jews.” (Hungary preceded Hitlerism by thirteen years
and any inflammatory literature demanding “exclusion”, such as the Defendant’s
article attached to my statement of claim, which was also used eighty years ago
as the “justification” of an anti-Jewish law, is, therefore, life-threateningly
dangerous in Hungary.)
Incitement to exclude
the Jews continued in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century. One of the
“champions” of this movement was again Count Pál Teleki. Here are some
quotations from his public statements, similar to that of the Defendant to the
present proceedings, conveying a tone of incitement and exclusion:
1928; speech in the debate on the amendment of the numerus
clausus legislation proposed by Count Kuno Klebelsberg [8]:
“[T]here is a racial struggle between Christianity and Jewry and I am unable to
support the gradual transformation of Hungary into a Jewish state.
1930; in the Upper House of Parliament: “I do not
regard the bill (anti-Jewish law) as the political legacy of the Imrédy [9]
Government which is incumbent on me, to my regret, to implement. […] I agree
with the main features of the bill out of conviction, but had I drafted the
law, it would have been much more stringent.”
“The essence of the problem is that the ratio of Jews in Hungary is six
times higher than in Western Europe, and yet Hungarian politics treated this
problem with a Western method, with the method of democracy and tolerance.”
(1935, 27 April, Journal of the Upper House of Parliament) “The
Jews, in contrast to the Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians and Germans, are not
simply a nationality but a separate race. I see the manifestation of racial
characteristics where the psychological features are evident in the faces, the
body shapes reflect the psychological habits, groups of humans are markedly and
biologically different from others and are often recognisable. Subject to
intensive inbreeding, specific features and racial characteristics may become
strongly ingrained, dominant and so powerful in groups of humans that, in the
case of intermarriage with others, these become dominant features against the
features of the weaker party. The majority of the Jews are an alien body in the
life of the nation and this alien body is transforming the body, character and
way of thinking of the Hungarian nation to a degree which poses the gravest of
dangers. (Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Loud applause.) I am asking you to waive your
proposals and amendments to attenuate the stringency of the law and cast your
votes for the original draft.”
1939, 11 May, Pál
Teleki addressing his party loyalists in the Pesti Vigadó [The Redoute]
following the passage of the second anti-Jewish law: “We have passed the Jewish
Law and have thereby concluded the legal part of the matter. No-one should therefore
think of a third law.”
Hardly a year went by, and it transpired that there was going to be
another anti-Jewish law. On 12 June 1940, Teleki was no longer so unambiguous:
“The Government will implement the second Jewish Law under any circumstances. However,
if, due to its complexity, it failed to do so, it will not shy away from
clarifying the import of the law by changing it or passing a new law.”
(The Upper House did not, in the end, heed Teleki’s advice and
maintained its proposed amendments, some of which were incorporated into the
final text of the law.)
Excerpts from speeches by former Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös [10]
in chronological order:
1920, Journal
of the National Assembly:
“The Central Powers lost the war because in the countries of the Entente
the ratio of Jews to Christians is 1:227, in the case of the Central Powers it
is 1:56.”
“While their citizenship rights must be left intact, the ratio of Jews
in every profession must be limited to 5%.”
“However anti-Semitic every
Hungarian may be deep in his heart – there are only anti-Semites – the fact is
that in this regard the Hungarian is still the most tolerant.”
25 January 1927,
Journal of the National Assembly
“In any country, the ratio of Jews may only be one quarter per cent, and
if there are more than that, the indigenous race gradually becomes dominated by
the Jews and, with the passage of time, the Jews alone will be masters in such
a country.”
These speeches convey
the same message as the Defendant’s article. We know where these inflammatory
calls had lead to.
Excerpts from speeches
by former Prime Minister Kálmán Darányi: [11]
(Salient political measures of his government: removal of the Gömbös
“nestlings” from his party, banning of Szálasi’s party, sentencing Szálasi and
Zoltán Böszörmény [12]
to imprisonment, expansion of the competence of the Regent and the Upper
House.)
Extracts from a speech given on 6 March 1938 at Győr:
“The prime objective of the government programme is to formulate a
concept for racial protection while maintaining constitutional order in Hungary
with the effective use of police methods against the extreme right-wing
movements and parties.
