It is difficult to explain how it feels to walk the earth in Hungary, a place with such a history of pain and suffering. If you pass through as a tourist, you can admire the beautiful countryside, the graceful architecture, the parks and baths. You can frequent bars and festivals, where people drink and laugh as they do anywhere else in the world.
But when you get in amongst the people of Hungary and hear their stories, you can start to understand the human history of this place. From the beginning of written history, this area has been a place where people lived by the plough and died by the sword.
The Romans founght the resident Celts and nomadic Huns to establish their forts along the Danube, and after the collapse fo the Roman Empire, the Celts were replaced by Avars, who were, in turn, slaughtered by the Hungarians when they conquered the homeland.
The history of the conquering Hungarians since the 10th century has been fraught as well. Their national anthem is more a lament than a clarion call of n
ational pride. This is a free translation of the verses into modern English:
O God, bless the nation of Hungary
With your grace and bounty
Extend over it your guarding arm
During strife with its enemies
Long torn by ill fate
Bring upon it a time of relief
This nation has suffered for all sins
Of the past and of the future!
You brought our ancestors up
Over the Carpathians’ holy peaks
By You was won a beautiful homeland
For Bendeguz’s sons
And wherever flow the rivers of
The Tisza and the Danube
Árpád our hero’s descendants
Will root and bloom.
For us on the plains of the Kuns
You ripened the wheat
In the grape fields of Tokaj
You dripped sweet nectar
Our flag you often planted
On the wild Turk’s earthworks
And under Mátyás’ grave army whimpered
Vienna’s “proud fort.”
Ah, but for our sins
Anger gathered in Your bosom
And You struck with Your lightning
From Your thundering clouds
Now the plundering Mongols’ arrows
You swarmed over us
Then the Turks’ slave yoke
We took upon our shoulders.
How often came from the mouths
Of Osman’s barbarian nation
Over the corpses of our defeated army
A victory song!
How often did your own son agress
My homeland, upon your breast,
And you became because of your own sons
Your own sons’ funeral urn!
The fugitive hid, and towards him
The sword reached into his cave
Looking everywhere he could not find
His home in his homeland
Climbs the mountain, descends the valley
Sadness and despair his companions
Sea of blood beneath his feet
Ocean of flame above.
Castle stood, now a heap of stones
Happiness and joy fluttered,
Groans of death, weeping
Now sound in their place.
And Ah! Freedom does not bloom
From the blood of the dead,
Torturous slavery’s tears fall
From the burning eyes of the orphans!
Pity, O Lord, the Hungarians
Who are tossed by waves of danger
Extend over it your guarding arm
On the sea of its misery
Long torn by ill fate
Bring upon it a time of relief
They who have suffered for all sins
Of the past and of the future!
Translated by: LASZLO KOROSSY (2003)
And this anthem was written before the 20th century wrote its own blood-soaked chapter of Hungarian history!
The oldest Hungarians alive today were born during or just after World War I, a time at which the nation of Hungary was torn apart and distributed amongst the neighbours who had been on the winning side in World War I. Millions of Hungarians suddenly found themselves living in Yugoslavia, Romania, Czecheslovakia, and the USSR.
The older generation grew up during the depression, and saw the rise of Fascism in the German-dominated governments of the time, a period which they call The White Terror. They saw Jews taken from their homes, death and destruction during World War II, and then the Russian occupation, which they call the Red Terror. For forty years, everyone lived in fear that their neighbour may turn on them and make a report to the secret police that they had the wrong attitude. When this happened, people would just be taken away, and never come back.
Throughout the 20th century, there were shortages of food and essentials due to wars, depressions, and Communism. Those few who escaped the country were often unable ever to return and visit their loved ones, and even letters needed to be worded very circumspectly, in case they were opened and read by government censors. During the 1950s and 1960s, any families had only one child, because there was not enough food available for more than one.
Even the younger generations, who gaily frolic at Lake Balaton in the summer, are not unaffected by the pain and fear of the 20th century. Epigenetics means that the traumatised mothers produced children who were inherently more fearful, and frightening social pressures, with a real risk of death, reinforced the fear.
Although the twenty-somethings don’t remember much about the Communist era, and were not alive at the time of World War II, the fear and loss still resonate through their family members, in the empty rows of seats in the synagogues, in the cautious saving of even the smallest bit of leftover food, and in the memorials and monuments which commemorate the awful losses and destruction.
What is amazing is that in the face of all this terror and constraint, the Hungarian people continued to live, to love, to raise children, to cherish life, and to maintain a loving and generous spirit. The Hungarian heart is warm and full of joy.
We cannot put into words the admiration we feel for people who can suffer through so much, and not become hard, closed, suspicious or bitter. We can only hope that the Good Lord heeds the plea in the national anthem, and allows the battered Hungarian psyche a permanent rest from processing grief and loss, other than the natural passing of loved ones at the end of a long and fulling life.
If anyone deserves such a blessing, truly, it is the people of Hungary.