János Esterházy

The native form of this personal name is Esterházy János. This article uses the Western name order.

Count János Esterházy (Nyitraújlak, Austria-Hungary, March 14, 1901 – Czechoslovakia, March 8, 1957) a member of the House of Esterházy was the most prominent ethnic Hungarian politician in former Czechoslovakia. His legacy is also one of the biggest sources of conflicts in Hungarian-Slovak relations up to this day.

He was the only member of the Slovak Parliament in 1942 who voted against expelling the Jews, setting an example which few dared to follow in the parts of Europe controlled by Adolf Hitler's Germany. He was detained by the Nazis and died in a communist prison. Officially he is still classified as a war criminal in Slovakia, as courts have rejected requests for his rehabilitation. However, Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League has recognized Esterházy's efforts for Jews with the Courage to Care Award.

Family

Son of Antal Mihály Esterházy, he was born into one of Hungary's most distinguished aristocrat families, the House of Esterházy, in the Galánta branch originated from Transylvania. His mother, Countess Elżbieta Tarnowska, daughter of Professor Stanisław Tarnowski, was Polish. He was four when his father died. He went to secondary school in Budapest and after studying commerce he returned to his estate in an area which Hungary was forced to cede to Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Trianon which closed World War I. On October 15, 1924 he married countess Lívia Serényi. They had two children, János and Alice.

In politics

In 1931 Esterházy became the leader of the Hungarian League of Nations League in the Czech Republic, an organization which operated within the League of Nations. On December 11 of the following year he was elected president of the National Christian Socialist Party. He won parliament mandate in Košice at the elections in 1935. In his first speech in parliament he said: "As we have been attached to Czechoslovakia against our will, we demand that the Czechoslovak government fully respect our minority, language, cultural and economic rights." He also supported the claims of ethnic Hungarians for autonomy within Slovakia. The Hungarian MPs supported^{[citation needed]} the successful bid of Edvard Beneš for president of the republic.

Head of the United Hungarian Party

Hungarian parties founded the United Hungarian Party at their congress held in Nové Zámky on June 21, 1936, and Esterházy was elected the new party's acting president. He rejected an offer by Beneš to take a post in the Czechoslovakian government.

In 1938 he met the head of the British mission, Lord Runciman several times. He also held talks in Hungary, Poland and Italy. On March 17 and 18, during talks in Poland, he backed Hungary's proposal to return the territory of Slovakia to Hungary. He also wanted to take part in the negotiations about the two countries' borders in Komarno, but the head of the Czechoslovakian delegation, Jozef Tiso, rejected his request.

His political activity in Slovakia

After the Vienna Awards giving back to Hungary part of the territories lost earlier, Esterházy welcomed Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy as the MP of Košice (then Kassa), but he settled in the former Hungarian land kept by Slovakia and founded the Hungarian Party in Slovakia to defend the interests of the 70,000 ethnic Hungarians there, while he also called for the Hungarian government to respect the rights of the ethnic Slovaks who lived in the regained Hungarian territories (and he also urged a reform of land ownership in Hungary). He published a daily, Új Hírek (fresh news) in Bratislava, but it was banned and Esterházy was drawn under police surveillance. Later he established a new daily, the Magyar Hírlap (Hungarian newspaper). His party rejected Nazism. He negotiated with Slovak president Jozef Tiso about the rights of ethnic Hungarians several times and also spoke for those rights in parliament (in which he was the sole Hungarian MP). On March 14, 1939 he welcomed the establishment of independent Slovakia in a radio speech. In Bratislava he founded a publishing company and backed the operations of Szemle, an ethnic Hungarian cultural organization which was banned but restarted in 1942.

His views on "the Jewish issue"

The Slovak parliament approved on May 15, 1942, the 68/1942 constitutional law about expelling the Jews from Slovakia. Esterházy was the only MP who voted against the bill and he immediately became the target of fierce attacks in the Slovak press. To defend his views, he said:

"The Slovak government has strayed onto a dangerous path when it submitted the bill about expelling the Jewish, because by that it acknowledged that simply ousting a minority by the majority is lawful... As a representative of the Hungarians here, I state it, and please acknowledge this, that I don't vote in favour of the proposal because as a Hungarian, a Christian and a Catholic I believe that this is against God and humanity."

Esterházy, János (1942)

When the Slovak parliament voted on the deportation of Jews to Germany he also declared:

"It is shameful that a government, whose president and prime minister claim to be good Catholics, deports its Jewish citizens to Hitler's concentration camps"

Esterházy, János (1942)

János Esterházy helped hundreds of Jewish, Czechs, Slovaks and Polish in 1944 to escape from being prosecuted. He was interned for a short period and the German Gestapo declared him wanted. Here is a quote from Irén Rujder, Ödön Rujder's widow (Ödön Rujder was rescued by Esterházy):

"We all, who lived in Slovakia in that time, know the truth. They (the Czechoslovaks) handed him (Esterházy) to the Soviets, because if they had brought him to justice in Bratislava, all of the Jews would have testified his innocence. The misinterpretation of truth like this is painful, Esterházy really deserves the true tree of Israel."