I believe it would be quite futile to conduct a theoretical debate
whether or not it is appropriate to speak of a Jewish question. The Jewish
question exists. And it is one of our unsolved problems. And if it is unsolved,
it can only be solved in a planned and lawful fashion. The Jews have occupied a
disproportionately large segment in the professions where the earning
opportunities are easier and more favourable. […]
It follows from this that, in the interest of the attainment of a just
situation, it is necessary to reduce the influence of Jews in Hungary “to a
proper degree”.
Note: Act XV of 1938 – the first anti-Jewish law was presented to
Parliament by Prime Minister Kálmán Darányi and Minister of Justice Ödön
Mikecz. 24 May 1938. The bill was passed. (Baron György Prónay [13],
Zoltán Meskó [14], Pál Bíró [15],
etc.)
Thereupon, the “Second
Jewish Law” came into force, which I enclose herewith under “B”.) Act XV of
1938 on the More Effective Maintenance of Balance in Social and Economic Life,
together with its ministerial reasoning. This was the “numerus clausus 20 %”
anti-Jewish law.
I wish to draw the
attention of the Honourable Court to the fact that the ministerial reasoning of
the attached Act, which is several times the length of the Act itself, has an
uncannily close resemblance in its “mentality” to the Defendant’s article in
its attempt to incite hatred against the Jews. It was this inflammatory tone
that eventually led to the murder of six hundred thousand Hungarian citizens
during the Holocaust and also, therefore, to the series of personal tragedies
of the Plaintiff who is submitting the present statement of claim. This is why the
Defendant’s article also violates my own personal rights.
Hatred of the Jews in
the months before the outbreak of the Second World War and during the war
(while Hungary maintained its neutrality until 1941, in September 1939, the
world war had already broken out in Europe).
Excerpts from a speech
by Prime Minister Béla Imrédy in preparation for the anti-Jewish law:
May 1939 “However, we need protection, like so many
other nations, against an element of the people which, by virtue of its strong
racial traits and thousands of years of isolation and life as a closed
community, has constantly remained in unconscious separation from the Hungarian
nation, the Jews.
I recognise deeds in good faith and acknowledge the strong will existing
in many to become Hungarian, however, the result, a few exceptions apart, is
not satisfactory.”
I enclose herewith
under “C” Act IV of 1939 on the Restriction of the Expanding Participation of
Jews in Public Life and Business together with its ministerial reasoning. This
was the numerus clausus 6 % anti-Jewish law.
Letter by the Regent
Miklós Horthy to Count Pál Teleki on 14 October 1940: “As far as I am
concerned, I have been anti-Semitic in all my life, have never made contact
with Jews and have found it intolerable that every factory, bank, business,
theatre and newspaper and all property, trade, etc. should be in Jewish hands
here in Hungary and that Hungary’s mirror image, in particular, abroad, is
Jewish. However, as I believe that one of the Government’s most important task
is to raise living standards, that is, we must accumulate wealth, it is
impossible to replace the Jews who have had control over everything with
largely worthless, loud-mouthed people with no experience or expertise in the
matter of a year or two because we then go bankrupt. In order to achieve this,
we need the lifetime of a generation. I was perhaps the first to give voice to
anti-Semitism, yet I cannot watch with equanimity inhumane cruelties, sadistic
and stupid humiliations while we still need them. Especially as I believe that
the Arrow Cross people are far more dangerous and more worthless for my country
than the Jews.”
This call for exclusion
and its manifestation in various activities aimed to bar the Jews led to the
rest of the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary, including Act XV of 1941 on the
Modification and Protection of the Right of Marriage, Sections 9 to 17 of which
I enclose herewith under “D”, together with its ministerial reasoning. (The
first eight sections in three chapters are about pre-marital medical
examinations and are irrelevant to the present legal dispute.) Chapter IV of
the above Act bears the following title: “Prohibition of marriage between
Gentiles and Jews”. This piece of legislation indicates the very end of common
sense in the hatred of Jews, yet it is the direct continuation of the speeches,
writings and deeds aimed at “exclusion”. This Act is aggravated by Act VIII of
1942 on the Regulation of the Legal Status of the Israelite Religious
Denomination, which is attached hereto under “E”.
Yet it was still
possible to surpass the aforementioned act by Decree No. 2250/1944. (VII. 15.)
