* Of about 800,000 mainly Hungarian Jews in Transylvania and Rumania,
about 11,000, mostly elderly people remain today. The Holocaust there was
begun years before the Wannsee Conference. Incredibly, Rumania's Nazi
ally, often protested the brutality of Rumanian means.

*There is no renaissance in Rumania. In Kolozsvár, for example, the
Párizs utca synagogue is still being used as a warehouse. Another
synagogue there is still a swimming pool.

*An attempt to halt the desecration of the largest cemetery in that city
is being led by the sister of Bishop Tőkés. By removing the remains and
monuments of Hungarians, Jewish and non-Jewish, a hope is to one day be
able to "prove" that neither ever existed there.

* 70% of the parliament is controlled by parties that more and less
openly back the creation of a "Greater Rumania," i.e., one consisting of
additional territories of adjoining countries, but that is also to be
"ethnically-pure": no Jews, no Hungarians, no Roma, no Germans. Only
unusual condemnation in the West, reduced to 30% from an expected
outright win, the seats in parliament controlled by the most openly
extremist party, the Greater Rumania party.

It is worth remembering that seventy years ago, the Nazis started with
about 30%, almost a century ago, the Bolsheviks were such a minority,
that they adopted their name meaning "majority."

* It is quite common to hear Rumanians talk openly, without shame or
embarrassment, about the fact that they have rid themselves of most Jews
and Germans; only the 2 million Hungarians and a similar number of Roma
remain to be "cleansed."

* Rumanian Prime Minister Nastase, at home and abroad, sings the praises
of Cioran and Eliade. Few in his audiences in the West seem to know that
they were early supporters of the Iron Guard that perpetrated some of the
atrocities beginning in the 1930s. The Iron Guard is seeing a revival in
Rumania.

* Ion Pacepa, living in the US and under death-threat still, chronicled
and warned of the rise of anti-Semitism in Rumania in March of this year.
He had been preceded by the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith
International and The American Jewish Committee in asking President Ion
Iliescu to stop rehabilitating Nazi and Iron Guard-era leaders.

* Perhaps in response to those requests, the Rumanian Scientific Academy
has since published the book, "I Am A Nationalist," anti-Semitic and
anti-Hungarian in its content, apparently conceived to slander and
inflame extant and carefully-nurtured prejudices.

* The request to stop rehabilitation of war criminals was repeated to
Prime Minister Nastase on his November visit to Washington and New York.
Streets still bear the names, statues still exist and others are still
being planned to honor those mass murderers, most notably Marshal
Antonescu. Undoubtedly in part as warning, many of those streets and
statues memorializing Antonescu are in Hungarian areas. There is nothing
comparable in Hungary.

* The Rumanian press, until Mr. Nastase's visit, carried articles on an
almost-daily basis about the continued existence of training camps
(Hamas, PLO) and that our FBI pointed out that 15% of all known bin Laden
companies were headquartered there. In addition, there are close ties
between Rumania and Iraq.

* In December of 2001, I read a press summary according to which the
renamed-Securitate has been conducting a campaign harassing particularly
the three predominately Hungarian counties, which they consider (foreign)
enclaves. The direction for the campaign has come from the Greater
Rumania party, but with support—direct and indirect—of the party of
PM Nastase and President Iliescu; in a speech in Greece, Mr. Iliescu
directly made the charge of subversion. At this point, the campaign will
use "legal" means. For example, while Hungarians make up at least 75% of
the population, a mere 5% of the police and troops stationed there are
Hungarian. Their purpose clearly is to intimidate.

I doubt Michael Guest, our ambassador in Rumania, will mention any of
these items. Or the planned destruction of only Hungarian homes and
churches in Verespatak, or the break-ins and robberies of (Hungarian)
Roman Catholic Churches in Hargita County, or the confiscation of donated
equipment from the orphanage and home for severely handicapped children
in Gyimesbukk, or…

In 1568, the Transylvanian diet declared the guarantee of freedom of
worship. In foreshadowing the Founders, they did so because faith is a
God-given gift and thus an unalienable right. Stephen Bocskai along with
Knox, Calvin, Luther, and others, is immortalized at Geneva's Monument to
the Reformation.

Hungary never had any of the religious wars so common throughout Europe.

An important date. In 1526, the Turks defeated the Hungarians at the
battle of Mohács, killed its king in the battle. History is reasonably
clear that one of the principal reasons for the defeat was that the
troops from my part of Hungary did not come until much later. The reason
is unclear.

The Turks—Islam—never were able to go any farther west; the West was
spared.

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