BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 399, 14 February 1947, Page 33

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

Presbyterians at Work in Hungary HE first non-official to be allowed to pass the "iron curtain" into Russian-occupied Hungary, the Rev. C. A. F. Knight, arrived the other day from Scotland to become Professor of Old Testament Studies at Knox College and Otago University. Professor Knight had broadcast to New Zealand in the BBC Pacific Service some three weeks before his arrival, under the title "Just Back from Hungary." "All the same," said he, ‘it was really July when I was there-after 13 months pestering for a permit. The Church of Scotland sent me out to report on what help could be given to rebuilding church life in Central Europe, and I was the first non-official person since the war began who was allowed in at all. Before my visit, Hungarian news in the world’s. papers had been simply what rumours reporters ,could pick up in Vienna. I had four full weeks, too, in which to travel about everywhere and talk and listen to everybody." But how, I asked, did a Scot come to know Magyar well enough to do that? And what was the Church of Scotland’s particular interest in Hungary? "The fact that every fourth Hungarian is a Presbyterian," replied the Professor, "and I would naturally know their language nearly as well as English because I lived there through the ‘thirties. From 1935 to 1940 I was head of the Church’ of Scotland’s Mission to Jews in Budapest and in charge of non-Aryan relief work." A very big undertaking, in these years of persecution, I suggested. "Yes. But the British and American churches helped with funds, and our mission staff even before had numbered 40-all Hungarians except myself. Well, you see there were 550 pupils in our girls’ schoo} alone, three-quarters of them Jewish. No, they weren’t there because they were excluded from other schools, but because they appreciated a school with no anti-semitism about it. We taught the New Testament, of course, as a school subject, along with the Old, but we applied no pressure for conversions. "Actually, however, more than 30,000 Jews joined the Church in Hungary during the ‘thirties-and we insisted on a stiff six months’ course of instruction in every case, to make their new attitude well-based. The result was to add to the Presbyterians-the great bulk of whom were poverty-stricken peasants-a body of city intellectuals. And such people became the core and backbone of the Resistance Movement. The President to-day isa Presbyterian minister, and so are ‘several members of the Cabinet, all Peasant Party men." (continued on next page)

Hungary’s Presbyterians

(continued from previous page) That would be the Conservative, or Right Party, I suggested. Professor Knight smiled. "If being ‘left’ means belonging to the industrial workers (as it’ does all over the Continent) you are correct. But the government’s first act, before ever the Russians arrived, was to confiscate the big estates and split them up among one-and-a-half million landless agricultural labourers. That's not exactly a clinging to the status quo as ‘conservative’ usually means, Well, whatever you call them, it’s the alliance between the Christian Jews and the Protestant peasants inside the one Church which has given Hungary its present government. Presbyterians are at the moment persona grata with the Russtan occupation authorities and are mediating in practical ways between the Christian and the Communist conceptions of society. This is a vital, if perhaps temporary, role in a land where the Communists can’t possibly rule because they poll only six per cent, but where the. Roman Catholic majority is too suspect to the Occupying Power--that is, Russia-to be able to take office." "Is there then no real freedom in Hungary?"

"Economically there is more than ever before. In religious faith and practice there is complete freedom. In intellectual matters-information and discussion — there is none," And did that mean, I asked, that Hungary. would gradually be incorporated into the Russian sphere?" "On the contrary," he replied, "it was completely plain to see, wherever I went, that contact with the Russians had made Hungarians quite firmly certain that their Western Heritage and Western ways were superior to the Russian ones. In fact there was a saying going about that ‘Stalin has made two mistakes. He has let Europe see the Russians, and the Russians see Europe.’ Don’t quote that as my own opinion, I’m just telling you how the Hungarians

were reacting."

A.M.

R.