Reflection of migration after the Armenian genocide in the Transylvanian Hungarian press

Conservative versus liberal perspectives

To obtain representative data covering the whole of Transylvania, we examine two prominent Transylvanian political dailies: the liberal Ellenzék from Cluj-Napoca and the conservative Brassói Lapok published in Brașov. Despite their great popularity, these newspapers can be considered only regional press products; therefore, they cannot be expected to follow foreign policy events with the same level of interest as nationally distributed dailies. Therefore, we must take into account that this will reduce the number of reports on the tragedy of the Armenians. Furthermore, we must also bear in mind that during the examined period, the political landscape in Transylvania had changed, which, in turn, significantly affected the media landscape – including news reporting, the types of information sources, and the distribution of information. According to Gábor Győrffy’s assessments, Transylvania had a significant press operating in rural areas prior to the First World War, but following the Treaty of Trianon, the part of the nation which had fallen under Romanian authority recognized that its institutions had to adapt in order to remain effective in the new minority situation. Following the cession, the independent press system was the first institution to be established in Transylvania: thus, within a few years, the press became the most important internal power within the self-organizing society.¹ Ellenzék was first published in Cluj-Napoca in 1880 as a political, economic, and social daily. From 1919, it was published as an independent political daily, and later, from 1923, as a Hungarian political daily, continuing to appear without interruption until its closure in 1944. The newspaper’s focus on social and economic issues was also remarkable. In the 1920s, its political orientation followed the ideology of civil liberalism, and from 1927 onward, it became the official press organ of the Hungarian Peasant Party. In addition, it played a significant role in shaping the literature of the period: its literary supplements were edited by prominent figures such as Aladár Kuncz and Lajos Áprily.² This weekly literature supplement was such an important feature that we consider Ellenzék as a shaping force of the Romanian-Hungarian literature which established its distinct identity.

However, in Transylvania’s other major city, Brașov, another Hungarian-language daily newspaper described as political also existed, which was founded on January 1, 1895, through the fusion of the newspapers Brassó and Brassói Magyar Újság. The significance of the locally oriented Brassói Lapok grew following the First World War. At first, the daily was conservative, but from 1928 onward, when its significance became nationwide, it evolved into a civic-democratic publication. It regularly published works by prominent writers such as Elek Benedek, Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Juhász, and Dezső Kosztolányi, but it also published longer pieces, including novels.³ During the period of imperial transition, it found itself in a privileged position, as Brașov was located in the centre of the new country, close to Bucharest, allowing it to report on certain events from a completely different perspective, since censorship in Brașov had been less strict from the beginning.⁴ The paper ceased publication in the fall of 1940, as a result of anti-Hungarian threats from the far-right, fascist Iron Guard. Both dailies were published in black-and-white and in a large format, Ellenzék was generally 10-12 pages long, while Brassói Lapok had eight pages. Their content was arranged in columns and clearly structured. Both published valuable editorials on the cover page, and in addition, there were separate editorial columns, which mainly dealt with political topics.

The Armenian Genocide and its global aftermath

Although the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, more than 30 countries, and renowned scholars around the world have recognized that this was undoubtedly genocide, the precise timeframe and the circumstances of the events continue to divide the academic community. It is indisputable, however, that the tragedy of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the first genocide of the 20^th century, a process of ethnic cleansing as part of an attempt of mass extermination. The perpetrators were the Ottoman Turks, who, mainly under the cover of the First World War, murdered approximately 1.5 million Armenians, representing the Christian minority of the empire. The perpetrators’ methods included not only execution but also death by disease, starvation, physical abuse, and drowning. In addition to the exterminated victims, half a million people were permanently deported from the ancestral land they considered their homeland, while their property was either confiscated or simply destroyed.⁵ Another half a million Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam in a terribly violent manner, offering them practically nothing but death as an alternative. The genocide itself was a process that lasted from 1915 to 1923, and unfolded in two phases. In addition, we must mention that the two bloodstained series of events, considered by most researchers to be a kind of precursor.

The first such period became known as the Hamidian Massacres between 1894 and 1896. In order to understand the context, it is essential to note that after the conquering Ottoman Empire had finally assimilated the remains of the once-flourishing ancient Armenia, the Armenian people, as a Christian minority, were forced to live as second-class citizens. Exhausted by the intolerable conditions, the Armenians demanded reforms by the 1800s, instead, however, the sultan effectively started a massacre. Basically, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, who became infamous as the “Bloody Sultan,” responded in this way to the efforts of the Western great powers, which were seeking to control the implementation of reforms as an external force.⁶ In practice, this meant that between 1894 and 1896, 300,000 unarmed Armenians were murdered, 100,000 were forced to convert to Islam, and another 100,000 were deported.⁷

