War By Other Means

Oh, to be in London now the Olympics are there.  Actually, no.  Now the Olympics are in London I’m not!  The city is mad enough at the best of times, so I decided to escape during the build-up, first into the countryside and now north into Scotland.  I’m in Edinburgh at present, on the threshold of a foray into the Highlands.  While here I visited the recently-opened Catherine the Great exhibition being held in National Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street, a fantastic experience which I intend to write about soon.

Thinking of Russia and thinking of the Olympics, I have an angle that ties in both.  It concerns an incident in the 1956 Melbourne Games, when sport turned into war by other means.  I have to thank Zunnur, who, in a comment on my recent blog on Hungary (Hungary’s Future is all in the Past, 18 July) drew my attention to what I now know has passed into history as the Blood in the Water Match, surely one of the most vivid and lurid spectacles ever seen in whole of the modern games.

It concerned a water polo match between the USSR and Hungary, a simple enough affair that came to symbolise so much more.  It’s December, 1956.  Only weeks before the Hungarian Rising against communist rule had been crushed under the treads of Russian tanks.  Budapest, the capital, was in ruins.  Across the world, where Hungarians were free to express any feelings at all against their ‘fraternal liberators’ they expressed nothing but hatred.  They were free to express such feeling in Australia.

Hungary’s champion water polo team knew nothing of these events.  They had been cut off from news from home while training for the games in adjacent Czechoslovakia.  It was only after they arrived in Melbourne that they learned the extent of the violence. 

Twenty-one-year old Ervin Zador, a star player and the only member of the Hungarian party who could read English, bought a local paper when their flight first touched down on Australian soil in the northern city of Darwin.  No sooner had he read the news than he told his team mates that he was not going back home.

The Hungarians went on to dominate their event, winning through to the semi-finals.  It was there that they met the Russians on 6 December.  Tension was already high.  The audience, dominated by Hungarian exiles, turned their backs as the Russians entered.  When the Soviet anthem was played they clapped loudly to drown it out.  With shouts of Hajra Magyarok! (Go Hungarians!), they waved flags and urged on their countrymen.  “We always had an extra incentive when we played the Soviets, but the atmosphere at Melbourne was another dimension," Zador said. "The game meant so much to us. We had to win the gold medal. We were playing for ourselves, for our families back home, for our country."

Throughout the ensuing match, which the Hungarians won 4-0, there had been kicking and punching from both sides.  No fewer than five players were ordered out of the pool by the referee.  With only minutes left before the end Zador was punched in the eye by one Valentin Prokopov, the Russian player immediately opposite. 

With blood pouring from his eye, giving the encounter its infamous name, the Hungarian spectators in the crowd erupted.  People raised their fists, shouted abuse and spat at the Russians.  To prevent a riot the police were forced to intervene. 

The team went on to beat Yugoslavia in the final. Though Zador was unable to take part due to his injury he stood on the podium for the medal ceremony.  True to his word, he refused to return to communist Hungary, seeking political asylum in the West.  He was joined by no fewer than half of the 100-member party that come to Australia.   Zador went on to settle in the United States, where he worked for many years as a swimming coach. 

I’ve never believed that it’s possible to separate politics from sport, not so long as national passions are involved.  The 1956 national passions were at a height.  The Blood in the Water match seems to me to be proof enough for this contention.  

Hungary’s Future is all in the Past

Auntie Angela Merkel, in the fashion of an earnest and humourless German Leherin, is in habit of lecturing us all on the dire consequences of the collapse of the European Union.  The alternative is the past, the alternative is German history, and we all want to avoid that! 

The thing is, you see, Auntie and the others who believe in the benighted European ideal have a kind of Marxist view that history has been surpassed and superseded; that the past, so to speak, is all in the past.  I can assure you that it’s not; modern Hungary, the Hungary of the European Union, is example enough to dispel that comforting illusion. 

Just imagine how Europe and the world would react if Germany repudiated the Treaty of Versailles which followed the First World War, the Versailles ‘Diktat’ which so enraged Hitler and the other German nationalists.  Ah, but that is a history too deeply buried.  Who now cares about that distant past?

