Newsletter
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

Current Status Of The BB:
* Members: 1752 * Surname Entries: 5620 * Query Board Entries: 4236
* Newsletters Archived: 190 * Number of Staff Members: 14

This newsletter concerns:

1) HOMEPAGE STATISTICS
2) UPDATE THE LDS FILES
3) "EMIGRATION AND DEPORTATION" PAGE
4) SCHANDORF - CEMBA BOOK & CD
5) UPCOMING EVENTS
6) GERRY BERGHOLD SCULPTURE
7) EMIGRATION LIST OF SCHANDORF - CEMBA
8) THE HUNGARIAN UPRISING OF 1956 (by Emmerich Koller)
9) THE BRIDGE OF ANDAU
10) THE STREET OF ESCAPING
11) COMMENTARY ON THE LIST OF DEPORTEES (by Wilhelm A. Schmidt)
12) "BORDER VILLAGES, ETHNIC TWINS"?  (by Wilhelm A. Schmidt)

1) HOMEPAGE STATISTICS

The popularity of our Homepage is growing month by month. In September, 2009, we had a record 12,500 - plus visits, with a daily average of 418

2) UPDATE THE LDS FILES

At 9th of October, Ed Tantsits wrote:

I am sending you the updates of the Districts. Frank Teklits talked with me and said it would be a very good idea to include all the location names and the parishes they belong to. That it would be good to see these together and we would not have to go elsewhere to do this research.

Thank you, Ed, for this good idea and your work!

I have added the updates to the LDS pages of several districts.

It is available under: http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/LDS/LDS.htm

3) "EMIGRATION AND DEPORTATION" PAGE

I got some lists of Deportation and Emigration, so I have done this new feature. Whenever we get additional lists, they can be added. And it's easy to correct and update in this way.

The first list was a deportation list from Pernau, which was published the first time at NL-187. Now, Wilhelm Schmidt has corrected it and I have published it under: http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Emigration/Pernau.htm

The second was a emigration list of Schandorf - Cemba. Ferdinand Mühlgaszner gave it to me in a meeting at his home. It is available under: http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Emigration/Schandorf.htm

I also have set a link to the external deportation list from Wolfs - Balf, maintained by Robert Steiner in Germany.

4) SCHANDORF - CEMBA BOOK & CD

In the last NL (191) main theme, there was a short chronicle of Schandorf - Cemba. This was a summary of the book "Schandorf - Cemba - Csem" that was put out by the Kulturverein Schandorf. It has 216 pages, many pictures, and is written in German, with summaries in Croatian and English.

Another book and CD of the Kulturverein Schandorf is "Schandorf - Cemba / Auswanderer - Iseljeninki - Emigrants". Additionally, on the CD is a Powerpoint presentation with 225 pages that needs 100 minutes to play and has a background of Tamburizza- music. It is complete and showable in three languages: German, Croatian, and English. (Ed: It's great, but takes a while to load.)

All these goodies are available from:

Dr. Ferdinand Mühlgaszner (ferdinand(a)muehlgaszner.com)

5) UPCOMING EVENTS

2009 November 12 - Bi-monthly meeting of the Burgenland Bunch of Missouri at the home of

Ronald E. Markland P.E.
15908 Wetherburn Road
Chesterfield, MO 63017
remron1@sbcglobal.net

6) GERRY BERGHOLD SCULPTURE

Last week, I started the final steps for the Gerry Berghold Sculpture. For people who don't know about it, here's a little introduction.

After the death of Gerry Berghold (our Burgenland Bunch founder) last year, I had an idea to make a monument (sculpture) for him.

First, I tried to find people or institutions in Burgenland who would be interested and would support this project. I had some ideas about how it should look when finished, but I was not sure about it, so I discarded them and started from the beginning. I had my final idea on my US trip to Pennsylvania this past summer, and I told it to the BB staff members attending our meeting in Northampton. But this idea also needed time to begin the realizing. I sampled some materials I needed, but didn't have much time to do so.

My final idea, which will now become realized, is:

A bronze-cast monitor-keyboard-mouse-mix that has the form of a Burgenland-map and Gerry's face.

It's the idea that each BB member would have his or her own sculpture on their desk, with Gerry's face looking out of the computer monitor (in relief) to watch us continue his work.

But I know that I have to do it NOW. I got a lot of support from my friend, Paul Mühlbauer, the founder and owner of the Sculpture-Park in Olbendorf. http://www.muehlbauer.cc/
So we made an agreement that I can use his studio and he will help me if I need it.

I really have no idea how I should finance all this material and the casting. But anyways, maybe we can all start to think about it.