The Adana massacres can be interpreted as the second preliminary phase. The background to these events is that in 1895, an organization called the Young Turks was founded in Paris, as a nationalist and constitutionalist political group, it organized a coup against Sultan Abdul Hamid II.⁸ Unsurprisingly, the Armenians celebrated the change in power, but this was resented by the sultan’s loyalists. These events took place in April 1909 in the city of Adana, which had a large Armenian population, when those who attempted to restore the sultan’s reign once again began murdering Armenians. The events escalated into a three-day pogrom, which was finally brought to an end by the British vice-consul. But at that point, more than 30,000 Armenians had already been killed.⁹ Ultimately, the Young Turk government remained in power, and rule was exercised by an extremely nationalist triumvirate: Enver Pasha as Minister of War, Talat Pasha as Minister of the Interior, and Cemal Pasha as Minister of the Navy. Moreover, the governing party became radicalized following its entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers. Behind the genocide, stood the ideology known as Pan-Turkism,¹⁰ which proclaimed the superiority of the Turkish race and in which, unfortunately, the Armenian people had no place. The government established special paramilitary units, which carried out the deportations and murders: for this purpose, 10,000 Turkish and Kurdish prisoners were released from prisons.¹¹ As the first stage of the genocide, Armenian soldiers were disarmed and executed in February 1915.¹² Then, on April 24, civilian leaders, intellectuals, doctors, businessmen, and artists were executed without any formal charges, thereby the Armenian elite was eliminated. To provide a legal base for the deportations, the so-called “Temporary Law of Deportation” was implemented on May 27, thereby allowing the remaining Armenians to be evicted by military force.¹³ They were forced into long, tortuous death marches into the desert of Deir ez-Zor, located in present-day Syria. Many of the deportees were massacred by the Special Organization, but the Armenian population was also decimated by allowing Kurdish raiders to plunder, rape, and kill the Armenians. There were also transit and death camps at the destination in the desert: those arriving there were burned en masse, poisoned, or drowned. According to scholars, more than 850,000 Armenians were deported, of whom at least 300,000 had died by the winter of 1915. By their estimates, at least 250,000 Armenians were still alive at the beginning of the second phase of the genocide, in February 1916.

This marked the beginning of the final phase, when the deportation of the last remaining Armenians in the inner provinces began. Although the new leader, Mustafa Kemal – who remained known as the “Father of the Turks” – proclaimed a “democratic” republic in 1923, the remaining Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians were also expelled on his orders.¹⁴ No period of peace could be expected for the survivors of the genocide. As a result of the violent Turkification policy, terrible conditions had developed by the end of the war: more than two million Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Persians became forced migrants, among whom about 400,000 were children. More than 100,000 Armenian refugees arrived at the refugee camps established in the former Ottoman provinces of present-day Lebanon and Syria. From there, they were able to reach European ports by ship through the diplomatic and aid networks, but an important escape route also led across the Ottoman–Russian border, presumably for 120,000-150,000 people. Although the great powers had sought to establish an independent Armenian state, when this seemed to be failing, the League of Nations assumed a central role in ensuring the well-being of the refugees.¹⁵ By then, however, the civilian population was already actively involved in the relief work. Another extremely important aspect is that the genocide became a taboo subject after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, surrounded by state-level denial of the events.

Although Western Europe was a more attractive destination, it is also important to examine our region from the perspective of the arriving Armenian refugees. First of all, there is a significant difference in the number of Armenians arriving in Romania and Hungary. After 1918, more than 30,000 Ottoman and Russian Armenian refugees arrived in the Romanian region, joining their compatriots who had settled there over the centuries. It can be tracked that the first 20,000 Armenian refugees arrived across the Black Sea. Most of them, about 12,000, settled in Bucharest and another 3,000 in Constanţa, but the cities of Galaţi, Brăila, Tulcea, Pitești, Craiova, Focșani, Ploiești, Bacău, Roman, and lași were also attractive destinations. A significant number – more than 10,000 – arrived via Bessarabia, crossing the Soviet–Romanian border along the Dniester River.¹⁶ In contrast, it is remarkable that the number of Armenians arriving in Hungary was much smaller, at a maximum of two hundred. Although statistical records are lacking in this case, making it difficult to estimate their exact number, the reason why Hungary did not appear attractive to Armenian refugees is obvious. As Hungary was an ally of the Turks through the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the refugees could hardly have seen Hungary as a safe destination, or even as a transit country. The geographical factor is also important, since Romania was much easier to reach by sea.

Data collection and research methodology

In the data collection process, we first defined the period to be examined: the starting date is 1894, when the Hamidian massacres began, and the end date is 1940. It is necessary to examine this period of nearly fifty years, because the processes of Armenian forced migration occurred in various, fluctuating phases that are closely related to the different phases of the genocide. Similarly, the aftermath of the genocide must also be the subject of this study. For this reason, it’s important to closely follow the Nansen Office’s work regarding refugees right up until the Second World War. The press corpus was obtained from three different sources: the online databases of the Arcanum Digital Library and DigiTéka, where we used the search terms “Armenian refugee.” Issues missing from the online databases were reviewed and processed manually in the periodicals collection of the Lucian Blaga Central University Library in Cluj-Napoca. Subsequently, when categorizing the articles during the qualitative analysis, grouping them by thematic categories seemed appropriate. Based on this, the following six topics can be observed, along with the numerical distribution of the articles:

Representing the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

In the pre-World War I period, the daily newspaper Ellenzék devoted a surprising amount of attention to the persecuted Armenians of the empire. This is the category of articles demonstrating the most empathy toward the Armenians, and it is also the thematic category with the highest number of articles, as nearly three-quarters of their writings fall into this category. These articles – mainly news items, local reports, and occasionally, a few feature stories – provided a historically accurate portrayal of each event, based on the historical facts. The first thematic category primarily includes articles published during the Hamidian massacres and those concerning the Adana massacre, which we have divided into three further subcategories for easier overview: the portrayal of the Hamidian massacres, the Armenians – in eternal persecution, and Kemalist politics. Even the very first opinion material, dated March 24, 1895, has exceptional importance. In this commentary, taken from the Daily Telegraph and supplemented with the editorial staff’s views, readers could learn about the extent of the brutality threatening the Armenian people.

