“I stand without compromise, on the foundation of Christian values; that is, I profess that love obliges us to accept natural laws for our fellow-men without exception which God gave and which cannot be taken away.”- Margit Slachta
Unit 1012
will honor and always remember Sister Margit Slachta, every
year on January 6, as she passed away on that date in 1974. We do not remember
her only on her feast day but also on her birthday on September 18. We will
remember and honor her for more than 2000 Hungarian Jews during World War II
and she rightfully deserves to be recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
Her story
should be an inspiration for us to support victims’ rights and defend the use
of the death penalty by speaking out against evil and saving lives. We also
learn to take a Christian approach in doing the thing. We will post
information about her from Wikipedia and other links.
Margit Slachta
|
|
Born
|
September
18, 1884
Hungary |
Died
|
January
6, 1974 (aged 89)
New York |
Nationality
|
Hungarian
|
Occupation
|
Sisters
of Social Service
|
Known for
|
Political
action, Social work
|
Margit Slachta (or Schlachta,
September 18, 1884 – January 6, 1974) was a Hungarian social activist. In 1920
she was the first woman to be elected to the Hungarian diet, and in 1923 she
founded the Sisters of Social Service, a Roman Catholic religious institute of
women.
Biography
Born in Kassa, Hungary in 1884. At a
young age Margit and her parents left to live in the United States for a brief
period. upon their return to Hungary, Margit trained at a Catholic school in
Budapest as a French and German language teacher.
A champion of human rights, she formed
the Union of Catholic Women, an organization to promote the female franchise in
Hungary, and in 1920 became the first woman to be elected to the Hungarian
diet. In 1908 Slachta joined a religious community, the Society of the
Social Mission. In 1923 she founded the Sisters of Social Service. The Social
Sisters were well known throughout Hungary for nursing, midwifery, and
orphanage services. The community opened professional schools for social work
in Budapest and Cluj. Some students joined ther religious community, others
joined an affiliated lay association.
The first anti-Jewish laws were passed
in Hungary in 1938, and from that time on, Slachta published articles opposing
anti-Jewish measures in her newspaper, Voice of the Spirit. In 1943 the
government suppressed her newspaper, but Slachta continued to publish it
"underground".
Hungary joined the Axis Powers in
1940. In the autumn of 1940, Jewish families of Csíkszereda, were deported
eventually arriving in Körösmezö in Carpathia-Ruthenia. Slachta responded
immediately to reports in 1940 of early displacement of Jews. She wrote to the
parish priest at Körösmezö requesting him to inquire into their welfare. The
removal process stopped on the evening of 9 December when a telegram from the
Ministry of Defense ordered the release of the detainees. It was the same day
as the dateline on her letter to the parish priest. The report reveals that the
captain in charge had received a telegram at 7:00 p.m.that ordered him to
immediately release the Jews in his custody and to send them back to
Csíkszereda.
She coupled zeal for social justice
religious convictions in rescue and relief efforts. In the years immediately
following the World War II, she raised awareness of the considerable
contribution of Protestant churches in rescue efforts.
“I stand without compromise, on the foundation of Christian values; that is, I profess that love obliges us to accept natural laws for our fellow-men without exception which God gave and which cannot be taken away.”
Slachta sheltered the persecuted,
protested forced labour and anti-semitic laws and went to Rome in 1943 to
encourage papal action against the Jewish persecutions.
Slachta told her sisters that the
precepts of their faith demanded that they protect the Jews, even if it led to
their own deaths. When in 1941, 20,000 were deported, Slachta protested to the
wife of Admiral Horthy. The Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, and commenced
widescale deportations of Jews. Slachta's sisters arranged baptisms in the hope
it would spare people from deportation, sent food and supplies to the Jewish
ghettos, and sheltered people in their convents. One of Slachta's sisters, Sára Salkaházi was executed by the Arrow Cross,
and Slachta herself was beaten and only narrowly avoided execution. The sisters
rescued probably more than 2000 Hungarian Jews. In 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Margit Slachta as Righteous Among the Nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment