Front of postcard sent by Private Jacob Isak Sicherman on 1 June 1916

Remember library stacks? Browsing among books? Serendipitously finding on a nearby shelf what you didn’t know you needed? There are still stacks, though nowadays you might be crushed if someone turned the crank. Public libraries have stacks. But where do we do most of our research?

On the internet, of course. Does serendipity exist in cyberspace?

It does. At the 2016 annual Institute for Historical Study meeting, Charles Sullivan described finding a document that had seemed non-existent, simply by using the right search terms. Advised to pursue primary sources, he worried about traveling to archives hither and yon. Did he travel? Not at all: the documents had been digitized.

I am now working with primary sources in my possession: ninety-nine postcards that my mother-in-law, Matylda Sicherman, brought with her from Poland when she emigrated in 1928. Out of them, and with the aid of other primary sources, I’ve teased the stories of a mostly Hasidic community in the first quarter of the twentieth century. I’m hoping that the owners of the cards will donate them to the Center for Jewish History in New York, which is digitizing its entire archive. In the future, these cards could be read in the countries from which they were sent—Poland, Romania, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia—and by anyone anywhere with access to the internet.

But for me, physically handling these battered cards is essential to understanding them. Each one was written by a particular person in a particular place, stamped by a post office or military postal service, read by someone in a different place and circumstance. One card depicts four generals shaking hands in 1915 to signify Bulgaria’s joining the Central Powers—“der neue Waffenbruder” (“the new brother-in-arms;” in addition to German, the phrase is also given in Hungarian, Czech and Polish). The sender, Private Jacob Isak Sicherman, wrote each “brother’s” nation above his head: “BULG. TURKEI, OS-UNG [Austro-Hungary], DEUT[SCH].” He wrote on 1 June 1916 while convalescing in a Cracow military hospital. The card is stamped by the hospital and by the military postal service (there’s no postage stamp). Like most of the cards, it went to his wife, then living in a small town in Hungary because her home in Poland wasn’t yet safe. His words overflowed the space. He writes intimately, yet anyone who read his crabbed handwriting would find no secrets:

I am going to note for you who each of these high and mighty gentlemen is. You’ll also know by yourself. Let me know whether you received it. I kiss you and the dear children heartily–[also] the dear parents. Your faithful J. Isaak

Holding this card contributes an ineffable sense of connection. Years ago, in the Public Records Office in London, I pored over scraps that a colonial official had scribbled in the course of his duties. I felt his presence.

Back of postcard sent by Private Jacob Isak Sicherman on 1 June 1916

This tactile connection is only part of the pleasure of my often-serendipitous research preparing an edition of the postcards. Early on, an Institute member told me about a genealogy site, JewishGen.org, loaded with an astonishing wealth of ever-growing databases and a large and friendly community of scholars and translators offering their skills for free. The main translator of the German cards, Isabel Rincon, teaches German literature and languages at a Munich Gymnasium. There was more than her training in German philology that prepared her for the task. Her personal history impelled her to volunteer: her grandfather and his best friend (Jewish) had both been in love with a young Jewish woman. She left Germany in the 1930s for America. Tempted to emigrate with her but not sharing her danger, the grandfather remained regretfully in Germany. The other two emigrated and married; all three friends remained in touch throughout their lives. Isabel knew them all.

Besides Isabel, I have had many pen pals met through JewishGen online discussion groups. Valerie Schatzker, author of the monograph Jewish Oil Magnates of Galicia—a wonderfully readable book—sent a source in a 1917 Austrian newspaper, explained Polish words, and offered to read the manuscript. A professional translator in Israel grappled with the intolerably messy Yiddish script. Institute member Bogna Lorance-Kot translated Polish cards. A man in Ohio eagerly offered to make a genealogical chart for the book. Rabbi Avrohom Marmorstein figured out the most likely way that Jacob Isak learned to read and write German—from his fellow pupils in one of the yeshivas that he attended. Like many Hasidim, his family ignored the imperial law that required all children to go to school. Jacob and his parents preferred that he sleep on straw and go hungry, as long as he could absorb rabbinic learning.

What has been most rewarding about this research has been the human element: coming to know the people of the cards and the people of the scholarly community–discovering and being offered knowledge that illuminates the stories of these long-gone people.

This post was first published in the Summer 2016 issue of the newsletter of the Institute for Historical Study.

Who is a real refugee?

The refugee crisis in Europe has caught a lot of global media attention. Countries at the entry points and their official actions, as well civil organizations, get a lot of attention in online media; furthermore, social media comments quite often focus on the refugees’ origins, intentions, religion, and behaviour. For instance, in the coverage of how a parish near the Hungarian border helps refugees, one interviewee voices her misgivings:

They spend a lot of money for coming, but if they are real refugees, they can come on order, on normal way. Not this other ways how they are trying.