As they pointed out, the British daily surprisingly presented the events from the perspective of a Turkish sub-officer. According to his account, the massacre lasted ten days, with 300-400 people being slaughtered every night. The Turkish sub-officer who testified was unable to harm children, even though his fellow soldiers simply picked up the children with the prongs of their pitchforks and threw them into the enormous mass grave that had been prepared in advance. The Armenians were all unarmed and unable to defend themselves. An order to halt the massacre was finally issued by one of the pashas, but by then, every Armenian in the area had been slaughtered. Another form of massacre involved forcing people into the fire: the forest where hundreds of Armenians had taken refugee was set on fire with cannons, and those who were not killed by the bombs, perished in the flames.¹⁷ The incident was also mentioned a few issues later in the British press. In this article, however, they mocked the current British Prime Minister, Gladstone, for speaking out against the atrocities, criticizing his “sensitive and humane soul.” Yet this, too, was a truly horrific crime.

According to a reporter from the Daily Telegraph, Turkish soldiers are committing brutal murders even as a bet. In Sasun, for example, they bet on whether they could behead four „Christian dogs” with a single stroke of a sword. The bet was won by the soldier who demonstrated that he was capable of doing this on four innocent Armenian infants, all in front of their mothers.¹⁸ Readers could come across the following news item on the subject on November 13. From this, they could find out that the bloodshed in Asia Minor was still ongoing: according to consular and private reports, the number of Armenians killed was estimated to be in the thousands. It was also reported that the Turks were the aggressors, and that the military units not only remained passive, but also participated in the atrocities on multiple occasions.¹⁹ In December, a brief news item described the immeasurable misery prevailing in those Asian Minor provinces where riots had occurred. Without urgent foreign intervention, two-thirds of the population would starve to death during the winter.²⁰

On August 29, 1896, two more reports from Constantinople were published. The first reported that on the 28^th, many Armenians had been slaughtered again, bringing the death count to over two thousand, and that these massacres by the Turkish mob were so horrifying that Armenians throughout Istanbul were living in fear.²¹ From the second brief report, however, we can deduce that the murdering of Armenians did not really reach the population’s threshold of tolerance during these months of the Hamidian massacres. This is because they wrote that the fact that a Muslim mob had murdered 21 Armenian artisans at the Istanbul train station did not disrupt urban traffic at all.²² Their articles published in early September 1896 described even more horrific conditions, and it is important to note that these reports also confirmed the involvement of various official authorities. In an editorial published on the 5^th, they wrote on the front page about bloodstains and mutilated corpses that lay in the streets of the capital’s district known as Pera. During the day, soldiers and police officers patrolled everywhere, but night-time guards gladly revealed to the murderers where the Armenian families were hiding. According to the article, the reason for this behaviour is that by exterminating the Armenians, Turkish artisans would rid themselves of their competitors, and simultaneously „please” both the government and their own religion.²³ A report with a similar headline appeared on September 12, also on the cover page; and it is a valuable piece because it explains how imperial propaganda portrays Armenians as revolutionaries. As reported, the police deny that they are murdering Armenians at night; indeed, the entire Turkish administration is attempting to reduce the number of victims and create false accusations about them, claiming that they are hiding weapons and disguises. According to the author, this is unfair, as the Armenian Revolutionary Committee is being confused with those innocent Armenians who harm no one.²⁴ The following article, titled An Eyewitness to the Turkish Massacres at Cluj-Napoca, is truly noteworthy, as its local significance is clear. At the same time, it also clearly emphasizes that the Transylvanian population – at least the people of Cluj – was fully conscious of the atrocities committed against the Armenians. According to the article, it was well known to everyone that the Turks had massacred the Armenians with extreme cruelty. And one of the eyewitnesses to these horrors, Jakab Melik, a Serbian Protestant priest, had arrived in Cluj. Melik had escaped the murderous mobs during the massacres of July 15, 1896, and now, as a pauper with nine orphaned children, he obtained permission to beg in Cluj.²⁵ Unfortunately, no further information about the refugee was published.

However, not all articles took sides with the persecuted Armenians. For example, a brief news item published on July 25, 1905, mentioned only the revolutionary Armenian organization – and only in passing and in a one-sided manner – in the context of the assassination attempt against the sultan.²⁶ This negative and stigmatizing tone toward Armenians continued in the following article as well, even though it reported on the persecution of Armenians under Russian, not Ottoman rule. With this, we have arrived at the next subcategory, titled Armenians – Eternally Persecuted. It was reported that General Drigorkov had to move into Baku with artillery to put an end to the disturbances: a thousand rebellious Armenians retreated into a hospital building after soldiers called on them to surrender.²⁷ The fact that this report only covered the Armenians’ crimes, such as the Armenians setting fire to several Russian soldiers while they were still alive, does not suggest a balanced coverage.

