At 06:29 PM 5/9/97 -0400, Johanne Tournier wrote:

>At 06:10 PM 5/9/97 -0400, Uncle Joe wrote:
>>At 03:11 PM 5/9/97 GMT, Kristof wrote:
><snip snip>
>>>Which, if true, would make one wonder about the Utah birthrates.
>>
>>In a world plagued by overpopulation, diminishing resources, and pollution,
>>I wouldn'd brag about a growing birthrate.
>>
>>Joe Szalai
>
>Sounded like a wry comment to me, not a boast, Joe.


OK Johanne, it sounded like a awry comment to me too.  Made it sound like
Utahans actually enjoyed sex.  But I just can't see it.  I can't see
Mormons having a good time at, say, a sex party.  And that's probably why
they won't be successful in Hungary.

Now, I'm not saying that all Hungarians like sex parties, but they're a lot
more liberal in their sexual mores than Mormons.  I mean, who isn't?  And
Hungarian sexual relationships, especially of the heterosexual persuasion,
are fluid enough to make the least ardent Mormon blush.  But not for long.
Cloning will soon replace the need to have sex, or to proselytize.  The
missionary position will be made redundant.  That will be double plus good,
for some people.

Joe Szalai

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines
increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that
they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of
civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to
view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now
argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment,
for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational
operation of the intellect.
             -- Sigmund Freud

I was about 4 years old at the time so my memories are hazy. I remember clearly
 that my father came home from work on 19. March 1944 and declared that we must
 pack and leave Budapest at once because the Germans have occupied the country 
and Budapest will shortly be subject to air raids on a considerable scale. We l
eft that day and went to my parents' weekender in Dunaharaszti at the northern 
end of Csepel island. The southern end was heavily industrialised while the are
a around Dunaharaszti was mainly rural. It would have been early April 1944 whe
n we received a heavy raid. The American planes came up the Danube and were ver
y effectively interdicted by the anti-aircraft batteries set up on the hills of
 Buda. This resulted in one bomb falling just outside our front gate, a second 
one taking off the corner of the block of flats opposite and another one scorin
g a direct hit on the local flour mill which was burnt to the ground. We found 
shrapnel, several cm long in the fir trees growing in front of our house.
It must be remembered that Budapest was outside the range of British an America
n bombers until after the airfields in southern Italy were secured.
I disagree that the csedörség was in any way more politically subservient than 
any other police force, but in any case they were the ones on the ground when a
ir raids occurred. 
I was not stating or implying that indiscriminate machine-gunning was general o
r even frequent but only that it did occur.

Regards
Dénes 



----------
From:  jeliko[SMTP:]
Sent:  Wednesday, 7 May 1997 1:57
To:  Multiple recipients of list HUNGARY
Subject:  Re: Airraids was NYTimes on NATO

Janos Zsargo pointing out a sloppy mistake and asking for comments.

> I would have some comment/question to Jeliko:
>
>He wrote:
>
>>2) The first bombing of Budapest was on Sept 4, 1944 by the Russians.

I was too much into the 1944 theme. The first raid on Budapest was on Sept
4, 1942 by the Russians. It was a small scale effort.
>
>and also:
>
>>8) The first major raid on Budapest occurred on Apr 3, 1944.
>
>There may be some confusion with the dates, here.
>
The latter was the first big US raid on Budapest.


>>3) Bardossy submitted his war "declaration" on Dec 12, 1941, but the US
>>response, the Senate ratification of war with Hungary was made only on June
>>5, 1942
>....
In the various discussions, there was a thread about who declared war on
whom and when.

>>5) The Hungarians violated a "sub-rosa'" agreement with the allies in Nov
>>1943 by crossing the then Hungarian border at Barcs to attack Yugoslav
>>partisan forces.
>

The decision to consider the bombing of Hungary was also influenced by the
violation of the agreement with the allies that Hungary would not
participate in war activities in the German occupied part of Yugoslavia



Regards,Jeliko

Denes BOGSANYI wrote:
>
>
> It must be remembered that Budapest was outside the range of British an
 American bombers until after the airfields in southern Italy were secured.
> I disagree that the csedvrsig was in any way more politically subservient tha
n
 any other police force, but in any case they were the ones on the ground when
 air raids occurred.
> I was not stating or implying that indiscriminate machine-gunning was general
 or even frequent but only that it did occur.
>
If I recall it correctly, you wrote at the beginning of the thread that
they machine-gunned civilians just for fun.
MKH

Awkwardly, NETSCAPE refuses to repeat your first paragraph about
Csepel, Dunaharaszti, the flak etc.

Additions to that : Dunaharaszti is not on the island, it4s East of the
Kisduna. The North of Csepel was heavily industrialized. In the South
there was a relatively small aircraft factory ( rep|lvgyar ) compared to
the industry area in the North. I the North there was also an base of
the Hungarian Air Force.
MKH