Hungary does, oh, not about Versailles but about the Treaty of Trianon, its own post-war settlement, concluded with the Allies in 1920.  By this the old Greater Hungry was reduced to a rump, a land-locked central European state, a kingdom without a king ruled by one Miklos Horthy, an admiral without a navy in a country without a coast. Horthy later went on to form an alliance with Hitler, repudiating Trianon and recovering some of the lost territory before the whole dream went belly up.

Ah, but Hungary is such stuff as dreams are made on and its little land is rounded by…places it wants back!  Now I feel sure that Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose conservative Fidesz party came to power in the election of 2010, would not dream of going to war with Austria, Slovakia, Romania, the Ukraine, Serbia and Croatia to regain in whole or in part what was lost, at least not all at once.  But that has not stopped him repudiating the treaty and inaugurating a ‘national day of mourning’ on the anniversary of its signing. 

Viktor is a decent man.  He has declared himself firmly opposed to monuments for such dictators as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.  Well, they are all foreigners, are they not?  He’s a bit more ambivalent when it comes to Hungary’s Horthy. 

The Admiral is making something of a comeback in a country still traumatised by a ninety-three year old treaty.  Last month a bust of the old boy was unveiled in Csokako in the north of the country by the paramilitary Hungarian Guard, a movement closely allied to the right-wing Jobbik Party.  It’s nothing to do with me, says the prime minister; it’s a matter for local government which monuments are erected or not.  Just as well, I suppose, that it was not Lenin, Stalin or Hitler. 

“Viktor Orban is a man of the past,” Socialist party president, Attila Mesterhazy, said in his annual address in parliament in March. “He wants to bring back a Hungary that’s long gone. That’s why they’re always citing politicians from the beginning of the 1900s. That’s why they’re trying to fashion the state after the Horthy regime, the public law configuration, even parliament.” 

The thing is, though, in Hungary the past is very much the present, with Orban moving the country back into an uncertain future. How I love history; how I love her sense of irony.  

Battle of the Passports

I’ve sometimes heard it said that the European Union has somehow sublimated and overcome the conflicts and tensions of history; that it represents, to use an appalling cliché, a new horizon. Well, to those who believe tendentious tosh like that all I will say let them come to Hungary, let them come to Slovakia! These are places where the past is not cheated.

I think one would have to scour present day Germany pretty hard to find any passion left over the Versailles ‘Diktat’ of 1919, but Hungarians to this day still regret the dismemberment of their country in the Treaty of Trianon, concluded in 1920, which scattered significant Magyar minorities across all of the adjacent lands. In Slovakia, the country’s northern neighbour, no fewer than 500,000 people, or 10% of the population, are of ethnic Hungarian origin, mostly concentrated in the border region. And it is here where the tension arises.

Doing down Hungarians has a rather popular appeal among the Slovaks. It has enabled Robert Fico, the country’s prime minister, to win elections. And it was not all shallow demagoguery, no; for measures have been introduced to criminalise the use of the Hungarian language in certain contexts.

Matters have become worse since the success of Viktor Orban in Hungary’s parliamentary elections earlier this year. Virtually the first act of the new centre-left Fidesz government was to give some 2.5 million ethnic Magyars living abroad the right to a Hungarian passport. This was also a populist move, one that takes eyes off Hungary’s present economic troubles, and one that undermines Jobbik, the far-right opposition party. But what looks good in Budapest looks bad upriver in Bratislava.

Slovakia, only fully independent for seventeen years following the amicable divorce with the Czechs, was a Hungarian colony for centuries, a time of not particularly happy memory. In the light of the Hungarian legislation, Fico has now pushed a law through parliament requiring Slovak citizens to report the acquisition of dual nationality or face a fine of more than $4000. People in this position will also lose their Slovak passports, which in practice means losing their citizenship.

Fico is using the most emotive language, according to a report I read in The Economist, talking of a “Hungarian brown plague”, a clear reference to the war-time fascist Arrow Cross government. He has even raised the possibility that Hungary’s passport policy may be the precursor to irredentist claims. “Are we supposed to stand by”, he said, "when someone creates an enclave of their own citizens on Slovak territory?”