But the following telegram, published four years later, also confirmed that the Armenians were persecuted not only by the Ottoman government, but also by other states in various parts of the region. For example, similar massacres took place in the city of Tehran in Persia at the time, when nationalists and Cossacks sparked a revolution in 1909.²⁸ Readers were not given any further explanation, however, although there is another article related to the subject. In an article published after the World War, it was reported that the Muslim population was threatening the Armenian population of Transcaucasia with massacres. It was written that, under the leadership of Turkish officers, massive Tatar forces disarmed the Armenian troops, and proclaimed the government of Azerbaijan.²⁹ By the way, they later published an article in 1930 about the conflicts in the Transcaucasian region, explaining that most of the bloodshed in the Transcaucasian Democratic Federal Republic had taken place in the Armenian region, and that this minority was suffering the most from the Communists’ activities that were disrupting the commerce.³⁰ The next subcategory takes us back to the era of Kemalist politics. The first article in this group was published in February 1919. A telegram from New York reported that the War Council was preparing, at its upcoming meeting, for an occupation of Turkey by the Entente and, if necessary, by the American armed forces. According to the article, this measure was presumably related to the arrival of fresh reports regarding the Turks’ atrocities against the Armenians and other defeated nations.³¹ The following article was published in September 1922, explaining the power relations among the states involved at the conference preceding the Treaty of Lausanne. It also noted that the Greek government had requested assistance in evacuating nearly half a million refugees awaiting transport on the shores of Asia Minor, as several hundred thousand Christians were awaiting aid on the islands of the Sea of Marmara.³² The following report on the peace conference was published on November 12, 1922, and it also mentioned the fleeing Armenian minority: as they wrote, the Greek and Armenian populations are constantly being forced to fled from Constantinople, and they are supported primarily by the British High Commissioner.³³ The following overview of Kemalist politics in Turkey was published in 1924. Among other things, it stated that many people did not understand how Mustafa Kemal, after his efforts to rebuild Turkey, could tolerate the mass killings carried out by fanatical Turks, whose suffering victims were Armenians and Greeks. Furthermore, the article stated that Turkey had successfully silenced the international community regarding the bloody events of the Armenian and Greek massacres. Nevertheless, in the further part of the article, the author praised Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish nation, making statements that suggested the moral superiority of the Turks.³⁴ The final article in this category finally provided concrete numerical data. The 1939 opinion article focused on the bloody struggles over Iraq’s oil, and stated that only France and the Armenians emerged as losing parties from this war. According to the author, more than two million Armenians perished during the Turkish–Greek War and the accompanying massacres of Armenians.³⁵

However, the articles published in Brassói Lapok regarding the persecution of Armenians differ significantly from what we have seen above, as it is evident at first glance that the editors did not reflect on the Hamidian and Adana massacres. In this case, the reporting did not occur in real time or as a matter of agenda. The persecutions of Armenians following the genocide were also mentioned only in retrospect, treating the bloody events as a matter of fact. For the first time in 1903, an article was published merely as secondary information, mentioning the Armenian massacres in the form of a retrospective account. The article included a commentary on a letter published in The Times, in which the Bishop of Gibraltar criticized the German Emperor’s attitude. He also condemned the fact that Germany, an ally of Turkey, had selfishly displayed calm and heartless indifference during the Armenian massacres.³⁶ We must wait more than a year for the next mention. The five-part series article was published on the cover page each time and was titled Visiting the Armenian Pope. The author visited the Armenian Plateau, but since his guide was a German scholar living in Tiflis, it is not surprising that his account of his experiences does not go into detail about the Turks’ cruel behaviour. Instead, the author carefully notes only that this region has seen much destruction. The first part of the series concludes with a description of the monumentality of the cathedral, the seat of the Armenian pope (bishop).³⁷ In the third part, he provided information about the Armenian people, the independent Armenian national church, and the differences between the Eastern and Western Armenian churches.³⁸ A few years later, around the time of Abdul-Hamid II’s deposition, although a brief news item was found regarding the murders committed against the Armenians, the report stated that the perpetrators were not Turks, but Kurds and Circassians.³⁹

Subsequently, the Armenians were mentioned in this context only later, in connection with the catastrophe that struck Smyrna on September 17, 1922, which was the final stage of the genocide. A telegram from Vienna reported on the Turkish troops’ entry into Smyrna. The Turks stormed the Armenian quarter: they killed 150 people and kidnapped the women. They set the Greek quarter on fire, murdered 120 people, and then locked down the city.⁴⁰ Brassói Lapok covered the incident the following day as well, but the telegram from London made no mention that the executioners and incendiaries were Turks. Instead, it stated that a clash and fire had broken out between Armenians and Greeks, resulting in the loss of a thousand lives.⁴¹ On the same page, the editorial office had already received the following telegram from Athens, informing the readers that the Greek government had turned to the Allies to request ships for the transport of half a million refugees. The report concluded with the following: if this dispute among the great powers continues, soon there will be no one left to save.⁴² The following article was reprinted from the Daily Telegraph and finally reported on the horrors witnessed on the Turkish–Greek front. According to the report, even upon arriving in Smyrna, the fleeing Armenians found nothing but famine. The fleeing Greeks and Armenians ran about in a panic to avoid falling into the hands of the Turks. The most harrowing sight among them was a thin, dirty, broken child, crying and begging for food. Under such circumstances, an adult or child was often left behind in the fleeing crowd: they collapsed, died, but no one cared about them anymore. Perhaps they were even envied for reaching the end of their suffering.⁴³ The following brief report concerned two ships carrying Armenian refugees that were attacked by thee soldiers of the Kemalist army, who tied an Armenian priest to the mast, and then set the ship on fire.⁴⁴ Meanwhile, as we have already seen, the Turkish side clearly denied that it was persecuting minorities living within the empire. The daily newspaper in Brașov reported all of this in its coverage of the consultations preceding the Lausanne Peace Treaty.⁴⁵