Rujder, Irén

Prison

After the Soviet army ousted German troops from Bratislava, they interned Esterházy, but released him after 12 days. Later he negotiated with Gustáv Husák who represented the interim Slovak government, and complained about the prosecution of ethnic Hungarians. On the order of Husák he was arrested and handed over to the Soviet secret service KGB. He was kept for one year in the feared prison of Lubyanka in Moscow, and then, on the basis of fabricated allegations, he was sentenced to ten years work in Siberia. The Slovak National Court in Bratislava on September 16, 1947 sentenced him in his absence to death for alleged collaboration with fascism. In 1949 the Soviet Union extradited him to Czechoslovakia. He was not executed as a presidential pardon commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Over the next years he was transferred from prison to prison in Czechoslovakia. He died in Mírov prison in 1957.

Efforts for his rehabilitation

On January 21, 1993 the Russians rehabilitated János Esterházy. Under the seal of the Office of the Attorney General and the IG of the Armed Forces and signed by N. Sz. Vlaszenko, (document #Sz.: Zuv-9563-54) states in part that:

"It is hereby certified that János Esterházy, citizen of Czechoslovakia, born in Újlak in 1901, was arrested without cause on June 27, 1945.....and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp.... János Esterházy was rehabilitated according to the Russian Federation's "Political Terror Victim's Rehabilitation Act" of October 18, 1991, paragraphs 3 and 5...."

seal of the Office of the Attorney General and the IG of the Armed Forces, January 21, 1993

There is a letter from Simon Wiesenthal to Dr. Peter Samko, chief judge of the City of Bratislava, published in the newspaper of Új Szó, 1993. In his letter Wiesenthal strongly defends Esterházy and offers witnesses on his behalf (Új Szó Daily also published: on the testimonial of the Schlesinger family of Pozsony, saved by Esterházy).

His daughter, Alice Esterházy-Malfatti, and ethnic Hungarian politicians in Slovakia and politicians in Hungary, have been trying to achieve the rehabilitatation in Slovakia of János Esterházy since November 1989, supported by the Hungarian government. The effort has not been successful so far. In 1994 his daughter initiated a new legal procedure, but a court rejected that, referring to the assessment of his role by Slovak and Czech historians. On his 100th birthday, Hungary's parliament held a memorial session in the presence of then president of the republic Ferenc Mádl. On April 20, 2007, President László Sólyom, a staunch advocate of friendship between Hungarians and Slovaks, also urged Esterházy's rehabilitation. "How comes that everybody respect a "war criminal", politicians officially stand by him, while legally and in documents he is still burdened by the most severe possible condemnation?" - Sólyom said in a speech delivered at a conference organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to remember Esterházy's death.

Further reading

• [1] Eduard Nižňanský a spol, Kto bol kto za I. ČSR (Q111 Brat. 1993)
• [2] Jozef Kamenec, Osobnosť Jánosa Esterházyho a jej kontroverzné interpretácie (Ľudia ľuďom bez hraníc, Helsinské občianske združenie v SR, Nitra 2000, s. 34)
• [3] Alice Esterházy-Malfatti, Bálint Török, Esterházy János Emlékkönyv (Pamätná kniha Jánosa Esterházyho) (Századvég Bp. 2001)
• [4] František Mikloško Žurnál Rádia Twist 12. 3. 2001
• [5] Ladislav Deák, Politický profil Jánoša Esterházyho (Ministerstvo kultúry Slovenskej republiky vo vyd. Kubko Goral 1995, šírený zdarma a vydaný súčasne i v anglickej a maďarskej jazykovej mutácii)
• [6] Jerguš Ferko, Vodca-zvodca János Esterházy (Maďarské sebaklamy, Matica Slovenská 2003, s.127-129)
• [7] Bohumil Doležal: Yehuda Lahav úr vitájához, Lidové noviny, April 21, 2001
• [8] Augustín Marko, Pavol Martinický, Slovensko-maďarské vzťahy

External links

In Hungarian:

• EMLÉKFÜZET az Esterházy János Emlékbizottság fennállásának 15. évfordulója alkalmából
• A FELVIDÉKI MAGYARSÁG MÁRTÍRJA
• DURAY MIKLÓS Megkésett temetési beszéd
• Esterházy János rehabilitációját sürgeti a köztársasági elnök