While not uncommon, comments such as this one miss a key aspect of the refugee experience. Having taught refugees in Australia, I am aware that people intending to leave their countries may sell all their possessions to be able to afford a journey to a safer place. When it isn’t possible for whole families to move together, they may raise money to enable a select member who may try to help others once they have reached safety.

So what are some of the possible origins of this ‘not a real refugee’ discourse?

It is quite often attributed to politicians. Earlier this year, in June, the Deputy of the ruling party in Hungary commented on national radio that people entering Hungary are not ‘real refugees’ as they have the funds to buy even first class plane tickets to Europe, but somehow they prefer to pay thousands of Euros to people smugglers and walk all the way. This comment, of course, blatantly ignores the fact that one needs both a passport and a valid visa to board a plane. While it is virtually impossible to trace the origins of such ideas, the above opinion seems to be a popular one globally present in reader comments on social media as well.

Undoubtedly, Hungary is just one of many countries using the ‘not a real refugee’ discourse, and possible reasons, like having enough money to buy plane tickets, and the issue of these people having smart phones, have been discussed in the media in other countries, too. Consequently, ideas and concepts linked to the construction of ‘non-real refugees’ are not localized to Hungarian politicians and media only. However, it is obvious that the position and role of the country in tackling the refugee crisis gives Hungary a central place in the discussions, so I will focus on the Hungarian context.

Confusion regarding terminology can be a possible reason why refugees are not seen as ‘real’. When analyzing discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press 1996-2006, Baker et al. (2008) mention a fundamental disagreement in defining refugees and asylum seekers in official bodies and sources, such as the Refugee Council or various dictionary definitions. By commonly applying the term ‘migrants’ to all people on the move, refugees and their rights for asylum can become invisible or even associated with those of ‘economic migrants’. In an attempt to clarify the issue, the UNHCR has published a statement saying:

Conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before.

Since early September, when Hungary sealed its border with Serbia and made border-crossing punishable with up to three years imprisonment, the terminology used in the media has been shifting to ‘unauthorized or irregular arrivals’.

Could it be that, apart from politicians fanning the flames, Hungarians simply have a different picture of ‘refugees’ in their minds? To answer this, I have examined how two historical events are linked to the construction of ‘real refugees.’

Based on Ruth Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach in her work exploring anti-Semitic and populist discourse in Austria, I firstly focus on the historical dimension of the discourse, then briefly look at argumentation strategies, also called topoi, to examine claims about refugees, and finally focus on metaphors.

Linking refugees to history

In media and social media comments world-wide, Hungary’s response to the refugee crisis is most commonly linked to two events in the country’s history: the Holocaust, and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, both of which produced huge waves of Hungarian refugees needing to be resettled in various parts of the world. In a reaction to these parallels, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance even released a statement in September, stating that:

The circumstances surrounding the current refugee situation are notably different from the persecution of Jews and other victims before, during and after the Holocaust; nonetheless, there are parallels between the treatment of refugees then and now – particularly regarding the shameful closing of borders, the rise of xenophobia, and the use of dehumanising language.

In referring to these two historical points, contemporary events become understood against these foils invoking above all shame. Reader comments on social media, however, oftentimes reject any kind of connection to the actions producing the present refugee situation, sometimes even clearly stating ‘we are not responsible for what happened to them’. Responsibility then, is an important element in constructing the meaning of ‘real refugees’.

The other element is resilience, at least the attribution of it to a certain group, which manifests in two ways: firstly, Hungarian refugees of the 1956 Uprising are said to have experienced the same treatment in refugee camps before they were admitted in other countries. This can be seen from the following excerpt from a reader comment detailing what those refugees had to endure:

How do you think the 1956 dissidents were treated? They slept in wooden barracks for at least 20-27 months. […] it was very cold. In summer it was scorching hot. In the meantime they worked in labour camps. There was no talking back or demanding things, blackmail or other things. If they were late, they risked being returned… [my translation]

It is clear that strength and endurance are values attached to the 1956 refugees, and this seems to be contrasted with contemporary refugees who are constructed as lacking these characteristics.

The second way attributed resilience gets expressed is by linking it to moral worth and referring to Hungarians who stayed behind during the events in 1956 as patriots. For example, a Hungarian conservative paper suggested that it as a moral obligation towards the country to stay rather than to flee, i.e. those who fled are ‘exiles with bleak souls’ while those who stayed have ‘the homeland in their hearts’. What this romantic presentation of the past does is that it positions people staying behind as superior to people fleeing war, and consequently, it questions the moral worth of all refugees.