7) EMIGRATION LIST OF SCHANDORF - CEMBA

8) THE HUNGARIAN UPRISING OF 1956 (by Emmerich Koller)

On the 4th of November fifty-three years ago, a terrible tragedy was unfolding in the heart of Hungary. A popular uprising that began on October 23 was coming to a premature and bloody end. In the early hours of this day, an overwhelming force of Soviet troops and tanks attacked Budapest, and Hungary's hope for independence and freedom vanished under a hail of Russian shells and bullets.

Far from these tragic events in the capital city, in my village near the Austrian border, people were glued to radios trying to find out what exactly was going on. While listening to a broadcast from Radio Budapest on the first day of the uprising, I heard many gunshots in the background. Later I learned that the armed conflict began at the radio station where that broadcast originated when the AVO, Hungary's hated secret police, fired upon demonstrators. Now, thirteen days later, my father listened with dismay and fear to the desperate plea for help that Imre Nagy, Hungary's Prime Minister, sent out to the free world. Despite earlier promises, especially through CIA-sponsored Radio Free Europe in Bavaria, no help materialized. By mid-morning, my father had reached a very important decision. He gathered us around him to inform us that we had to escape to Austria immediately.

As a fourteen-year-old boy, I was a bit scared but also excited by this new development and started packing what I could carry. I did not yet know the underlying reasons for my father's fateful decision. As we trudged through the mud towards the border, loaded down with whatever we could carry - we lived very close to the Iron Curtain and knew where it was safe to cross - Father finally had time to share with his family of ten people the reasons for our leaving. He was escaping from the clutches of the secret police that had made his life intolerable in the past years. He also couldn't see us continue suffering the deprivations and indignities placed on us by Hungary's tyrannical Stalinist regime. As we said good-bye to Grandmother, who at the last minute decided to stay behind, we made a promise to her that we would be back just as soon as things got better again. Sadly, for years after our escape, the situation at home became worse instead of better and Grandma died of a broken heart waiting for her family's return.

When we stepped onto Burgenland's soil near Bildein at about noon that Sunday, we didn't know that we were just the front-runners of a massive exodus that unfolded in the following days and weeks. Before the border was closed tightly again, 200,000 Hungarians left their homeland with only their clothes on their backs and maybe a few possessions in their hands. From all corners of the country, refugees stole their way westward, to the safety and freedom in Austria. Once the escapees made it past the dangers and obstacles of the Iron Curtain, the people of Burgenland were ready to welcome their dispirited and traumatized guests with neighborly generosity and kindness.

The brutality with which the Russian forces crushed the revolution may have precipitated the exodus, but the reasons for leaving had been piling up during eight years of communist terror. Hungary's communist party took control of the government in 1948. Until Stalin's death in 1953, life in Hungary had become almost unbearable. The leaders of the regime initiated a reign of terror in Hungary that was harsher than in all other socialist countries, even harsher than in the Soviet Union. Throughout the land, people were persecuted, tortured and even executed on trumped up charges against the state. Tens of thousands were imprisoned or were taken to forced labor camps. On the eve of the revolution, the number of purge victims had reached over 200,000. Show trials, in which even communist political leaders like László Rajk were condemned to death and prominent religious leaders like Cardinal Mindszenty to life in prison, made a mockery of the justice system. Those who didn't end up in prisons or forced labor camps were coerced into spying and informing on each other. Friends and neighbors, even children, could no longer be trusted. Fear, mistrust, deprivation and a total disregard of human rights were the hallmarks of Hungary's Stalinist era.

For the small farmers in villages like Pornóapáti/Pernau where my family lived, the agrarian policies were the most difficult to take. Soon after they seized control of the government, the communists introduced the failed policies of the Soviet Union, complete with the persecution of the so-called kulaks, a strong push for collectivization, excessive delivery quotas and a counterproductive tax system. By the early 1950's, Hungary, a land that used to produce a surplus of food supplies, moved to the brink of starvation. These were the years when I often stood in line at the village store for an entire family's ration of half a loaf of bread or a small bottle of cooking oil.

After Stalin's death in 1953, Hungary experienced a very modest thaw; persecutions became a little less vicious, arrests a bit less frequent. In February 1956, Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin. Poland reacted with a popular uprising in June; Hungary followed in October. Both uprisings were put down brutally by Russian forces. Thirty-three years later, the system collapsed on its own accord, exposing the flawed ideology and philosophy upon which it was built. And although great progress has been made since then in the embrace of the EU, long-term consequences of the damages that the socialist governments of Eastern Europe have caused linger to this day.

