In Memoriam of Antal LINHARDT
He Was the Director of Nepszava
(The Voice of the People)
It
is possible that we will never find out exactly when, where and in what
circumstances Antal Linhardt, dedicated Socialdemocrata Party organizer and the
late Director of the circulation department of NEPSZAVA, died.
Maybe around 1943-1944 he died at the bend of the Don (River), like so
many thousands of labor-service men, but this is only speculation based upon
indirect sources. His 86-year-old
widow, who left Hungary with her daughter at the beginning of 1957, returned to
visit home from USA at the end of August to try to find out what happened to her
husband. It was her secondary
objective to clear the good name and honor of her husband and herself, since
both of them were persecuted, ostracized and stigmatized without a phony trial
or even trumped up charges because of their membership in the Socialdemokrata
Party.
It is our duty to commemorate Antal Linhardt’s life story, since, for
many years, he was the head of the circulation department of NEPSZAVA; in that
position he made great strides forward in the distribution of NEPSZAVA to all
areas of the country, so more people could buy and read this newspaper even in
distant rural towns.
Little information is available about his younger years.
He was born in 1894, he learned the printer trade, and he joined the
labor movement when he was still only an apprentice.
After he graduated as a master printer, he worked as a foreman in his
trade. As a union representative,
he protected the interests of his fellow workers.
After the collapse of the Soviet Republic (of
Hungary in 1919), he reorganized the Kispest branch of the Socialdemocrata
Party and was its secretary for many years.
He was elected as a councilman of the City of Kispest for the first time
in 1922.
Between the two World Wars he was a representative at each of the
Socialdemocrata Party congresses and often he initiated important decisions.
One of his main interests was small town politics.
He regularly urged the leadership and the Party’s Parliament Caucus to
spend more time and energy in the struggle for democratic reforms in government
politics, and the organization of sociopolitical studies on small towns, because
workers rights suffered constant attacks in small town life.
He stated: the democratization of Hungary could only be effectively
achieved through proper local politics.
From the mid-thirties, Antal Linhardt increasingly accepted more
important mandates and functions in the Socialdemocrata Labor Movement.
From the beginning of 1934, he organized the rural distribution of
NEPSZAVA and held meetings for the rural support and circulation of this
newspaper in over 30 small towns. He
sent survey questionnaires to more than 500 small towns where NEPSZAVA was
unknown. Based upon the responses,
he made a detailed report and proposal to the party leaders.
Among
other things, he proposed distributing the NEPSZAVA is in the early morning
hours, at the same time that other cheap newspapers were distributed in the
rural areas, devoting at least 2 pages of the paper to local news and articles
on the countryside, and finding a way to stop the persecution and molestation of
NEPSZAVA by authorities, especially in the rural areas.
In September 1935, during the XXXth Congress of the Hungarian
Socialdemocrata Party (MSZDP), he was elected as one of 70 committee members
working out the party platform of the MSZDP.
At this party meeting, Arpad Szakasits suggested the creation of a
separate national committee to increase the NEPSZAVA’s circulation.
Linhardt was also elected to be a member of this committee.
In early 1936, during the Party reorganization, they divided the Budapest
area into three separate branches corresponding to the voting districts.
Linhardt became the leader of the Southern District.
After one year, as a result of his success and his organizational
abilities, he was appointed to be the secretary of a new district, covering ten
areas between the Danube and Tisza rivers.
Within a year he had visited the secretarial chapters in 40 towns and
villages; he continued his organizational work until 1938.
In the early 1938, Antal Linhardt won the election in Kispest and became
city councilman. At the same time
he became the member of the elected governing body of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun
counties. In the 1939 parliamentary
election, Antal Lihardt was the MSZDP candidate for the northern section of Pest
County, but lost against the Hungarian Nazi and governing parties’ candidates.
At the beginning of 1940, he became the director of the circulation
department of NEPSZAVA. In that
position he submitted a plan for the reorganization of the NEPSZAVA Committee to
the party leaders in Budapest at their meeting of February 9, 1940.
In early 1942 the cabinet of Prime Minister Kallay started a big campaign
against the organizers of the antifascist independence struggle, and the tide of
arrests reached NEPSZAVA too. The
report about this, which was submitted to the party leaders on the XXXIIth
MSZDP Congress at December of 1942, states: “This spring a terrible thing
occurred. The military drafted to a
forced-labor camp at Tapiosuly a large number of our comrades, including Antal
Linhardt, director of the circulation department of NEPSZAVA; Soma Braun,
education secretary of the party; Sandor Herzka and Istvan Kossa, members of the
education committee; and many party and labor union members and representatives,
especially members of the Ironworkers’ Union.”