The following article, published in 1926, is especially valuable for its information on Armenian women. It reported that Turkish slave traders had abducted countless Christian women, mostly during the World War, and had been holding them captive by force ever since. Many of them were abducted as young children and raised specifically to serve the purposes of the harems. The Geneva correspondent of Brassói Lapok found out about all this from a Danish female missionary whom the League of Nations had commissioned to investigate the situation of these women, rescue them, and place them in a shelter she managed in Alev. According to the missionary, thirty thousand women suffer in harems and at the hands of agents, because they are objects of the sex industry. The women’s children were sold, they were married off to Muslims, but many of them were imported to Europe by traffickers. In 1925 only, Danish missionaries managed to rescue 1,400 women from the harems. But there were also some among them who felt they had a good life and wanted to stay. Many Armenian women from the harems got married, and indeed, many married for love.⁴⁶ This article clearly illustrates the significant social changes that the violent persecution of the Armenians brought about in a long-term perspective, and it confirms that the missionaries and aid organizations did tremendously useful work. Although the following article reported that an Armenian revolutionary organization had assassinated the archbishop of the Armenian emigrants in New York, this piece can still be classified under the category of the persecution of Armenians, as it reflected on the turbulent lives of Armenians in Turkey. As reported, the revolutionary association known as Dasnak can be considered a mafia-like organization, even as late as 1934, its members were still dreaming of an independent Armenia. As they wrote, as a result of the massacres carried out by the sultan and the Young Turks, out of the three million Armenians who lived in pre-war Turkey, barely 100,000 remained. The remaining nearly one million had fled to the Soviet Republic of Yerevan, while another one and a half million had emigrated, mostly to the United States, via Persia and French Syria. The report further explained that the archbishop was murdered because he believed it was still better to exist under Soviet rule than to perish under the Kemalist nationalist dictatorship. The organization’s secret members found this view unacceptable, and that is why they murdered the archbishop.⁴⁷

Events of the First World War

In this category, Ellenzék and Brassói Lapok appear to have adopted the principle that a problem not reported is a problem that does not exist. At least, this is the conclusion we can draw, given that Transylvanian dailies published absolutely no material about Armenian refugees during the years of the World War. Not only that, they did not publish any articles that would have distorted the truth by presenting events from the Turkish perspective; they did not publish any mention of them at all. This further confirms that, with the onset of the World War, the reporting in the two Transylvanian daily newspapers was similar to the Hungarian press. After all, Hungarian military censorship could not allow the newspapers to undermine the image of the Turkish ally. Transylvania was no exception to this. However, it is also conceivable that the editorial staff believed these events were beyond the interest of Transylvanian readers.

Nansen and the League of Nations’ international discourse on refugee resettlement

Both Hungary and Romania had the opportunity to report on the issues discussed at various League of Nations sessions. It is important to bear this in mind, because following the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, Transylvania was united with Romania. Thus, by the time Transylvanian newspapers had the opportunity to report on the international handling of the refugee crisis, they were already doing it as part of Romania. Judging by the number of articles, it can be concluded that the work of the League of Nations and the Nansen Office regarding refugees largely escaped the attention of Ellenzék. In contrast, Brassói Lapok devoted considerable attention to the issue. Ellenzék published a total of five articles on the subject, and these articles were primarily aimed at criticizing the organization. The first article in this category was not even the own material of Ellenzék, but a reprint from the Romanian Dimineaţa newspaper. In it, they reported that the League of Nations had published a report on political refugees in need of assistance. The number of Russian refugees was 800,000 and 240,000 Armenians. They added that the Armenians remained martyr and suffering people, forced to flee, leaving all their possessions behind, amidst the devastation of disease, typhus, and hunger. They further clarified that the fate of those listed in the League of Nations report differs from that of the older refugees, as these people have no hope of returning to their homelands.⁴⁸ The following article is a well-written analysis, a kind of judgment on the work of the League of Nations, its inconsistencies, and the injustices of the Lausanne Conference. But even here, the situation of the Armenians was only mentioned in passing.⁴⁹ By 1938, it was already being reported that in Geneva, no matter how much emphasis was placed on the importance of protecting minorities and refugees, in reality this issue did not receive the attention it deserved. After all, the minority issue affected thirty million people in Europe.⁵⁰