ME on Numerus Nullus. Section 1, subsection (1) of the Decree reads as
follows: “a Jewish doctor may only treat Jewish persons”; while Section 3,
subsection (1) of the Prime Ministerial Decree declared: “No Jew may be
admitted to the Chamber of Physicians” (according to Act I of 1935 on the
Chamber of Physicians, only members of the Chamber of Physicians may engage in
medical activities). Section 5 of the Prime Ministerial Decree stipulated: a)
a Jewish physician who violates or evades the provisions set forth in Sections
1 and 2, b) a non-Jewish person who accepts treatment from a Jewish
physician may be punishable by imprisonment for up to six months.
The 1942 Yearbook of
the Hungarian Chamber of Physicians listed the names and addresses of all
medical doctors working in Hungary. They printed a six-pointed star next to the
names of Jewish physicians. In the aftermath of 19 March 1944, the date of the
forced occupation of Hungary by German forces, it was on the basis of these
records that the gendarmes and the SS found Jewish physicians and 4,000
physicians were deported. I suffered together with 400 physicians in the
deportation camp in the Kőszeg brewery. Only 17 of the 400 physicians made it
back to Hungary.
These events were
preceded by articles and speeches of hate such as the piece published by the
Defendant to the present proceedings.
Based on the above, it
is clear that I, as a private individual, and my personal rights have been directly
(!) affected by the Defendant’s article, in spite of the fact that the article
does not directly mention my person. This is not pure hypothesis. I have
already experienced the process of EXCLUSION in Hungary and abroad from simple
exclusion (I was not allowed to become a tennis umpire) to mass murder and the
worst series of terror killings in the history of humankind to this day. I do
not wish to relive my "Fatelessness" [16]
III. I
am appealing to the Honourable Court that, in weighing the balance of the
evidence [Section 206, subsection (1) of Chapter X of the Act on Civil
Proceedings], it evaluate the evidence “in its entirety” and to take the
following into consideration in determining its opinion: The judge decides after
free deliberation, according to his/her conviction. Conviction may only be
reached through evaluation on the basis of the rules of logic. Here is a
pattern for the basic principles of logic: “A est A”: the principle of
sameness; “A may not be non A”: the principle of contradiction; “A and non
A” embrace all, there is no third option and, finally, all this must be
logically compared on the basis of the principle of the sufficient. Syllogisms
are constructed from the four principles: the main thesis, the sub-theses and,
based on these, by way of deduction, the conclusion. This is the system of
human reasoning (conviction). The formulation of
inductive and deductive syllogisms pursuant to the rules of logic is the
following: As a starting point, from the particular, we arrive at the general
conclusion. For instance, dog “a” barks, dog “b” barks as well, so does dog “c”
and dog … “n”. I cannot claim about any of them, if they bark, that they do
not, that is, A est A, and it cannot be claimed that A (the dog barks),
on the basis of this, does not bark. Since I cannot claim that if it barks it
does not bark, there is no third case (principle of exclusion of third). This
constitutes sufficient grounds for positing the main thesis by way of complete
or incomplete inductive reasoning: every dog barks. This is followed by
deductive syllogism: -
main thesis: every dog barks -
sub-thesis: Bodri 17]
is a dog -
conclusion: Bodri barks. The Defendant, too,
uses the same logical system in his article attached hereto under “A”: he
established by way of some inductive syllogism (we do not know how he arrived
at the conclusion but this is irrelevant to the present legal dispute): “the
army of Galician vagrants” (a synonym for the Jews), that is, Jew “a”; Galician
vagrant (Jew) “b”; Jew (Galician vagrant) “c” … Galician vagrant (Jew) “n”…
form an army and their “only message of survival” is: they will exclude
Christian Hungarians if they do not exclude the vagrants from Galicia (the
Jews) first. The Defendant arrives thus far with the conclusion of inductive
syllogism. The only logical
conclusion based on the above as the main thesis of a deductive
syllogism may be the following: “All Jews (Galician vagrants), which group
forms an army, wish to exclude Christian Hungarians.” Sub-thesis: the
Plaintiff to the present legal dispute is a Jew, which cannot be disputed on
the basis of general consensus, Conclusion: the
Plaintiff, too, is to be excluded because if you do not do it to him him, he
will do it to you. Based on this simple
logical deduction, it is obvious that the Defendant’s article attached hereto
under “A” violates my personal rights the same way as all other incitement
worded as a general conclusion (preparations for and text of the anti-Jewish
laws, their ministerial reasoning, the parliamentary speeches between the two
world wars, etc.) which eventually led to the series of tragedies in my family
described herein above. As a human being, too, I am unable to have to bear this all over again. With a simple analysis extending to the present legal
dispute: Inductive syllogism
generalises on the basis of the particular, that is, it establishes the main
thesis on the basis of the individual sub-theses; deductive syllogism posits a
main thesis proven, in its opinion, according to the rules of logic, and
arrives at the conclusion therefrom on the basis of sub-theses. Human speech and its text committed to writing
constitute human actions, the same way as actions simultaneously convey human
information. One of the factors of human actions, which calls upon the listener
to act, prevents the listener from acting, recommends a method for action,
compels or prohibits an action, is speech and any of its written forms, images,
symbols, etc. In the system of human actions, speech and all its variants (e.g.