9) THE BRIDGE OF ANDAU

On October 23rd, 1956 a national uprising broke out in Hungary. This uprising was put down by the Soviet troops on November 5th. Over 200,000 Hungarians fled the country. The "BRIDGE at ANDAU" at that time was indeed the last possible way into freedom for many.

The late American best-selling author James A. Michener had then been "reporter on the spot." Thereafter, he wrote a book about the dramatic events, entitled "The BRIDGE at ANDAU". This was, Michener writes, possibly the least important bridge in Europe. But the twist of fate would have it become one of the most important bridges in the world for a couple of weeks.

The Andau chronicle tells you about these events:

On Sunday, November 4th, the roar of tank engines and the rattling of the chains of armored vehicles approaching the national border was in the air. The people held their breath, wondering what would happen. Our firefighters went to the border and marked it with red-white-red flags. ... In the next few days the first refugees arrived. From day to day, the flow of refugees swelled. Thousands came from all over Hungary via the Einser channel to Andau, into the freedom of the West.

This small, insignificant and yet world-famous ANDAU BRIDGE had been blown up a little bit later. Shortly before Christmas 1956, the future U.S. President Richard NIXON came as the then Commissioner for Refugees to Andau to get a picture of this refugee disaster. The population of Andau had been in continuous use for the refugees.

Here again, the local chronicle:

The municipality and the people of Andau accomplished great humanitarian work in those days and weeks, which today would be impossible to imagine. The schools, the kindergarten, the cinema and all public spaces have been provided for the accommodation of refugees. Today the "BRIDGE at ANDAU" stands again. It is not only a monument that commemorates the ill-fated times of a divided Europe, but also a symbol of helpfulness, tolerance and
togetherness across all political boundaries.

James A. Michener

"If I ever had to flee, so I hope that it can be to Austria"

Text excerpts from James A. Michener's book "The bridge at Andau"

At Andau there was a bridge. Could someone reach it, he found the way into freedom.
Only an insignificant bridge, neither wide enough for a car nor strong enough for a motorcycle. It's rickety .....
Those generations who had once built this bridge could not, of course, know the role this bridge of simple planks and beams will play one day. .......They came out of the reeds of the marsh land, from the mud and the dirt, right across the swamps and via the Einser channel, across the bridge with the rickety beams.
Yes, that's the way they came. Then we heard a dull bang, but nothing was to be seen. A refugee, who had kept hidden until then, took his opportunity. Breathless he came running towards us: "They have blown up the bridge!"
On November 21, 1956, the bridge was blasted by Soviet troops.

10) THE STREET OF ESCAPING

This is the path that was received as the "escape road" in 1956 in world history. That road was used by the Einser-channel, which forms the border with Hungary, on the historic bridge Andau as the last escape route of many thousands of people.

After the breakdown of the Iron Curtain, a group of artists made 1992-96 an international Symposium "Flucht und Vertreibung", and then placed their works at the "Street of Escaping" between Andau bridge and Andau village.

More than 90 sculptures are left and right at the road and also at the Andau-bridge area beside the Einser-channel in a outdoor gallery of unique proportions.

11) COMMENTARY ON THE LIST OF DEPORTEES (by Wilhelm A. Schmidt)

see: http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Emigration/Pernau.htm

In the BB newsletter 187A, a list of families deported from Pernau/Pornóapáti, Hungary, on May 26, 1946, was published. The list was submitted by Emmerich Koller. But he did not prepare it, and no one I have asked seems to know who did. The names on the list, both first and last, are given in Hungarian, suggesting a Hungarian origin.

I immediately noticed discrepancies on the list. I recognized the first name on it, but knew that a person by that name was deported with her mother and four sisters, not alone. I think it refers to an old woman, living across the street from us in Schwabhausen, whom we called Resi Muam. Her last name, I have since found out, was Eder, not Schmidt. Worse than this misnaming, the list completely omitted two families and erroneously numbered the members of others, including my own. From former Pernauer, I also learned that the list contained families that left the country either prior to deportation or during the rebellion in 1956. My list does not include those who left of their own volition.

Quite a few people besides Emmerich Koller aided me in the compilation of a more accurate list: Felix Pehr (left in 1956); Emerich Gratzl, Maria (Wölfinger) Legath, Margaret (Meltsch) Binder, Kamilla (Steger) Welke, Theresia (Schmidt) Rotter, and Pauline (Windisch) Mueller (all DPs, i.e., "Displaced Persons"). There are other deportees still living that I wish I could have contacted, but I was unable to find their current whereabouts.