In contrast, the Brașov daily published the most articles in this category, a total of 14. The first mention of Nansen appeared in September 1924. This article reported on the proceedings of the League of Nations’ current session, and noted that the League had commended Nansen for taking up the cause of Russian and Armenian refugees.⁵¹ An article published in May 1926 about one of the League of Nations’ subsequent sessions discussed international passport regulations and measures to ease the process of obtaining them. According to the International Labour Office, refugees would be transported home by ship, and the costs would be covered by the Russian and Turkish embassies, but as they wrote, neither country is inclined to do that.⁵² The presence of Armenian and Russian refugees undoubtedly caused major problems for the host countries, nevertheless, in one of its opinion pieces from 1926, the editorial board marked the issue as insignificant.⁵³ Subsequently, a few more articles mentioned that the League of Nations had addressed the issue of Armenian refugees, but in 1930, the topic was broached again in connection with Nansen’s death. It was noted that the Norwegian geologist and arctic explorer would be remembered more as a diplomat and champion of solidarity, who, among other things, took the plight of Bulgarian, Armenian, and Russian refugees to his heart, and established several international humanitarian institutions.⁵⁴ We also come across a report published by the association in 1936 detailing those who were taken under its wings. In addition to the 800,000 Belarusians, 100,000 German, and refugees of other nationalities, the registry also included 240,000 Armenians, who had received a total of 2.68 million Swiss francs in aid by that point.⁵⁵ In the same year, however, a critical opinion piece was published in response to the news of the Office’s dissolution. It noted that over the course of ten years, the Office had provided new European accommodations for nearly one million Russian, Armenian, Italian, German, Balkan, Spanish, and Portuguese refugees. They explained the reasons for the dissolution by saying that the new European realpolitik seeks to create nation-states in which refugees who strengthen the political opposition are nothing but a source of frustration.⁵⁶

Discussion on the arrival, accommodation, and registration of refugees

In both publications, this category contains only a negligible number of articles: three in Ellenzék and only one in the Brașov daily. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t include some very important articles. One such article was written by Ellenzék in 1895, during the Hamidian massacres. According to it, ships arriving from Turkish ports on the Black Sea brought with them several hundred refugees who had escaped the massacres from Trebizond, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, and Erzurum. In the last-mentioned city, the massacres committed by Turkish “regular troops” took place with the assistance of the government’s chief commissioner. The wealthy Armenians of Odessa organized a fundraiser for the refugees, who were in a miserable state. It is also mentioned that letters from the Armenians of Asia Minor addressed to Russia were confiscated by the Turkish authorities, as were the cash-filled letters sent to them by Russian Armenians.⁵⁷

A report on the Lausanne Conference was published on December 29, 1922. It noted that the negotiations revolved almost exclusively around minority issues, and the conflict between the parties was nearly irreconcilable. The Bulgarian representatives, for example, emphasized that more than 150,000 Armenians that had fled to their country wished to return to Turkey. The Armenians sought the support of the great powers to establish an Armenian patriarchate in Kars and Cilicia, and thereby found their national homeland. But the Turks reacted with protest, arguing that minorities are not typically included as negotiating parties in intergovernmental talks.⁵⁸ In contrast, Brassói Lapok published only a single brief news item on this matter, from which we learned that at the Lausanne Conference, representatives from Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia had submitted a memorandum stating that they were prepared to accept the majority of Armenian refugees.⁵⁹

The integration of arriving refugees

In the case of Ellenzék, most of the articles dealt with events and information concerning Armenians in Romania and Hungary. Through its correspondent in Budapest, it first reported that forty Armenian families had fled to Budapest due to the turbulent situation in Turkey. Most of them were wealthy, and after their arrival, they established a large textile shareholding company. They also planned to found a Mechitarist monastery that was expected to be monumental, for which the Pope had already granted permission, and for which ten million liras had been set aside.⁶⁰ Similarly, a brief news item published two years later is also connected to the Church. It reported that the high priest of the Armenians who had fled the 1922 Turkish massacre was arriving in Romania from France in order to examine the organization of the Armenian Catholic churches in Romania and, at the same time, to visit Dumbrăveni.⁶¹ The topic of foreigners residing in Romania was also addressed in an official report from 1934, which summarized the composition of the Romanian labour force. According to this report, in 1934, there were 24,414 foreigners registered in the country, of whom 8,000 were Russian and Armenian refugees who, since they held Nansen passports, could not be expelled from Romania. Based on the statistics, their number represented two percent of the country’s working population.⁶² In chronological order, the next article looked beyond the country’s borders. In 1935, an article on refugees in Prague was published, and the Czech capital was dubbed the „city of exiles.” They wrote that Bulgarians, Russians, Germans, Croats, Armenians, Macedonians, Spaniards, and Jews were also staying there, people who could no longer live in their homelands.