its written form) form an integral part of human deeds. Speech (writing, etc.)
and other forms of human action are different in that the action (event) itself
is determined in time: an action has a precisely determined time factor. Speech
(writing, etc.), too, occurs at a determined time, however, it may be a
recollection, a factor determining the present (specific instruction to act at
the time something happens) or a draft, idea, recommendation, prediction,
request, instruction or order with respect to the future. As time is
irreversible, the past and the present are already clearly determined (have
taken place), the future is open and variable: a number of alternatives may be
possible. This is why any call to act, any plan, any invitation to love, and
its opposite, any incitement to animosity has a major influence on the future
determination of the life of human beings (individual, group, nation, humanity,
etc.) already at the time the speech is made (the writing is published). Time
itself is irreversible, that is, what has already happened cannot be altered,
but reasoning and its manifestation (written form) is reversible: it is free to
“reach back” to the past, may “evaluate” the present in a number of ways and,
what is most important, may fundamentally influence the future with speech,
writing, etc., as the future has not yet occurred and may therefore take any
number of shapes. The past is unalterable, while the future may hold anything,
this is the “alpha” of human existence. This is why, for instance, hostile
instructions inciting to unlawful deeds are, de jure, of fundamental
importance with respect to the rules of legal proceedings. This is why a speech
or its transcribed text worded on the basis of deductive syllogism may violate
personal rights (Section 76 of the Civil Code), in particular, if it is
published in a newspaper published in several copies and may be distributed
among the general public. Therefore, based on the above, to simply qualify a
speech, writing, etc. which intends to direct the future conduct of the
population towards illegal acts, which incites and intends to “exclude”, as
mere “hatespeak” and to leave it without legal sanctions is not the correct
court practice of independent, democratic and constitutional states. That is,
to evaluate the situation precisely, the Defendant brands the Jews living in
Hungary, including the Plaintiff, as an “army of Galician vagrants”. Following
this, he defines the main thesis of deductive syllogism: EXCLUDE THEM! BECAUSE
IF YOU DO NOT, THEY WILL DO IT TO YOU! Therefore, the
deductive main thesis is that this is what the Jews do unless the non-Jews
exclude them. The logical rule of the main thesis is that it applies to each
particular element of the sub-thesis. However, I, as the Plaintiff, do not wish
to exclude anyone, yet, according to the Defendant’s claim, I should be
excluded. I do not know how; perhaps I can still not be a tennis umpire or may
not marry a non-Jewish woman, or should be living in a ghetto and wear a yellow
star of David? Or should I, by any chance, be gassed and cremated in a
crematorium? The Defendant has not yet provided an answer to this question. Honourable Central District Court of Pest, I do not request the
Defendant to answer the question; in fact, I do not at all require an answer.
Neither do I wish to become acquainted with the Defendant’s opinion in this
legal dispute. I hereby request the
Honourable Court to establish on the basis of objective civil law liability
(Section 76 of the Civil Code) that the Defendant has violated my personal
rights, to establish the above pursuant to Section 84, subsection (1),
paragraph a) of the Civil Code, an objective sanction, and to prohibit the
Defendant from any further breach of law on the basis of paragraph b), which is
also an objective sanction. Budapest, 20 January 2003 Dr György ÁDÁM Plaintiff Attorney-at-Law