*** Reuter/UPI/AP News *** February/26/97 ***
Hungarian American List
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February 26, 1997
Hungary, Rumania agree to open new consulates (Why in this era of "warming
relations" has a Catholic cloister in Udvarhely been expropriated, why does the
anti-Hungarian rhetoric continue, why have they not been accorded human rights
common in all western democracies?
By Duncan Shiels
BUDAPEST, Feb 25 (Reuter) - Hungary and Romania continued their recent
warming of relations by formally agreeing on Tuesday to open new provincial
consulates in each other's country.
Romania will open a consulate in the south eastern Hungarian town of Szeged
while Hungary's representation will be in Kolozsvar (Cluj), the largest city in
Transylvania, where most of Romania's 1.4 million strong ethnic Hungarian
community lives. "The two governments have exchanged letters enabling the
opening of the new consulates," Hungary's deputy state secretary for foreign
affairs Gabor Bagi told reporters after talks with his Romanian counterpart
Petru Cordos. "Concrete plans for Hungary's consulate in Kolozsvar (Cluj) will
be worked out within one or two months," he added.
Bilateral ties have improved steadily since former communist president Ion
Iliescu was voted out of power last November. New President Emil Constantinescu
has brought two members of a political party representing ethnic Hungarians into
his government coalition. Better ties between Bucharest and Budapest have
raised Romanian hopes of joining the first group of countries invited to become
members of NATO, a decision the alliance is expected to announce in July.
Romania's Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu closed Hungary's consulate
in Kolozsvar (Cluj) in 1977, provoking Budapest to do the same to the Romanian
mission in the eastern Hungarian town of Debrecen soon afterwards. Cordos said
Romania had decided to open its new consulate in Szeged because it had better
transport links than Debrecen between Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.
He added Bucharest's main obstacle to setting up the new representation had
been financial. "The new economic reforms of the government of Prime Minister
(Victor) Ciorbea demand a 10 percent cut in the budget for foreign missions," he
said, adding that he was unable to give a date for the opening of the Szeged
consulate. Bagi added that further missions were planned for the western
Hungarian city of Gyor and the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta.
He added that agreements had been prepared for a joint committee of the two
foreign ministries and for nine technical committees to oversee the
implementation of the basic treaty signed between the two countries last year.
The agreements will be signed when Ciorbea visits Hungary next month, he said.
The bilateral basic treaty guarantees the inviolability of the border
between the two countries and protects ethnic minority rights -- for years a
sticking point between the two countries, mainly in relation to the status of
Romania's 1.4 million-strong ethnic Hungarian community. The documents of the
treaty -- seen as vital to the two countries efforts to join NATO and the
European Union -- were exchanged when newly appointed Romanian Foreign Minister
Adrian Severin visited Budapest in December. Last week, Hungary and Romania set
up a joint military unit and signed an accord on the protection and exchange of
military secrets and a second agreement on cooperation in tackling organised
crime, drug trafficking and terrorism.
Rumania to use King as envoy to boost NATO chances (We will know Rumania is
really serious about its treaty commitments and wanting to join the West, when
it convinces someone like Bishop Tokes to help. Until then the persecution and
expropriations of Hungarians of all religions and Roma will continue, hoping
none in the West notices. JAB)
BUCHAREST, Romania (Reuter) - Romania, eager to boost its chances of quick
admission to NATO, plans to entrust exiled King Michael with a mission to woo
support for his country from Europe's constitutional monarchies. Bucharest's
new centrist leaders -- who had Michael's citizenship restored after nearly 50
years last week -- say that the former monarch's visit starting Friday is
another sign that Romania is "finally returning to normality."
In a break with previous post-communist policy toward the king, reformist
President Emil Constantinescu plans to give a dinner in Michael's honor at his
Cotroceni palace, a former royal residence. "I invited him (Michael) to
Cotroceni next Tuesday. I'm looking forward to talking to a man who played a
prominent role in Romanian and Europe's history," Constantinescu said in a talk
show on state television late Tuesday. Michael, a member of the German
Hohenzollern dynasty, was forced to abdicate and go into exile in 1947, by
Communists who seized power in Romania with Moscow's help after World War II. He
was stripped of his citizenship one year later.
