| |
The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name. |
|
| |
Abstract: Abuses of Authorities Against Reformed Pastors and Church Leaders in Southern Transylvania between 1940 and 1945.
The study presents the situation of Reformed pastors in Romania between 1940 and 1945. Being the so-called leaders of the Hungarian minority in Romania, these pastors were exposed to the malicious intrigues of the Romanian authorities. Police, local authorities and even local Romanians always tried to find charges against Hungarians to make their lives difficult.
The study has two parts. The first one presents the small abuses committed against pastors. We present here the way that pastors have been under constant surveillance, the unjustified searchings (in railway stations, trains, busses etc.), malicious house searches (and related provocations, like intentional hiding of guns or propaganda material to be able to press charges against pastors), and other small abuses (like bugging pastors’ phones or confiscating their typewriters or radios).
The second part presents the charges that were pressed against pastors in the Romanian military courts. These justice organizations had enlarged competencies, and have also charged persons, who committed crimes that would normally fit in the competence of a regular court. But the bigger problem was that the charges pressed against pastors were almost always unjustified and unproven. The number of trials against Hungarians in these courts is impressive, as it is the number of trials held against pastors. And the charges were sometimes even hilarious, like offence against Romanian nation due to a child’s name, or a sermon. The most frequent charges were: offence against the Romanian nation, illegal assembling, forging of official documents, illegal border crossing etc. The defendants were always declared not guilty, but the process of the trial, the costs and the stress that was implicated had made their lives difficult.
Keywords: church history, Romania during WW2, Reformed Church of Transylvania, military tribunal, house searching, abuses of authorities.
|
|