Argumentation

Getting back to my first example from Al Jazeera, it is clear that commenters have clear arguments to support their views on refugees. The noun for ‘refugee’ in Hungarian (‘menekült’) derives from the verb ‘to flee’ (‘menekülni’), which suggests leaving everything behind and run. Having no possessions then is an important feature of a refugee. Linking these to topoi, we can apply the topos of definition to this case, which says “if an action, a thing, or person (group of persons) is named/designated as X, the action, thing or person (group of persons) carries or should carry the qualities/traits/attributes contained in the (literal) meaning of X” (Wodak 2001, p. 75). And being able to organize an escape and pay people smugglers clearly contradicts the above picture of a ‘menekült’.

Another reason brought up in the argument that contemporary entrants to Europe are not real refugees is their behaviour: they are violent, they refuse help; consequently, they are not ‘real refugees’. An example of this can be seen in a Tweet of two pictures presented side by side: on the left, people apparently protesting against Hungary’s closed borders, and on the right, a woman and children lying on bundles of clothes. A commenter mentions that the ‘real refugees’ are in the right hand side picture. Although this particular tweet emanates from the UK, it is a good example for what can be found in local comments in Hungary too. The reasoning behind this distinction between ‘real’ vs. ‘ not real refugees’ is based on their behaviour – filtered through media coverage, of course – and suggests that ‘real refugees’ should be humble and behave so that they could ‘earn’ their admission into Europe, quite like the 1956 Hungarian refugees supposedly did 60 years ago.

Language use

Metaphors are important linguistic devices used to create these ideas, and, ultimately, the picture of ‘real/non-real refugees’ in people’s heads. On Language on the Move, we have discussed the effects of metaphors here and here. In her recent article in the Austrian newspaper Kurier, Ruth Wodak explains that certain word choices in the discussion of the refugee crisis in Europe can gear people towards thinking about refugees as armed and violent. The use of metaphors of natural disaster (‘waves’ and ‘floods’ of refugees) creates a menacing picture. Wodak argues that these metaphors create the misconception that the reasons for the refugee movements are not human-made, which ties in well with the idea of ‘responsibility’ discussed above.

However, there are more direct references to danger, too. Wodak mentions the construction of Europe as a ‘fortress’, which needs to be ‘protected’ from refugees by Hungary’s ‘border guards’ who ‘hunt’ refugees. It is not difficult to see how these metaphors of war can relate to the reasoning regarding ‘behaviour’ discussed above, and thus further strengthen the idea that these refugees are not ‘real refugees’.

In sum, historical experience, argumentation and metaphors have contributed to creating a powerful anti-migration discourse in Hungary and Europe as a whole. This may feed the interests of certain political elites and parties but it cuts short any attempt at having an objective and effective discussion on the issue.

References

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., KhosraviNik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press Discourse & Society, 19 (3), 273-306 DOI: 10.1177/0957926508088962

Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (Vol. 63-94). London: Sage.

Percentage of Europeans who speak three or more languages (2012 Eurobarometer ‘Europeans and their Languages’, p. 14)

The 2012 Eurobarometer Report “Europeans and their languages” was published last month and makes fascinating reading. To begin with, it’s always heartening to see the value the European Union places on linguistic and cultural diversity:

There are 23 officially recognised languages, more than 60 indigenous regional and minority languages, and many non-indigenous languages spoken by migrant communities. The EU, although it has limited influence because educational and language policies are the responsibility of individual Member States, is committed to safeguarding this linguistic diversity and promoting knowledge of languages, for reasons of cultural identity and social integration and cohesion, and because multilingual citizens are better placed to take advantage of the economic, educational and professional opportunities created by an integrated Europe. A mobile workforce is key to the competitiveness of the EU economy. (p. 2)

It is even more heartening to see that this vision is shared by the majority of Europeans: almost all Europeans (98%!) think that learning at least one foreign language is important for the future of their children. And the current generation is itself well on the way towards that goal: with 46% of the population, monolingual Europeans are now in the minority. 19% of Europeans are bilingual, 25% are trilingual and 10% speak four or more languages.

The European policy objective of a trilingual population (national language, English, another language) is already met by the majority of the population in Luxembourg (84%), the Netherlands (77%), Slovenia (67%), Malta (59%), Denmark (58%), Latvia (54%), Lithuania (52%) and Estonia (52%). By contrast, the countries furthest away from this objective include Portugal and Hungary (13% in each), the UK (14%) and Greece (15%).

