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To all who still feel like humans.
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When tsarist Russia still existed, cultured people all over the world felt humiliation and shame that high-minded idealists there were tormented in prisons and abandoned to ruin in the dull snowy wastelands of Siberia and one of the strongest slogans that drove our masses to the Eastern war theater was: “Against Tsarist Russia!”.
But [today?], after all the futile sufferings of the war, a reign of terror has come into being even closer to us which in every respect is equal to the Russian events and whose victims are too oppressed to defend themselves. We raise our voices for them, and we call upon all the feeling people of the world, whatever their views may be, to stop the [atrocities] in Hungary. At the time of communist rule there was much injustice, much cruelty. But what is happening today is a hundredfold greater cruelty, the victims of which are numbered in the thousands, it is boundless prevailing despotism of subsidiary organs with the consent of the highest authorities of the country, it is no longer justice and atonement, but only wild, bloodthirsty revenge. It seizes not only the enemies of the past, the communists, but also the social democrats, the libertarians of all shades and above all the Jews, regardless of whether or not they have participated in the communist regime, and regardless of whether or not they are of high standing, useful citizens or pests of society.
The current government wants to protect itself from its opponents. In the opinion of the entire civilized world, however, there are limits of self-defense which may never be exceeded. Innocent people must never be punished as in the case with the lack of any legal proceedings in which murder without investigation of the guilt now happens daily: never may even a lawfully convicted person be agonized and tortured and [page 2] be exposed to the brutal and perverse cruelty of dehumanized soldiers; a defendant must never be robbed and marauded as is the case in Hungary today; and above all, all this must not be done in the name of Christianity whose mild founder would turn away from the horrible events with tears and pain.
The Hungarian government has established the dreaded brute force which is an organ of the military dictatorship and is subject only to it. It has equipped prisons and torture chambers in Budapest and these prisons are inaccessible to all civil authorities. One such is in the Gerhardus Hotel where Nikolaus Czerwenka, the secretary of the Social Democratic Party, was murdered. To this day the newspapers are allowed to write about him as a missing person.
The fight against social democracy is led only by force. A party building was destroyed, a valuable socialist library burned, all those who participated in the labor movement were incarcerated, many killed. Orders have been intercepted which ordered in what way the socialist press should be gagged. The worst disgraceful deed in this direction was the assassination of the editor Somogyi who knew that his life was being sought but remained on his position because he was one of the few remaining intellectual leaders of the people. One eye of a corpse was gouged out, the nasal bridge broken, the limbs broken several times.
The most terrible crimes have been committed in Komarom. Passengers are taken off the trains at the station and without any reason are beaten bloody and abused in every way. Numerous cases vouched by name are known. Near the town there is a cemetery where many Jews murdered there are buried. The Vienna newspapers only warn against driving on the route, but nobody can influence and protect the travelers, because the Hungarian government itself stands behind the murderers and watches their activities. No one has yet been held responsible or punished and if, on the occasion of the murder of Szomogyi, Huszar found words of regret in the National Assembly, this is not to be taken seriously, and is only because the accumulation of murders is inconvenient for the Hungarian government at the present moment of peace negotiations. No moral concerns, no human consideration will prevent them from continuing the system of murder once their current political goal is achieved.
The organization of terror also extends beyond the borders of Hungary. Entire military formations are placed in Vienna, for the sole purpose of observing the activities of the Hungarian refugees, sneaking into their confidence, and reporting to Morthy and Friedrich.
The informers recently led the communist Bela Schön across the border in an automobile belonging to the Hungarian Embassy and murdered him there without this sensational, outrageous crime being prosecuted and punished by the Hungarian government.
Such things cannot continue to happen, here the world cannot watch indifferently. It is much more important than current political interests that the most primitive human compassion is not trampled underfoot. Whoever is attached to dear relatives all over the world, whoever wants to protect them wherever brutal state power intervenes, whoever wants peace and harmony to reign again and people to be able to devote themselves to quiet work without fear of henchmen and hangmen, whoever realizes that [page 4] there is no place on earth where crude murderous lust can reign without endangering the rest of the world, use all their influence and strength to put an end to the Hungarian Reign of Terror. -
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When tsarist Russia still existed, cultured people all over the world felt humiliation and shame that high-minded idealists there were tormented in prisons and abandoned to ruin in the dull snowy wastelands of Siberia and one of the strongest slogans that drove our masses to the Eastern war theater was: “Against Tsarist Russia!”.