I forwarded my tentative list to Gizella (Schmalzl) Bogdan, a friend of my mother, living in Pernau. She prevailed upon the current village notary, Kovacs Geza, to amend it. The original list provides only the names of the heads of the families and the number of people in each family. The list he sent me provides the names of all family members. But it has some of the same shortcomings as the original list. One family is entirely omitted, as is my sister (at less than a year old, the youngest person deported), and I am consigned to another Schmidt family that was childless.

The number of people on the notary's list is 90. The same number appears on a memorial plaque in Pernau. The total number reported by the village priest, Gyorgy Illes, in a letter to his bishop two days after our expulsion, without giving names, is 92. This number must be considered the most authoritative. My list contains several more names, including two men that returned to Pernau from a Russian prison camp in 1948, unaware of the deportation. They joined their families in Germany, and should therefore be counted. But I am not sure about some of the names, and urge readers to verify my list. (e-mail: wilhelms@nni.com)

A final remark: all the names on my list are given in German. This reflects their true ethnicity and my lingering antipathy for the nation that deported me.

12) "BORDER VILLAGES, ETHNIC TWINS"? (by Wilhelm A. Schmidt)

On the topic. "Border villages, ethnic twins" at the end of BB Newsletter 48A, a correction is in order. The idea that the mentioned villages on opposite sides of the border are ethnic twins, one mostly German and the other mostly Hungarian, is a misperception.

Before the separation of Burgenland, all these villages were part of Hungary and had Hungarian names. Simultaneously, all of them were inhabited by ethnic Germans and had German names. Other pairs of villages up and down the border could be mentioned. Curiously, the four that are cited have an interesting relationship to my birthplace, Pernau/Porno (Pornóapáti since 1899). They belonged to a member of the Jak family back when, and were bequeathed to the Cistercian monastery in Pernau in 1233. With the exception of Deutschschützen, all of them already existed late in the 12th century. This village, adjoining the monastery on the west, was inhabited by archers in the employ of the Counts of Güssing. At the time the monastery was founded, the land belonged to the Jaks, but then reverted back to the Wildoners. Originally, the archers had settled in a village immediately to the north of Pernau. After Croatians migrated to that village around 1548, they founded a new village. To distinguish the two villages, the old became Kroatschützen/Horvatövö, and the new one became Deutschschützen/Nemetlövö. Höll, southwest of Pernau, was originally part of Oberbildein/Alsobeled, the village due south of Pernau. Its name is supposedly derived from the "hel" in Hettföhelly, meaning "Monday market," which was the name of the estate that became Oberbildein. Eberau/Monyorokerek (=Stein am Hazelrund) and Prostrum (=Gesindeacker)/Szentpertfa, two villages below Unterbildein/Felsobeled, also were given to the monastery in Pernau, as were two other properties still further south, the forest of Moschendorf/Nagysaroslak and the mill at Allerheiligen/Mintszent. (See 750-year Festschrift for Deutschschützen.)

As late as the end of World War II, the inhabitants of all these villages were largely German speakers. Croatian was spoken only by part of the population of Kroatschützen and Prostrum. Pernau was still staunchly Hianzisch during my early childhood. Only the priest, the teacher, the doctor, and the village notary were Hungarian. Official business was conducted in Hungarian, but Mass was said in German. Instruction was both in German and Hungarian. I only learned a few words of conversational Hungarian.

With the exception of Allerheiligen, the "Hungarian" villages in the above pairs were initially designated by the Treaty of Trianon to be part of Burgenland. The reason for keeping them in Hungary differs for each of the remaining three. Kroatschützen was apparently indifferent about its alliance. The inhabitants of Pernau wanted to be part of Austria, but Prince Franz of Bavaria, the owner of the estate (the monastery grounds), persuaded the border commission to keep it in Hungary. Despite protests in Prostrum, the Austrian government exchanged this "Croatian" village for a "German" village elsewhere along the border. Evidently, the grounds for pairing the villages on opposite sides of the new border is historic accident, not ethnicity. Between the world wars, commerce and kinships kept following their centuries' old patterns. It was the iron curtain that completely altered the situation. All the roads crossing the border were closed, and Hungary achieved its long desired linguistic hegemony. Concomitantly, the Hungarian language became obsolete in Burgenland, and cultural diversity disappeared there as well. Only due to this loss is a pairing of the villages on opposite sides of the border on linguistic grounds valid.

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Burgenland Bunch Newsletter (c) 2009 by The Burgenland Bunch
All rights reserved. Permission to copy excerpts granted if credit is provided.