Note 51 — Chapter X · HUNGARY’S ATTITUDE TO-DAY
Reading edition
“This paroxysm of fury died down gradually, but still I have witnessed scenes like the following: It is evening in a Budapest café. One of those cafés which are always full, in which a large part of the life of the citizens is passed. Suddenly men are heard running in the street outside; carriages drive up at full speed; at the door appear various uniforms, belonging to the various officers’ détachements, and behind them about a hundred adherents of the anti-Semitic League of Awakening Magyars or Awakened Magyars. A panic ensues in the café. Customers are to be seen crawling under the billiard table and the sofas, some run to the closets, others to the telephone. But an Awakened Magyar stops the latter with the words: ‘It’s no good trying to warn the police, all the wires are cut!’ Meanwhile the officers pass from table to table politely asking everyone to justify themselves, as they call it, that is to say, to show their identity papers. A Jew is recognised merely by the way in which he gets up before anything is even asked of him. He is immediately seized and passed from hand to hand, and by a magical process he has not reached the door before he has been relieved on the way of his pocket-book, purse, watch and cigar-case. Then he is thrown to the crowd, which receives him with howls and execrations, of which I remember this one: ‘Knock him on the head, in case he gets crippled!’ The café having been purged, the band of inquisitors salutes the remaining customers politely and goes on elsewhere to repeat its not over heroic exploit.
“One day, in the course of one of these affrays, a Jew urged in his defence that he had been baptized, and forthwith produced his certificate of baptism.
“‘All right,’ replied the officer. ‘Say the Lord’s Prayer.’
“‘Our Father, Who art in heaven——’
“The recent Christian knew no more. He was incontinently bundled into the street ‘to learn the rest.’”—(J. and J. Thiraud, Quand Israel est Roi.)