But [today?], after all the futile sufferings of the war, a reign of terror has come into being even closer to us which in every respect is equal to the Russian events and whose victims are too oppressed to defend themselves. We raise our voices for them, and we call upon all the feeling people of the world, whatever their views may be, to stop the [atrocities] in Hungary. At the time of communist rule there was much injustice, much cruelty. But what is happening today is a hundredfold greater cruelty, the victims of which are numbered in the thousands, it is boundless prevailing despotism of subsidiary organs with the consent of the highest authorities of the country, it is no longer justice and atonement, but only wild, bloodthirsty revenge. It seizes not only the enemies of the past, the communists, but also the social democrats, the libertarians of all shades and above all the Jews, regardless of whether or not they have participated in the communist regime, and regardless of whether or not they are of high standing, useful citizens or pests of society.
The current government wants to protect itself from its opponents. In the opinion of the entire civilized world, however, there are limits of self-defense which may never be exceeded. Innocent people must never be punished as in the case with the lack of any legal proceedings in which murder without investigation of the guilt now happens daily: never may even a lawfully convicted person be agonized and tortured and [page 2] be exposed to the brutal and perverse cruelty of dehumanized soldiers; a defendant must never be robbed and marauded as is the case in Hungary today; and above all, all this must not be done in the name of Christianity whose mild founder would turn away from the horrible events with tears and pain.
The Hungarian government has established the dreaded brute force which is an organ of the military dictatorship and is subject only to it. It has equipped prisons and torture chambers in Budapest and these prisons are inaccessible to all civil authorities. One such is in the Gerhardus Hotel where Nikolaus Czerwenka, the secretary of the Social Democratic Party, was murdered. To this day the newspapers are allowed to write about him as a missing person.
The fight against social democracy is led only by force. A party building was destroyed, a valuable socialist library burned, all those who participated in the labor movement were incarcerated, many killed. Orders have been intercepted which ordered in what way the socialist press should be gagged. The worst disgraceful deed in this direction was the assassination of the editor Somogyi who knew that his life was being sought but remained on his position because he was one of the few remaining intellectual leaders of the people. One eye of a corpse was gouged out, the nasal bridge broken, the limbs broken several times.
The most terrible crimes have been committed in Komarom. Passengers are taken off the trains at the station and without any reason are beaten bloody and abused in every way. Numerous cases vouched by name are known. Near the town there is a cemetery where many Jews murdered there are buried. The Vienna newspapers only warn against driving on the route, but nobody can influence and protect the travelers, because the Hungarian government itself stands behind the murderers and watches their activities. No one has yet been held responsible or punished and if, on the occasion of the murder of Szomogyi, Huszar found words of regret in the National Assembly, this is not to be taken seriously, and is only because the accumulation of murders is inconvenient for the Hungarian government at the present moment of peace negotiations. No moral concerns, no human consideration will prevent them from continuing the system of murder once their current political goal is achieved.
The organization of terror also extends beyond the borders of Hungary. Entire military formations are placed in Vienna, for the sole purpose of observing the activities of the Hungarian refugees, sneaking into their confidence, and reporting to Morthy and Friedrich.
The informers recently led the communist Bela Schön across the border in an automobile belonging to the Hungarian Embassy and murdered him there without this sensational, outrageous crime being prosecuted and punished by the Hungarian government.
Such things cannot continue to happen, here the world cannot watch indifferently. It is much more important than current political interests that the most primitive human compassion is not trampled underfoot. Whoever is attached to dear relatives all over the world, whoever wants to protect them wherever brutal state power intervenes, whoever wants peace and harmony to reign again and people to be able to devote themselves to quiet work without fear of henchmen and hangmen, whoever realizes that [page 4] there is no place on earth where crude murderous lust can reign without endangering the rest of the world, use all their influence and strength to put an end to the Hungarian Reign of Terror. -
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