Approximately four hundred Armenian refugees, mostly university students and schoolgirls fled to Prague to escape Turkish persecution, and are regarded as Christian martyrs.⁶³ Finally, an analysis from France was also published, a summary that examined the challenges facing the French state apparatus, taking into account that ten percent of the country’s population consists of foreigners, including Armenian political refugees.⁶⁴ Brassói Lapok first published an article in this category on April 8, 1905, specifically an article of opinion sent from the East. The letter, postmarked from Egypt, was sent by Dr. Artur Frim, a physician, to his friend, Dr. Antal Hermann, an Armenologist. The report described Cairo’s multicultural character and Egypt’s vibrant cultural and commercial life. While the author acknowledges the turbulent and unfair fate of the Armenians who had fled to Cairo, he criticizes their attitude toward money, saying that they and the Greeks would even extract gold from the desert sand.⁶⁵ This is significant because the date of the article proves that the expulsion of Armenians from the empire had already begun well before the actual genocide took place. But the daily also reported on the arrival of forty Armenian families in Budapest. The Brașov daily did not write so much about the integration or the plans of the Armenian settlers, but rather about the reason for their arrival. It also noted that their suffering might have been somewhat alleviated by the fact that they had not left their homeland as paupers. According to the author, however, their greatest assets lay not in money, but in the inexhaustible work ethic and diligence that characterizes Armenian refugees.

They also reflected on the Lausanne Conference, whose most recent session, according to the daily newspaper’s report, was heated by a debate between the British foreign secretary and Izmed Pasha, the head of the Turkish delegation. The British statesman angrily criticized the Turks’ denialist attitude. How is it possible that out of three million Armenians, only 130,000 are now living in Anatolia? Did millions of them emigrate voluntarily? He also stated that it is impossible to entrust the fate of the Armenians to the Turks.⁶⁶ In the following article, Joakim Görög, the Armenian Catholic parish priest of Gheorgheni, was honoured on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of his ordination. As they described him, he is a true and Hungarian man. During the jubilee Mass, Joakim expressed his gratitude to the entire Hungarian nation for giving the Armenians a homeland and a mother tongue. The ceremony was also attended by a sorrowful, gentle Armenian refugee couple who fled to Romania following the persecution of Christians, and later settled in Gherla.⁶⁷ Both daily newspapers published the Ministry of the Interior’s announcement regarding the extension of residency permits. According to the decree, holders of Nansen certificates – those of Russian and Armenian nationality – were required to report by January 10, 1931, to surrender their expired certificates and obtain extensions. They were required to pay a stamp duty of 165 lei per person.⁶⁸ The last article of Brassói Lapok classified under this category also referred to the Armenians of Romania: it was an appeal from the Armenian Catholic orphanages for boys and girls in Gherla. According to the notice, both institutions would admit poor orphans of Armenian Catholic parents, starting from the age of seven, for the school year of 1934.⁶⁹ This article also discusses another so-called Transylvanian Armenian colony. More specifically, Frumoasa, which was once considered the economic hub of Szeklerland. In this article, the reporter notes that the urban-style village, which flourished thanks to the Armenian merchants that settled there over the last 300 years, stands out from the other towns in the region. Similarly, people also came here to escape the most recent Armenian massacre, including, for example, the Armenian priest, who has since learned Hungarian and has been serving in Frumoasa ever since. It is also important to note that the Armenian population has declined significantly in recent years. In 1857, 507 Armenian families lived in Frumoasa, but by 1938, there were only 17 families, with a total of 55 people. This, along with the decline in the wealth of the Armenians of Miercurea Ciuc, can be explained by the fact that the Armenians had given up their professions in industry, commerce, and agriculture. Instead, they prioritized the intellectual sphere, and the education of the younger generation began to consume their wealth. Moreover, Armenian graduates typically settled in large cities.⁷⁰

Remembrance and Relief

The final category, labelled “Other,” included articles from the two Transylvanian daily newspapers, written much later, from a retrospective perspective, about the genocide and the subsequent forced migration. In addition, the topic of relief efforts was also recognizable. The first article classified in this category in Ellenzék was precisely about aid, although it mentioned the Armenians only in passing, in connection with a controversial Greek businessman, Sir Basil Zacharov, who donated 10,000 pounds to aid Armenian refugees.⁷¹ As for the theme of remembrance, in the case of Ellenzék, such articles appeared, for example, in the column titled “Forty Years Ago Today.” In a memoir published in 1936, the foreign policy events of 1896 were summarized, and it was written that in the Turkish capital, subversive elements instigated a rebellion through Armenian assassins, and the riots ultimately claimed 200 victims.⁷² There is also a valuable series of reports by Ernő Gara. One of the reports is titled “My Travel Mate: A Refugee from Musa Dagh”. The story features two travellers, one of whom turns out to be an Armenian refugee from Turkey whose brother was killed on Mount Musa Dagh, although he himself managed to escape in time. He joined the French Foreign Legion, from which he also deserted, travelling straight to Constanţa and then on to Bucharest. He is currently on a business trip, as he is organizing the repatriation of Romanian Armenians to the new Soviet Armenia.⁷³ The very next day, a column was published on the cover page, in which Werfel’s novel was mentioned again.⁷⁴

As for Brassói Lapok, in the charity subtopic, donations to Armenian refugees were not described as a necessary act of kindness, but were instead presented to readers as nothing more than a hoax. They recounted the case of begging Syrian Armenian priests who were collecting donations for Armenian refugees who had survived the Turkish massacres. And since they had collected hundreds of thousands of lei in donations across Transylvania in a short time, it caused quite a stir when it turned out that the priests were merely common swindlers, whom the Cluj authorities had arrested.⁷⁵ An article written by the editor-in-chief, Endre Kakassy, fits into the category of reminiscence. He discussed how Turkey broke with the custom of autocratic states in 1937, when it passed a legislative amendment benefiting minorities, granting equal rights to Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and all non-Muslim religious minorities. The author emphasized how significant this change was compared to the persecution of Armenians that had taken place twenty years earlier, before and during the war, or even to the events on Mount Musa Dagh.⁷⁶ Although the author acknowledged that the Armenians had suffered greatly, it was not clear whether he disapproved of this new development or not.