Many Romanians revere Michael, now 75, for his courage as a young monarch
during World War II, when he arrested wartime fascist leader Marshal Ion
Antonescu and switched Romania to the Allied side. Bucharest sees a new role
for Michael in lobbying for support for Romania to be admitted to NATO, along
with more developed fellow east Europeans Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic, when the Alliance issues formal invitations to states to allow its
first eastward expansion at a Madrid summit in July.
"Let's not forget that six NATO members are constitutional monarchies,"
Constantinescu said. Wednesday Foreign Minister Adrian Severin told a
parliament commission that for the time being, his country's chances of
first-wave admission to NATO "stood at 50 percent." But ex-President Ion
Iliescu and his leftist supporters, who were removed from office for the first
time in seven years during elections last November, had blocked his subsequent
homecoming attempts. The ex-communists treated him as a foreign commoner and
tied a visa for Michael on his recognition of the constitution of 1991 which
defines Romania as a semi-presidential republic.
Michael, who lives in exile in Switzerland, has thanked Romania's new
leaders for vindicating the wrong done to him and has repeated his pledge to
defend his country's interests worldwide.
Britain - Wallenberg memorial ( What goes unmentioned is that Britain could have
done more. It refused to let Hungary join the Allies and shorten the war, and
perhaps make Wallenberg unnecessary. Until the Nazis occupied Hungary in March
of 1944, Hungary was a safe haven for Jews from all over Europe. And so Britain,
too, atones and falls far, far short. JAB)
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Press
LONDON (AP) -- A Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during
World War II joined the ranks of Britain's heroes Wednesday, and was honored by
the queen, diplomats and Jews who survived because of his courage.
In a rare tribute to an eminent foreigner, Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a
10-foot-high statue of Raoul Wallenberg, whose personal campaign against Nazi
genocide epitomized man's ability to battle evil. Israel's President Ezer
Weizman stood beside the queen at the ceremony outside a synagogue near London's
famed Marble Arch. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose wife is
Wallenberg's niece, also was among the guests.
Annan said that contemplating the statue had forced him to ask the painful
question of why Wallenberg took such extraordinary risks -- "and why did so many
turn the other way?" He said he hoped the monument would inspire future
generations to act. Wallenberg, a member of a family of industrialists and
diplomats referred to as "Sweden's Rockefellers," distributed special Swedish
passports to Hungarian Jews in deportation trains and on death marches. He also
won diplomatic protection for entire sections of Budapest and is credited with
saving at least 20,000 Jews.
In January 1945, the Soviet army occupied Budapest and arrested Wallenberg as
an American spy. He vanished into the Soviet prison system where Soviet
officials say he died in 1947. Fellow inmates claim to have seen him as late as
1989. The bronze statue, by British sculptor Philip Jackson, stands against a
wall with thousands of "schutz-passes," the false papers issued by Wallenberg,
shown in bas-relief. Queen Elizabeth, who did not speak publicly, met five
Hungarian Jews who owe their lives to Wallenberg.
"I told her I was born in Raoul Wallenberg's bed," said Yvonne Singer, who
was born in Budapest in November 1944, the month when the final round-up of
Hungarian Jewish women began. Singer, who now lives in Canada, said her father
worked in the Swedish Embassy in Budapest and asked Wallenberg for help because
no hospital would take her mother.
"Wallenberg let my mother use his private apartment in Budapest for my birth.
Without him, I would not be alive," she said. "He richly deserves the honor of a
statue in Britain." Suzanne Rubin said she was 10 years old when she escaped to
a "safe house" in Budapest run by Wallenberg. "I think he is one of the
greatest humanitarians," she said. Marianne Bardos Burg, 59, a Hungarian Jew
who was not among those invited to the ceremony, said her family received false
papers from Wallenberg. Standing outside a police cordon Wednesday hoping for a
glimpse of the statue, she recalled the day in January 1945 when Wallenberg
disappeared, just after Soviet troops entered Budapest.
"Wallenberg went out even while the shooting was on to ask the Russians to
send in food because we were all starving," she said. "No one ever saw him
again."
