What will happen to you, Transylvania? What will happen to the future of Hungarians in Romania? The parliamentary elections suggest that the minority Hungarians can unite if necessary. The presidential election, on the other hand, means that they are in danger.

László Péntek, the former deputy mayor of Kőrösfő, the honorary president of the Vasvári Pál Civic Association, does not like to get involved in politics, he made this clear to me right at the beginning of our conversation. However, circumstances and events force him to do so.

– In the end, Vasvári did not want to become a politician either, he would have preferred to teach, but history forced him to act because he did not want to leave his homeland.

- However, it was a very different situation, we Hungarians living in a minority can only fight by sticking to our traditions and cherishing the spiritual heritage of our predecessors. I am not at the Vasvári award ceremony to analyze the situation in Romania, but to cherish the memory of Vasvári.

"Okay, let's stay with the prize." How and who decides who is worthy of recognition in a given year?

– I am honorary president, it does not depend on me who the Association's management recommends. Ferenc Bauer, Kálmán Tóth and the others decide who they find worthy of the award, but when the proposal is made, they ask for my opinion. I haven't had any objections yet, as the management is made up of excellent people, they really know the candidates. After that, the question is put before the general assembly, where the personal proposals are either accepted or rejected. There was no controversy in the case of the current two award winners, and everyone knows Philip Rákay, either from TV or because the movie Now or Never is linked to his name, in which Vasvári is the central figure of the events.

– I would like your personal opinion, as well as that of a great admirer of Vasvári: did it bother you that the film did not adhere to real events? Because this is what the anteaters mostly attack.

– The left-wing press and many historians argued that things did not happen exactly as we saw in the film. But don't expect perfect historical fidelity. Things did not happen in the Egri stars either as Gárdonyi wrote or as the film showed, but the main line was the same. The plot needs to be expanded and colored so that it also appeals to young people. If they don't feel like the movie is theirs, if they don't find a little action, excitement, love in it, they won't watch it. I think this is a very good movie, it entertains and teaches at the same time. Unfortunately, the historical knowledge of many young people is incomplete, to say the least. I met people who didn't even know about the Viennese revolution and wondered what Vienna had to do with Budapest. I tell them, children, the revolution reached Budapest from France via Vienna! The Hungarian people stood on their feet and these young people were the pioneers. Among them, one of the most educated people's leaders was the not-quite-23-year-old Pál Vasvári. If there is anything that can be objected to in the film, it is only that Vasvári was not a brunette, but a blond, blue-eyed young man...

- The women and his students were fans of him in the wrong languages, since he was a teacher at a girls' school.

– He really loved women, he loved girls, which may have been a little exaggerated in the movie, but young people like it when there is a little mischief in a movie. In any case, Philip Rákay and the entire crew put something on the table that, if the young people of that time watch it 10 years from now, they will certainly not see how close the story is to reality. However, they will feel how inspiring and patriotic he is.

"Ten years from now, that will be a long time." But what about tomorrow? I know that you don't like to get involved in politics, but even if you don't want to, you are still affected by daily politics, for example the Romanian presidential election. Kelemen Hunor said that the lesser evil of the two remaining candidates should be supported. Of course, it is a question of how the Romanian legal flea circus will develop, because what happens there is also bad for cabaret.

"We can really only decide between bad and worse, and that's not very encouraging." We know one of his past, we know that Călin Georgescu glorified Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Romanian legion movement between the two world wars and also a fan of Ion Antonescu, who is responsible for the murder of around 280-380 thousand Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and 11 thousand Roma. It is so extreme and anti-Semitic that it even had to leave the ultra-nationalist AUR. The organization whose activists ransacked the Hungarian military cemetery in Úz-völgy. In an interview, he said about the minority Hungarians that "we gave them land and water, so they shut up."

"It seems to have happened a little differently." It was not the Transylvanian Hungarians who tore off a piece of Romania's "body", rather we gave that land to the Romanians, even if not voluntarily.

"I know that too." The other candidate is the politician of the liberal Save Romania Association, Elena Lasconi. His party wants to reshape the electoral districts of Székelyföld in such a way that Hungarians become a minority everywhere. Before the parliamentary elections, Kelemen Hunor assured him of our support, but only on the condition that they withdraw this proposal. It was ostensibly withdrawn, but now, during the government formation negotiations, it was brought up again, with the stipulation that they are only willing to enter the government if this is accepted. What kind of people are these? But there are also encouraging signs, for example, the fact that the Transylvanian Hungarians, as a result of the many Romanian attacks - because they felt that something was wrong - were able to unite during the parliamentary elections and came together under the umbrella of the RMDSZ. And this is a very good thing.

Author: György Tóth Jr

Cover photo: László Péntek, honorary president of the Vasvári Pál Civic Association / Photo: Ferenc Bauer Facebook