That’s nothing really compared with the words of Jan Slota, leader of the racist Slovak National Party, a junior partner in Fico’s coalition. He has even suggested the possibility of armed conflict in the face the relentless “militarisation” of Hungarian society. It actually gets worse for Orban has declared 4 June, the anniversary of Trianon, as National Unity Day, recalling the nostalgia for Greater Hungary.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago…

Repeating the Past

In Hungary the fascist-style Jobbik party is ready to make an electoral breakthrough as the ruling left-wing MSZP looks set to collapse in the wake of accusations of corruption and economic mismanagement. The fact is that neither the end of communism nor membership of the European Union has brought the lasting benefits that ordinary Hungarians expected.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 April predictions are that the centre-right Fidesz Party will take the lead, with the MSZP falling into third place behind Jobbik, headed by Gabor Vona. If this turns out to be true Jobbik has come a long way. In 2006 the party failed to get a single member into parliament. It already has a representation in the European Parliament in the person of Krisztina Morvai, a former lawyer and mother of three, the acceptable face of Hungarian fascism.

Fascist, are they fascists? There is a history here, one that the modern movement would very much like to cover in the cloak of forgetfulness. For many Jobbik is viewed as the successor to the Arrow Cross Party, which briefly held power towards the end of the Second World War, when Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. Headed by Ferenc Szálasi, the Arrow Cross government was notorious for its anti-Semitic excesses in the last frenzied stages of the Holocaust.

Certainly Jobbik does little to allay these fears, with its rhetoric and its rallies, with its paramilitary Hungarian Guard and its attacks on the Roma, Hungary’s large gypsy minority. It has to be said, though, that hostility towards the Roma is a popular cause in Hungary, going far beyond the ranks of Jobbik. Although this ultra-nationalist movement carries too many reminders of a rather unpleasant past to be accepted by the political mainstream it’s still part of the pulse of modern Hungary, a nation whose history was sublimated for such a long time after the end of the Second World War. After all, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Waving the Flag for Hungary

It’s inevitable that right wing nationalism will wax strong in the current climate, fostered not just be economic problems but a general resentment against the bureaucratic absurdities of that monstrous monolith, the European Union, as well as more local resentments.

Anyway, I like to keep my eyes open for any new developments. I read a report at the weekend on Dr Krisztina Morvai, who is standing in the forthcoming European elections for the far-right Jobbik movement in Hungary. I’d never heard of Jobbik prior to this, but it seems to me to carry strong overtones of the Arrow Cross, the Fascist movement that controlled Hungary in the dying stages of the Second World War. Jobbik even has its own paramilitary wing, the Hungarian Guard. Oh, sorry, they are not paramilitaries at all; they are merely a collection of guys and girls in traditional Hungarian costume, at least they are according to Balzco Zoltan, the vice-president of Jobbik. Would you like to see the Hungarian national costume? Well, here it is. :-))

Erzsébet Báthory, The Blood Countess

For the most part I have very little interest in serial killers, most of whom are tiresome, inadequate bores. However, Erzsébet Báthory, the Blood Countess, is an altogether different phenomenon, a serial killer, yes, but one I find horribly fascinating, not just for the Gothic intensity, the sheer awfulness of her crimes, but because of what they reveal about the times, the culture and the place in which she lived. She was brought down in the end not because of a demand for justice-she and others of her class were beyond conventional notions of justice-but because of a conflict over money.

It's difficult now to imagine what life was like for ordinary people in sixteenth century Hungary, the century that saw Erzsébet Báthory enter the world. Serfs, those tied to the estates of the nobility, counted as nothing; they could be disposed of in any manner their overlord chose. Protection in law was non existent. Such was the background to Erzsébet's crimes.

She was born into one of the best connected families in Hungary. Her uncle, Stephan Báthory was King of Poland and other members of her family held positions of power in the extensive province of Transylvania. In 1575, when she was fifteen years old, she married Count Ferenc Nádasdy, later to be known as Hungary's 'Black Hero' for his exploits as a soldier in the wars against the Ottoman Turks.

Much of what we know about Erzsébet's crimes come from the records of the trial of 1610-11, a trial to which she was never summoned, in which testimony was taken from her principle accomplices. It was during this time that aspects of the black history of the Báthory family acquired a retrospective significance. Erzsébet's aunt was reputed to be a lesbian and a witch. An uncle was said to be an alchemist and a devil worshipper. Ilona Joo, her nurse, and one of those arrested in 1610, allegedly practiced a form of black magic that required the blood and bones of children. It is possible that Erzsébet herself practiced a form of witchcraft, though the evidence is not conclusive.

