Reuven Hecht was a right-wing Zionist who worked with the revisionist movement’s founding father, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and after the founding of the state, became an Israeli entrepreneur and right-wing politician. Today, a museum and park in the Jewish state bear his name. After trying to help the Horthy family obtain a Swiss visa, he remained in correspondence with them until his death in 1993.
According to an anti-Zionist pamphlet published during the Republic of Councils, Zionism ‘is nothing but a Jewish version of clerical reaction’ and was to be ‘fully eradicated.’
From the spring of 1920, the regent travelled around the country in his private train to observe the results of his national leadership in all the important settlements.
The picture of Horthy that emerges from the contemporary reports of Western ambassadors is hardly that of a gullible politician, but rather of a shrewd, albeit immoral manipulator.
Archpriest Youssef Khalil, leading representative of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Hungary, considers his new home to be a beacon of religious tolerance and freedom. A short walk through history helps to reminds us that we shouldn’t be surprised to hear that.
‘I myself believe that extreme politics, whether right-wing or left-wing, is equally half-hearted, harmful and dangerous.’
The report explicitly referred to Baltazár as an ‘enemy.’ The investigators were quite obviously not interested in identifying the real culprits.
In this two-part article we will explore the main reasons behind the conflict, which proved to be one of the most serious anti-Calvinist offenses of the period.
The situation of the Gypsies in this period ranged from tolerance and jovial disdain to exclusion, which literary historian János Hankiss characterized a quarter of a century later by saying that the Gypsies were ‘relatable strangers’ in Hungarian culture.
The story of Zadravecz’s controversial years well illustrates the fascinating internal debates and lively public life of the early Horthy period, as well as the divisions between Christian churches in a period which desperately called for Christian unity.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
