Acknowledgments
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THIS BOOK IS THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LÁSZLÓ TŐKÉS. IT IS TOLD BY HIM FROM HIS OWN VIEWPOINT. OTHERS WILL NO DOUBT WRITE BOOKS ABOUT THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION AND LÁSZLÓ TŐKÉS’S ROLE IN IT, BUT THIS IS HIS OWN STORY, CAREFULLY TOLD OVER MANY HOURS SPREAD OVER MANY WEEKS. HOWEVER, IN WORKING WITH LÁSZLÓ TŐKÉS ON HIS BOOK, I HAVE RECEIVED HELP, ENCOURAGEMENT AND FRIENDSHIP FROM MANY PEOPLE. MY DEBT IS GREATEST TO LÁSZLÓ TŐKÉS HIMSELF. THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST HALF OF 1990 WHEN THE DEMANDS UPON HIM WERE MANY AND HEAVY (…). DAVID PORTER INTRODUCTION If you want to understand best the story that is told in this book, take a map of the country in which you live; tear off two-thirds of it and give those two-thirds to a neighbouring country. The land you have lost will, of course, contain country that you love, major natural resources and industrial complexes that are essential to your economy and cities and villages in which millions of your countrymen and countrywomen live. Imagine also that your neighbour embarks on a programme of forced assimilation, mass population resettlement, prohibition of the language of your country and finally the systematic destruction of most of the villages and a large part of the cultural and architectural heritage of the cities. The events in this book took place in Transylvania, now part of Romania, and historically part of Hungary. No other country in the world in modern times has lost two-thirds of its territory to its neighbours. A NOTE ON LANGUAGE It was a policy of the Ceausescu regime to demand that Hungarian place names be abandoned and that their Romanian equivalents be used. The Hungarian community in Romania, when talking of towns that were built by Hungarians and were Hungarian within the living memory of some, often use the Hungarian names, not merely out of sentiment but to make a point about their diminishing cultural heritage and the forced Romanianisation of many of their communities. Ideally, as a Hungarian Romanian, I would like to use Hungarian place names, as my parents taught me. In everyday conversation I use both, but in telling my story I would prefer to use Hungarian. The right to use Hungarian names was denied us by Ceausescu and was won back at the cost of many lives. However, the practical problem is that no maps are available using Hungarian place names and readers wishing to follow the story on a map would have great difficulty in identifying the places mentioned. As a compromise I have used the Hungarian and the Romanian in the same time. TEMESVÁR - DECEMBER l5TH The Securitate thugs had smashed every window in my apartment weeks ago. In my study, the broken panes were boarded and shuttered against the early morning light. If I were to fling them open and look out I would see the windows of the building across the street; anonymous apertures in the formal city block, with drab net curtains hiding the interior of the rooms. Those windows had the same excellent view of mine across the quiet leafy side street. From behind the dirty curtains, Ceausescu’s hated secret police had been watching me and my family for several months. At my front door, I knew, the regular Securitate guard was. stationed, recording every activity and every visitor. I looked around my study. A comfortable room; not grand, but crowded with familiar things, the characteristic possessions of a Hungarian Transylvanian family. Some original paintings hung on the walls and there were rows of ornamental plates from various villages. The bookshelves were full: volumes of the poetry I had loved since my child-hood; several of my father’s theological writings, annotated by myself in neat, careful handwriting; other theological tomes that I had struggled to master as a theological student. In the corner, the enormous Hungarian wood stove burned fitfully. Though it was midwinter, we had very little firewood. The Securitate had seen to that. The chill from the biting winter morning outside struck through the boarded windows. My desk was unusually tidy. Everything was arranged in precise order. I kept few confidential papers in my study now, especially since the Securitate’s break-in a few weeks ago. But usually the desk of a working pastor is full of half-finished business, sermons in preparation, church papers and the like. There was none of that to be seen on mine. I had sorted out my affairs and made my arrangements. It was December l5th, 1989: the day I was to be forcibly removed from my home and dismissed as pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church, ‘Temesvár'. It was nine o’clock in the morning. My wife Edit and I were alone in the apartment. Our small son Máté was in Kolozsvár, staying with his grandparents. Edit was pregnant with our second child. I read again the brief note I had received in August from László Papp, Bishop of Nagyvárad. He and I had been locked in confrontation for years. My offence: complaining about a shortage of hymn-books; organising youth activities in the church; protesting against the destruction of the Romanian villages; appearing on a foreign television programme and speaking against the brutal oppression of Ceausescu’s regime. The terse half-sheet of paper bearing the rubber stamp of the bishop’s office in Nagyvárad stated that I would have to vacate my apartment by December l5th. As from August 20th I was no longer pastor in Temesvár; another minister would be sent to replace me. I was to be transferred to the parish of Mineu/Menyő, an isolated mountain village. Pinned to the letter was a later one dated the beginning of December. It was a notice of eviction. My appeal against the bishop’s earlier ruling had failed. I would have to leave, or be removed by force, in eight days’ time. The previous Sunday I had stood in the pulpit and addressed a congregation that filled the pews and the balcony. Many of the people had regularly smuggled firewood and food into the church for us, defying the orders of the Securitate who stood guard outside the building noting all who entered. It was the same every Sunday. In the church that morning were people who had risked their lives for my wife and myself. And I knew that sitting among the congregation, bored by the service but listening to every word I said, were plain- clothes Securitate officers. I’d made my announcement with a heavy heart. ‘Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I have been issued with a summons of eviction. I will not accept it, so I will be taken from you by force next Friday.’ The sober faces betrayed no surprise. It was the inevitable outcome of long months of self-imposed imprisonment in my own home, months in which mounting pressure from the church authorities, police and Securitate had pointed to this inevitable outcome. ‘It is an illegal act,’ he explained; and so it was, for the pastor’s apartment, like church premises in most countries, was considered the possession of the local church and its members. ‘They want to do this in secret because they have no right to do it.’ The congregation listened in silence. Some of the people sitting there would report my words to their Securitate superiors as soon as the service was over. ‘Please, come next Friday and be witnesses of what will happen. Come, be peaceful, but be witnesses.’ As the people filed out I had wondered how many of them would turn up next Friday. Very few, I guessed. Nor did I expect, or want, them to resist my eviction. Morally, I had no right to demand that. There had been so much persecution against them and they were in so much fear that I doubted they had courage left to stand against this last phase. And I was responsible for these men and women. They were my flock and I was their pastor. I just wanted them to be there, to observe what was going to happen, so that nobody would ever be able to persuade them that things had been done differently. I went to the window and pulled one of the boards aside to ventilate the room. The cold air rushed at my face and I blinked in the bright sun-light. Despite the cutting chill, it was a beautiful, almost spring-like morning. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the light. Several dozen members of my congregation were standing in small groups on the pavement outside. As I leaned further out to look past the corner of the building I could see others standing in the main road. There were thirty or forty people, at least. Lajos Varga, church member and friend of László Tőkés: One of the chief characteristics of László Tőkés is that he keeps nothing from us. All o f us in the church knew that the Securitate had been threatening him and his family - the surveillance, the intimidation, the violence. So when he told us that he was going to be arrested on Friday and asked us to come - not to bring sticks and stones, just to be observers - we came. Of course we were very frightened. We stood in small groups of three or four, some in the side street, some in the main street, and we waited. Nobody knew quite what to expect. ‘Has anything happened yet? What’s going on? Have the Securitate done anything yet?’ Then László appeared at the window and made a sign with his arm for us to come forward.