Looking at where Europeans are now in terms of knowledge of languages and relating it to where they want their children to be makes me feel confidently optimistic about the future of multilingual Europe!

At the same time, not all findings of the 2012 Eurobarometer Report “Europeans and their languages” give cause for optimism, as knowledge of languages has decreased considerably in some countries vis-à-vis the 2006 Eurobarometer Report “Europeans and their languages”. The proportion of respondents able to speak at least two languages has declined considerably in these five countries:

• Slovakia (-17 percentage points to 80%)
• the Czech Republic (-12 percentage points to 49%)
• Bulgaria (-11 percentage points to 48%)
• Poland (-7 percentage points to 50%)
• Hungary (-7 percentage points to 35%)

The culprit is English

Why has bi- and multilingualism decreased so notably in these Eastern European countries when the overall European trend is towards more language learning and valuing linguistic diversity more? I knew the answer before I read the explanation of the report because I actually was part of making Eastern Europeans less multilingual at one point in my life.

As a PhD student, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, I had a job in what used to be the German Democratic Republic that involved teaching English linguistics to high school teachers of Russians who were being retrained to become high school teachers of English. This bizarre scenario was repeated across Eastern Europe: as everyone scrambled to learn English, demand for Russian and, to a lesser degree, German, plummeted. The widespread result was not bilingualism in a different combination of languages but monolingualism.

Why?

The Russian-to-English teacher re-training program on which I taught was comparatively well-resourced but even so the outcomes were not great and the fact that you can’t simply switch from one language proficiency to another was the major obstacle. Quality language teaching needs a good infrastructure including qualified and proficient teachers, resources, and practice opportunities. It is difficult if not impossible to willy-nilly transplant this infrastructure from one language to another. For instance, some of the teachers I taught had for many years organized language camps and exchanges with schools in Russia. They had no comparable contacts in an English-speaking country and so camps and exchanges went out the window. In this way many Russian language learning opportunities, big and small, were not replaced with English equivalents but disappeared.

It is the effects of the lost language learning opportunities in the 1990s in Eastern Europe that we are now seeing as statistics of declining numbers of multilinguals in the new member states. The 2012 Eurobarometer Report “Europeans and their languages” speaks of a ‘lost generation:’

Within these countries the proportions of respondents able to speak foreign languages such as Russian and German have declined notably since 2005. For example, the proportion able to speak Russian has dropped in Bulgaria (-12 points), Slovakia (-12 points), Poland (-8 points) and the Czech Republic (-7 points). Similarly, the proportions speaking German are down in the Czech Republic (-13 points), Slovakia (-10 points) and Hungary (-7 points). It is likely that in these post-Communist countries these downward shifts are the result of a ‘lost’ generation. Many of those who were able to speak German (following the Second World War) or who learnt Russian at school (it is now much less commonly taught) are now deceased, or, as time has elapsed, have forgotten how to speak these languages. (p. 16)

The global hegemony of English works in mysterious ways: not only is it closely tied to the monolingual mindset in English-speaking countries but apparently it can also result in monolingualism in Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish or Slovakian!

Hungarians in Romania

Up until a few decades ago, the academic consensus – along with public opinion – was that bilingualism is detrimental to the individual and society. Nowadays, that has all changed and the new consensus is that bilingualism is enriching and advantageous both for the individual and society. Unfortunately, both sentiments are facile and reductive. Bilingualism – just as monolingualism – is neither good nor bad in itself. What matters is what we make of it, as a recent article about language policy and language ideologies in Székely Land (Kiss, 2011) reminds us.

Székely Land is a region of three counties with a bit over 800,000 inhabitants in Transylvania in Romania (the large green part in the center of the map). Also known as Székelyföld in Hungarian, Ținutul Secuiesc in Romanian, Szeklerland in German and Terra Siculorum in Latin, its many names are indicative of the region’s complex history. Since medieval times, Székely Land has been settled by Székely Hungarians and formed an autonomous region within the Hungarian Kingdom until the middle of the 19^th century. While Székely Land lost its autonomy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it continued to form part of Hungary until it was awarded to Romania after World War I with the Treaty of Trianon. In the 1940s, Székely Land became again part of Hungary for another five years and has been part of Romania ever since 1946. For most of the 1950s and 1960s, Székely Land was administered as the Hungarian Autonomous Province within Socialist Romania. The Hungarian Autonomous Province was dissolved in 1968, one year after Ceaușescu became head of state. For the next 20 years, the Romanian authorities pursued a policy of “Rumanization,” which involved the mass resettlement of ethnic Romanians in Székely Land and the resettlement of Székely Hungarians with higher education outside of Székely Land in other parts of Romania. A quick way to sum up the history of Székely Hungarians throughout most of the 20^th century might thus be to say that they have been messed around.