The report states, even though Karoly Peyer (member of the Parliament)
and Arpad Szakasits (Chief Editor of the NEPSZAVA) did everything possible for
them, “they could not free the unlawfully and unjustly seized comrades, who
were taken to two punishment brigades at the Eastern Front.
We don’t know anything certain about their fate.
Now we definitely know this campaign was the first step of a planned and
phased general attack against the labor movement.”
Antal Linhardt was taken to the special punishment labor brigade on April
25, 1942. In her testimony at the
Office of the Police of Budapest on February 27, 1945, Mrs. Antal Linhardt
stated, “Karoly Peyer, member of the Parliament, at that time one of the most
influential leader of the MSZDP, told me that my husband’s discharge was taken
care of and he was not going to be taken to the Front.”
In spite of the written discharge order for 19 men, Lieutenant Colonel
Muray gave an order on May 3rd to immediately load up all
labor-service men into boxcars, and so all of them were taken off to the Front.
According
to ex-labor-service man Janos Klingler, Antal Lihardt was a member of that
group, which – per Muray’s list – was not to return from the Ukraine.
As a witness at the trial of the People’s Court in April of 1945 in the
case of Muray and his cohorts, Istvan Kossa stated that out of approximately 200
labor-service men of the #401 brigade, barely 30 survived.
According to him the security soldiers (keret
guards) executed 124 labor–service men, 32 became POWs, and the rest
starved to death or received fatal wounds while picking up land mines.
In his memoirs “From Danube to Don,” Kossa mentions Antal Linhardt at
several places. According to him,
by the fall of 1942 Linhardt was already in very bad condition. “He could not
keep his temper any more. His
nerves gave out.” Due to the
inhumane treatment and starvation his health deteriorated so much, that in
December he was taken to a field hospital at the Front.
“Linhardt’s entire body was completely covered with sores and puss.
He was barely conscious and didn’t even know what was happening to
him.” This is how Istvan Kossa,
who, with a few of his comrades, successfully escaped to the other side, to the
Soviet troops, remembers him. This
happened in January of 1943, when the Soviet Army started its major attack
against the 2nd Hungarian Army.
However, according to him, Linhardt wasn’t among the Hungarian
prisoners of war.
In spite of this, even today Linhardt’s widow isn’t certain that her
husband died at the bend of the Don River, because she heard many indirect and
unconfirmed stories about him being alive in the Soviet Union.
She even entertains the possibility that the Soviets executed him as a
“traitor of the working class”.
At the present time it is impossible to confirm these stories.
One thing is sure, Antal Linhardt’s wife received his last military
post-card from him in January of 1943; from then on there was no sign that he
was still alive. Nevertheless,
afterwards Mrs. Linhardt heard vague rumors from unknown sources about her
husband’s supposed activity in the Soviet Union.
It is a fact, in 1946 Antal Linhardt was declared dead and a martyr of
the labor movement, and the Hungarian Governing Cabinet ordered a special
annuity for his family. This
annuity was terminated in 1950 with an excuse, - as the widow states –
“Antal Linhardt does not merit the support of his family by the Fatherland.”
Consequently, Antal Linhardt’s widow and two children were continuously
exposed to various persecution and humiliation, so after the 1956 Revolution
they emigrated from Hungary.
On February 2, 1947, a black granite memorial plaque was mounted on the
wall of the headquarters building of NEPSZAVA at 4 Conti Street, on which the
names of 29 martyrs (working for the NEPSZAVA) were engraved.
One of these names was Antal Linhardt.
The February 4th edition of the NEPSZAVA writes about them:
“socialism united them in life, now the appreciation of socialists unites them
in our memories, with the deep respect that they deserve.”
(This memorial plaque was removed
in 1950.)
Whenever and however Antal Linhardt died, he as well as the other workers
of the NEPSZAVA, deserve remembrance and respect, as those who - in the words of
the late editor Istvan Szava – “took risks and sacrificed themselves for the
progress and better future of mankind.”
Written by Sandor Fazekas
From the pages of Nepszava, Sept 26, 1989
Antal LINHARDT Pages: Main | Nepszava Memorial | Biography | Family Life | #401 Penal Labor Brigade | Citizen of Kispest
LINHARDT | BREUER | SIMON |
FISCHMANN | MAHLER
| SALZBERGER | BELANSZKY
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