Denes BOGSANYI wrote:
>
>
> It must be remembered that Budapest was outside the range of British an
 American bombers until after the airfields in southern Italy were secured.
> I disagree that the csedvrsig was in any way more politically subservient tha
n
 any other police force, but in any case they were the ones on the ground when
 air raids occurred.
> I was not stating or implying that indiscriminate machine-gunning was general
 or even frequent but only that it did occur.
>
> Regards
> Dines
>
> ----------
> From:  jeliko[SMTP:]
> Sent:  Wednesday, 7 May 1997 1:57
> To:  Multiple recipients of list HUNGARY
> Subject:  Re: Airraids was NYTimes on NATO
>
> Janos Zsargo pointing out a sloppy mistake and asking for comments.
>
> > I would have some comment/question to Jeliko:
> >
> >He wrote:
> >
> >>2) The first bombing of Budapest was on Sept 4, 1944 by the Russians.
>
> I was too much into the 1944 theme. The first raid on Budapest was on Sept
> 4, 1942 by the Russians. It was a small scale effort.
> >
> >and also:
> >
> >>8) The first major raid on Budapest occurred on Apr 3, 1944.
> >
> >There may be some confusion with the dates, here.
> >
> The latter was the first big US raid on Budapest.
>
> >>3) Bardossy submitted his war "declaration" on Dec 12, 1941, but the US
> >>response, the Senate ratification of war with Hungary was made only on June
> >>5, 1942
> >....
> In the various discussions, there was a thread about who declared war on
> whom and when.
>
> >>5) The Hungarians violated a "sub-rosa'" agreement with the allies in Nov
> >>1943 by crossing the then Hungarian border at Barcs to attack Yugoslav
> >>partisan forces.
> >
>
> The decision to consider the bombing of Hungary was also influenced by the
> violation of the agreement with the allies that Hungary would not
> participate in war activities in the German occupied part of Yugoslavia
>
> Regards,Jeliko

This is a somewhat belated answer to Agnes Heringer's description
about her daughters' confusion concerning who they are. Perhaps, you are
right: our parents may have had a fairly decent way to deal with the problem.
        First, about religious education. My own family as well as other
families I knew where the parents were not churchgoers dealt with that
question in the following, perhaps hypocritical, manner. When the child
became of school age suddenly they began attending church. My poor father
ended up being a "presbiter" because of me. (It turned out that our
chief-chief minister [we had three in our church] when he was a young man
taught my father religion when he attended "realgimnazium," and he got
terribly excited about finding my father in church again!). I received
compulsory religious instruction (today it wouldn't be compulsory, of
course) for eight years. I learned practically nothing. In the first four
years we had a sadistic hunchback for instructor who used to beat the boys
with a stick, folding their jackets up so it would hurt more. They had to
bend over the first desk at which I sat! Otherwise, I remember a few hymns
from this period and mostly negative remarks about Catholics, wich I
immediately put to good use every time I got into an argument with my cousin
who was Catholic. I preached at her about worshipping idols and made fun of
the funny names of her teachers who were nuns. Mater Gerarda became Mater
Gerenda and my cousin, three years younger than I am, kept screaming: Not
Gerenda, Gerarda! (Gerenda means "beam" in Hungarian.) When I attended a
Catholic school (for two miserable years) we had to prove that we attended
church. We had to go into the office after service and receive a piece of
paper to that effect. In any case, at age of thirteen I was confirmed. Also
a miserable experience: we had to memorize pages and pages from the Bible
and I have very poor ability to learn things by heart. To make a long story
short, in the middle of the elevating story of John the Baptist in front of
the whole congregation I stopped dead after one of the sentences somewhere
in the middle and from there on I was unable to mutter out a word to the
total dismay of my parents and relatives. And then came the even more awful
experience: it turned out that one had to drink the wine from a communal
cup, and I made it crystal clear to my parents that I had no intention of
ever drinking with 100 people from the same cup, although the minister was
busily turning the cup around and wiped it occasionally with a piece of
white cloth! And from there on I never set foot in the church and neither
did my parents. But at least I had the opportunity to chose.
        As for so-called mixed marriages. Hungary specialized in them: mixed
Catholic-Protestant and Catholic-Protestant-Jewish. My mother's family would
be a good example: for three generations every marriage was mixed. My
great-grandmother was Hungarian Reformed married to a Lutheran. She agreed
to have all children baptized as Lutheran--instead of boys following
father's, girls following mother's religion--and thus my grandmother became
a not very good Lutheran. I think she went to church once a year, at
Christmas. Then this Lutheran grandmother married a Catholic and again
agreed that all children be Catholic. There were three daughters. They all
turned out to be not very good Catholics. My Catholic mother married a
Hungarian Reformed and agreed that all children would be Hungarian Reformed.
And I was confused all right. The first time I went to the hunchback's
religious instruction, he asked us to get up and pray. I got up and put my
hands together in the Catholic manner because this is how I saw it on
pictures, and since I never prayed in my life, I had no idea that Catholics
and Hungarian Reformed pray differently. The hunchback said: "My child! Are
you sure that you are in the right class!" Oh, yes, I said, I was sure.
        However, eventually I developed a very strong affiliation with the
idea of being Hungarian Reformed. Not with the church itself but with the
historical role of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Hungary. My father's
family had been Hungarian Reformed I guess since the teachings of Calvin got
to Hungary. He told me one story about this heroic ancestor of mine whose
name was Lukacs Gyuro and who lived during the reign of Maria Theresa. Maria
Theresa might have been an excellent queen but she was a bigotted Catholic
and she tried to wipe out Protestantism in Hungary. Among other things the
Hungarian Reformed church in my ancestor's village was converted into a
Catholic church, although there was not one Catholic in the whole village.
My ancestor, also a "presbiter," got mighty upset over those "idols" being
dragged into his church, and he and some of his fellow church leaders in the
dead of night smashed those idols into smitherings!! And the gendarmes were
after them and they were running away toward the Drava river, where they
managed to get into a boat in the hope of getting to the other side of the
river. The gendarmes were very close and my ancestor was the last man to
jump into the boat but he missed, and as a result he survived. All the
others were killed while Lukacs was hiding in the water. He lived in Croatia
for a few years as a refugee, but then he became very homesick and he
returned to his village, again in the dead of night. The family hid him for
ten years in the attic when Maria Theresa died and her son Joseph II issued
the Toleration Act. At this point, he triumphantly decended from the attic.
Or, at least, this is how the family story went. Of course, I was extremely
proud of my ancestor who stood against tyranny and all that. Eva Balogh