Summary

In light of all this, it can be clearly concluded that the two Transylvanian dailies did cover the issue of Armenian refugees. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that this coverage was continuous or consistent. Looking at the numerical distribution of their articles, it can be said that Ellenzék published twice as many articles – a total of 72 – as its counterpart in Brașov. When considering the whole press research, it is important to note that the examined Budapest and Bucharest dailies published at least twice as many articles on the topic. One reason for this is undoubtedly the regional character of the newspapers, as their editorial perspective differs from that of nationally distributed media products. However, the Ellenzék proved that it could provide in-depth coverage of the Armenian tragedy despite the fact that, as a regional paper, it presumably had fewer readers of Armenian ethnicity, and on the other hand, there was no expectation for it to accurately report on world events. However, the difference in the number of articles published by the daily newspapers in Brașov and Cluj-Napoca is striking: from this, we can conclude that the readership in Cluj-Napoca and the surrounding area was better informed about the Armenian genocide than those in Brașov. One possible reason for this is that Cluj, in terms of its importance, magnitude, and historical traditions, had a much more capital-city-like character than Brașov. The articles in Brassói Lapok classified in the first thematic category are particularly disappointing. Essentially, this daily newspaper did not inform the public about the two preparatory phases of the genocide. They made only a brief, one-sentence reference to the Hamidian massacres as a reminiscence, and published just a single article on the Adana massacres, though at least they did it in real time.

It can be said that they only really began to address the issue in the 1920s, which was the final phase of the genocide. However, the way the dailies reported on the Turkish occupation of Smyrna following the Greco-Turkish War, confirmed that the genocide did not end with the First World War, nor with the removal of Turkish leaders. Moreover, it was evident from the articles in both newspapers that Mustafa Kemal, also known as the “father of the Turks”, pursued a policy of expulsion and persecution against the Armenian minority comparable to his predecessors. In Hungary, the news embargo during the First World War apparently functioned absolutely in Transylvania as well, since none of the dailies made even a brief mention of the horrors unfolding in the Empire. Subsequently, it is also important to note that by the time Transylvanian newspapers had the opportunity to report on the international refugee crisis linked to Nansen, the imperial change had already taken place in Transylvania. In this sense – again, based on the results of the larger, comprehensive research – it was interesting to observe that the Transylvanian newspapers’ reports on League of Nations meetings differed from both the Romanian and Hungarian news coverage. Their articles on this topic were written from a unique perspective: Ellenzék reported on the international migration crisis and its management only rarely, in a total of five articles, and even then, in a critical and judgmental tone.

In contrast, this was the most frequent category in Brassói Lapok, though the newspaper itself also criticized the organization in several articles for failing to act ethically and fairly on certain issues. It should also be noted, however, that the way in which Transylvanian newspapers approached the issue from a distance, from a sort of external perspective, was comparable to what was observed in the Hungarian press from Budapest. Thus, despite the fact that Transylvania had already been integrated into Romania by that time, the two Transylvanian dailies tended to follow the patterns seen in the Hungarian press. The two dailies also fell short of expectations in the category related to the arrival, accommodation, and registration of refugees. In contrast, the section on the integration of the arriving refugees featured colourful and valuable materials. They frequently covered the fate of refugees who had arrived in Hungary, but they also published ministerial appeals addressed to Armenian refugees who remained in Romania. It is also important to note that Brassói Lapok devoted two extensive editorials to the Armenian colonies in Transylvania, in which they praised and paid great respect to the Armenian community in Transylvania, including the newly arrived refugees who, following the war, joined their compatriots who had settled there in previous centuries. In the sixth and final category, both newspapers approached the Armenians from the perspectives of aid and remembrance. Here, both news papers commemorated the tragedy that befell the Armenians – although briefly and in passing – largely with sympathy. However, there were also articles that contained negative tones, such as reports about Armenian swindlers. Overall, nevertheless, it can be concluded that the two newspapers overwhelmingly took the side of the Armenian refugees.

Finally, it can be stated that although the coverage of Armenians was not consistent in either newspaper over the course of these nearly fifty years – and indeed, public opinion regarding Armenian refugees has changed from time to time – the reports in the entire corpus can nevertheless be viewed positively. After all, both papers presented the reality. Their articles substantiated the fact (even if Brassói Lapok did this only retrospectively, in the form of reminiscence) that the Armenians became forced migrants because they could no longer live either in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire or in the newly proclaimed Republic of Turkey. Indeed, the Ottoman Turks plundered them and drove them from their ancestral homelands by different methods and immeasurable cruelty. Through more or fewer articles, the two dailies reported that the Ottoman Turks had committed genocide: they described this phenomenon in a way that was ahead of their time. They were able to provide reliable accounts of a genocide and its consequences, at a time when even an appropriate term for this crime against humanity did not exist yet.