User talk:Qqbasil

Background  as reply to Odysseus1479. It is an extract from an introduction I am writing to visitors to a proposed Commemorating exhibition. 17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)Qqbasil (talk) 17:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC) This paper, PESTI POSTA, was published in 1944, in wartime, during the German occupation, during the political pandemonium in Hungary! The German Army invaded Hungary in March 1944 and in May, the Gestapo started the deportation of Jews, Gypsies, and the Enemies of the Reich to Auschwitz to kill them. For a long time no civilised person could believe that the Germans were establishing a deliberate killing settlement. It took some time to convince the Hungarian regent Horthy, but eventually in July, he banned further deportations. An official note in August notified Germany of Hungary’s policy to safeguard its Jewish citizens, but by that time, approximately 430,000 mainly provincial Jews had been sent to the death camp. Horthy’s authority helped to protect Hungary’s remaining Jews for a while. This was the background in which my Uncle published the first issue, August 29, 1944. He got permission to publish the paper only after agreeing that more than half of the paper’s directors were to be nominated by the Government. He accepted this as he realised that calling a Meeting of the Directors remained his perquisite. He never called a Director’s Meeting. At the beginning a number of his friends and newspaper colleagues helped to run the paper, but more and more of them became rightfully scared of working for a defiant political paper and quit, or “left town because of the constant air-raids”. Very soon, my Uncle was publishing almost alone, writing, drawing, and gathering material. My Grandmother translated jokes from French, and German sources, and from bound copies of old Punch magazines to give ideas to my Uncle. As the editor, he paid large sums for good ideas sent to him, even for those that he could not use. He had a permanent table in a coffee house where he could be found every day. In a surprisingly short time, an army of contributors was pacing the floors of coffee houses wreaking their brain to invent jokes. One troublesome problem was that in the printing works, after an edition had been passed by the Censors the workers sometimes inserted their own jokes, usually politically too risky or just far too risqué. The quality of the available newsprint was bad, full of wood splinters, and sometimes there was shortage of printing ink, but in spite of everything, Pesti Posta was a great success. It always sold out all the printed copies, and earned huge amount of money. We had suitcases packed with bank notes, and cartons of Symphonia cigarettes that became a valuable currency later when civil society truly collapsed. I remember him drawing cartoons for the paper in the evenings. He always started with a soft graphite pencil; made the broad outlines, then he changed it again and again and refined it until he was satisfied, then with a drawing pen dipped into India ink he quickly finished it. My job started when the ink was dry, when I had to rub out the remaining pencil marks. He said that a caricature is only good if no traces show of any effort of preparation, but looks to have been accomplished in seconds. Everything to be published was first scrutinised by Hungarian Censors, and overseen by the German occupiers. Hence, the political jokes in the Pesti Posta were inconceivably obscure, indirect and indecipherable, but loved. Neither the Gestapo nor the Hungarian Censors could figure out what to make of them and what to do with them. Some of them became oft repeated bywords e.g. about the fascist Szálasi”He is coming whilst seems to be leaving” and ”hang on Malvin, a curve is coming” which was on the front page of the last edition, November 10th, 1944 when the Russians were closing in on Budapest. My Uncle’s paper was the only one which made public mention of the possibility for Jews to get Swedish protection and citizenship with his famous cartoon. The Germans eventually imposed a murderous fascist regime on Hungary called the Arrow Cross, and their leadership wanted revenge for all the ridicule and mockery that had been heaped on them. When their leader Szálasi gave orders to arrest my Uncle, at least three officers called my uncle from the police head quarters to warn him and advised him to be careful and hide. It took very little time for him to leave his flat, but when he stepped out on the street he noticed that two men were following him. He quickly walked to a nearby large apartment complex and took one of the elevators, leaving the detectives behind. I have never learnt all the details, but he spent the following three days in the small lift engine room before escaping. He had friends living in the apartment complex who fed him and helped him.