Tag #136012 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

From the 1980s on anti-Hungarianism and anti-Semitism became in fact more pronounced; for example, Hungarians and Jews who were in higher positions in different workplaces were laid off and Romanians gradually got into leading positions. This couldn't really be done in literary circles, there were always Hungarians beside the Romanians in the management of newspapers. It can be a long discussion to what extent writers and intellectuals of Jewish origin contributed to interwar and postwar Hungarian literature. There were Jews, for example, in the management of Utunk and Korunk, Erno Gall [31] and Pal Soni at Korunk and Laci Foldes at Utunk. We don't think of them today as Jews any more: although they were Jewish by origin, they declared themselves Hungarian authors, who belonged to Hungarian culture. We must distinguish these people from the Hungarians and Jews who played a leading role in the party leadership, since they played this leading role as communists and not as Hungarians or Jews.