Her initial cruelties were learned by example, with her husband encouraging her to beat servants close to death for trivial errors. But it was only after Nádasdy's death in 1604 that she really came into her own.

Throughout the early years of the seventeenth century young women and girls began to disappear from the villages on the Báthory estate. The Nádasdy carriage, drawn by black horses, was seen at night with girls inside, girls who were never to be seen again. But no complaint could be made; the Countess was above the law.

Once under her power these girls were subject to a variety of tortures, many carried out by Erzsébet in person. I don't want to dwell at length over these, but in one case she forced a victim to eat strips of her own flesh. Most were whipped, burned or cut to death. Often the Countess's clothes were so heavy with blood that she was obliged to change before continuing with her pleasures.

It's impossible to establish a motive for her actions beyond that of simple sadism; even the alleged witchcraft seems incidental, and there is no real evidence that she performed black magick. Why her animus was directed at her own sex is also impossible to establish. But she had an all consuming taste for torture and murder that moved in ever expanding circles.

As the supply of peasant girls ran short Erzsébet turned her attention to the daughters of the lesser nobility, who were invited to Čachtice Castle, allegedly on the pretext of completing their education, and then subject to the same grim tortures. It was after the murder of one of these girls in 1609, which the Countess tried to pass off as a suicide, that the authorities decided to act. But it needed one additional spur.

Rumours of Erzsébet's crimes had been circulating for years. Even the murder of the noble girls might conceivably have been passed off on some pretext or other. But fatally for the Countess King Matthias owed her money, and she was pressing for repayment. These debts would be cancelled once she was imprisoned, so the process was initiated by royal demand.

This, coupled with the fact that their was conflict between the Protestant Transylvanian nobility, to which Erzsébet belonged, and the Catholic Habsburgs, led to later speculation that the whole thing was a conspiracy engineered by the crown. This theory is further aided by the fact that Erzsébet was never called to speak in her own defence, and that she maintained her innocence to the end. But the evidence against her is simply too compelling to allow for such an explanation.

Over three hundred witness statements were examined in the trial of her principle accomplices, Ilona Joo, Dorottya Szentes, also known as Dorka, Katarína Benická, and a male dwarf by the name of János Újváry, better known as Ibis or Ficzko. During the search of Čachtice Castle officials discovered bones and other remains, including mutilated corpses, many with no arms or eyes.

The accused were also quick to confess to numerous crimes, not under threat of torture, but in the hope of gaining clemency through cooperation. Ficzko alone confessed to the killing of thirty-seven girls. He could not remember just how many women he had helped to kill. Ilona Joo, who admitted to killing fifty, said that she had inserted red-hot pokers into the mouths or up the noses of her victims. All described that how the Countess, even during illness, did not lose her lust for blood, having girls brought to her bed, on occasions biting them to death.

Inevitably stories of sorcery and witchcraft made an appearance. Erzsébet was claimed to have had sexual relations with Satan. Many of the kidnapped girls were said to have been chained to the walls of her dungeons and fattened up because this was believed to increase the blood in their bodies, and blood was needed for her moonlit sorcery.

At the end of the trial Erzsébet and her accomplices were convicted, on the basis of the remains discovered and the witness statements, of eighty counts of murder, though the number of victims is likely to have been considerably more, possibly as many as 650, going on the basis of a register of names supposedly in the Countess' own handwriting. Dorka, Ilona Joo and Ficzko were all thrown into a pit of fire. Katarína Benická was sentenced to life imprisonment, the evidence suggesting that she only acted under the bullying and the domination of the other women.

The problem then remained what to do with the principle culprit. The King favoured execution, but that meant enacting a special statute, stripping her of royal immunity. In the end she was imprisoned for life in her own castle of Čachtice, the scene of many of her crimes, with the doors and windows of her chambers bricked up, save for small slits for food and air. It was there that she died in 1614.

Like Vlad the Impaler and the myth of Dracula Erzsébet began to attract her own mythology, including the story that she bathed in the blood of her victims, believing it to be a way of preserving her youth, a tale that goes no further back than 1729. Such a suggestion is, of course, horrible, but it at least supplied both a dark rationale and a motive. The real horror of Erzsébet's life is that she simply had a taste for suffering and blood as ends in themselves. A vampire of a kind, yes, but infinitely more terrifying than any of the monster's of fiction.