Rumanians honor memory of Gypsy King (Ron remains faithful to the old regime. He
simply can't remember: the atrocities of Antonescu, Ceausescu--only Hitler, and
that they are called Roma. JAB) By Ron Popeski
NAGYSZEBEN (SIBIU), Romania, Feb 26 (Reuter) - Thousands of Romanians poured
into the centre of Nagyszeben (Sibiu) in the heart of Transylvania on Wednesday
in what amounted to a street festival to pay their last respects to the
self-styled "King of the Gypsies." The body of Ion Cioaba, who died this week
aged 62, was carried through the centre of the city aboard an army truck, his
open coffin draped in colourful blankets and dominated by a portrait in flowing
robes, a sceptre in his hand. Only a fraction of the crowds filing past
pastel-coloured buildings represented Romania's Gypsy community, officially put
at 410,000 but said by its leaders to be many times larger.
Thousands of others -- shop assistants, workers at building sites,
university technicians in white smocks -- lined the route on the way to
Nagyszeben's (Sibiu's) vast cemetery. "He did a lot of good for people here --
Gypsies and the rest of us too," said Maria, a pensioner outside a pharmacy.
Cioaba proclaimed himself "King of Romania's Gypsies" in a church ceremony
in 1992, three years after the fall of communist rule during which Gypsies were
victimised as second-class citizens and parasites. Like tens of thousands of
Gypsies in wartime Romania, run by pro-Hitler fascists, Cioaba was deported to
the Nazi-occupied Dnestr region of present-day Moldova. Only one in 10 of the
deportees survived.
A variety of businesses enabled him to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the
two-storey villa which served as his headquarters, though his influence was
challenged by a rival "Emperor of Gypsies Everywhere" living nearby. "My
father did his best to defend us," Cioaba's son Florin, 41, who succeeded him
according to Gypsy tradition, told a Pentecostal service in the house's cramped
courtyard as he donned his late father's crown made of 24-carat gold coins.
"There are three million of us. We must be united to defend our rights as a
minority." "Long live the king!" shouted mourners as a brass band played
Frederic Chopin's Funeral March. Women in gaudy pleated dresses, their ears
showing though long braids according to tradition, sat in silence or scolded
impatient children. Men, gathered around the embers of a bonfire symbolising
nomadic life, were told to put out cigarettes.
Cioaba, defeated in a bid last year to enter parliament, had been in
Bucharest, 250 km (170 miles) to the south, waiting for an appointment to
discuss his community's problems with President Emil Constantinescu, when he
died. Constantinescu sent condolences to the funeral. "Ion Cioaba was always
the first to do everything," the officiating pastor told mourners. "He was the
first to send his children to school, to give up nomadic life, to build a house,
to buy a bicycle and then a car."
Sohn von Rumäniens gestorbenem Roma-König zum Nachfolger ausgerufen 2/26/97
Bukarest (dpa) - Rumäniens Roma werden nach dem Tod ihres Königs Ioan Cioaba
bald einen neuen Monarchen haben. Am Mittwoch verlas Roma-Kaiser Iulian
Radulescu ein Dekret des sogenannten "Kronrats", mit dem Cioabas Sohn Florin zum
"Internationalen König aller Roma" ausgerufen wurde. Wie der staatliche
rumänische Rundfunk berichtete, soll die Krönungszeremonie am 8. September
dieses Jahres im Kloster Bistrita im Süden des Landes stattfinden.
König Cioaba war am Sonntag im Alter von 62 Jahren an den Folgen eines
Herzinfarkts gestorben. Im Stadtzentrum von Bukarest tragen die traditionell als
Blumenverkäuferinnen arbeitenden Roma-Frauen Trauer.
Julian, "Kaiser der Roma in aller Welt", erklärte den 26., 27. und 28.
Februar zu "Trauertagen für die Roma in ganz Osteuropa". Zwischen Kaiser Iulian
und König Cioaba hatte es jahrelang Rivalitäten um die Vorherrschaft gegeben.
Der Machtkampf wurde auf familiärem Wege beendet, als eine Tochter von König
Cioaba den Sohn von Kaiser Iulian heiratete. dpa kl fk
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