In post-communist Romania, the minority rights of Székely Hungarians are being protected by the constitution, as this was a key requirement for EU ascension in 2007. Furthermore, Székely Hungarians constitute the most vocal and best organized minority group in contemporary Romania. Despite the fact that their numbers continue to shrink due to emigration, the position of Székely Hungarians in Romania is often considered exemplary in contemporary Eastern Europe, as in this quote from US President Clinton in the 1990s:

Who is going to define the future of this part of the world? Slobodan Milosevic, with his propaganda machine and paramilitary forces which compel people to give up their country, identity, and property, or a state like Romania which has built a democracy respecting the rights of ethnic minorities?

So, how does this ‘model minority’ fare when it comes to bilingualism? Not great, according to Kiss (2011). Székely Hungarians, like minority groups elsewhere, aspire to full socio-economic participation through high-level bilingualism in the ethnic language (Hungarian) and the state language (Romanian). Indeed, full participation through bilingualism is a constitutional right Székely Hungarians enjoy in democratic Romania. However, in reality, bilingualism is difficult to achieve and social mobility is currently tied to either giving up Hungarian and becoming monolingual in Romanian or giving up the ancestral homeland and emigrating to Hungary.

Why is it that bilingualism does not work for most Székely Hungarians despite the fact that that is what they want and that it is state policy? The problem is slightly different for each language and I will discuss each in turn.

Hungarian, the mother tongue of Székely Hungarians, has been severely damaged by decades of more or less active anti-Hungarian policies. Thus, contemporary Hungarian-medium education suffers from a lack of qualified teachers, appropriate teaching materials and specialized dictionaries. Vocational teachers whose mother tongue is Hungarian, for instance, feel they cannot teach vocational subjects in Hungarian because they lack the technical vocabulary. Since the end of communism, many advanced textbooks have been translated into Hungarian but this has been done in an ad hoc manner and there is a lack of standardization as textbook translations are neither moderated nor are translators necessarily technically competent.

It would seem that these problems of Hungarian teaching could be easily solved with the provision of professional development by teacher training institutions in Hungary and through importing teaching materials from Hungary and/or standardizing local textbooks with reference to norms operating in Hungary. However, this seemingly straightforward solution is not an option because the Romanian state insists on its educational sovereignty and prohibits these measures – the fact that Hungary is a fellow member of the European Union notwithstanding! In sum, despite constitutional language rights, Székely Hungarians in practice largely lack the opportunity to extend their mother tongue into the domains of vocational and higher education.

Romanian doesn’t fare much better but for different reasons. In those parts of the country where they constitute a minority, Romanian Hungarians usually attend Romanian-medium schools and use Romanian on a daily basis outside the home – and more and more of those Hungarians are finding it more convenient to simply switch to Romanian altogether. However, the situation is different in Székely Land, where Hungarians continue to constitute more than three quarters of the population and where Hungarian-medium education is widely available. Lacking the opportunity to practice Romanian in everyday life, Székely Hungarians rely on the school to learn Romanian. Romanian is indeed a compulsory subject throughout the entire education system and some subjects such as Romanian history have to be taught through the medium of Romanian even in Hungarian-medium schools. Even so, the Romanian proficiency of many students is so poorly developed that they fail final school examinations at the end of 8^th grade and even at the end 12^th grade they often don’t speak Romanian “as correctly and fluently as expected” (p. 241).

The reasons for the unsatisfactory outcomes of Romanian instruction lie in teaching methods, which Kiss (2011: 257) terms ‘worst-practice.’ In Székely Land schools, Romanian is taught not as a foreign language but as a first language, including a heavy emphasis on literary analysis. Consequently, comprehension is limited and students only succeed by memorizing. For instance, a teacher of Romanian Language and Literature in a Székely Land high-school comments as follows:

Competence in Romanian doesn’t develop even in twelve years’ time. Naturally, this can be explained by the fact that the textbook that we use was written for Romanian students, and they do not expect that students will possibly have any difficulties with them, and none of the textbooks concentrate on communicative language use. So, our students learn by heart everything they have to know for the exams. (p. 256)

Again, it would seem that there is a straightforward solution for this problem, namely to employ foreign language teaching methods rather than mother-tongue teaching methods. However, the term ‘foreign language’ with reference to Romanian is apparently so ideologically laden that context-appropriate teaching methods have largely become unthinkable on the national level.

Székely Hungarians aspire to high levels of bilingualism as a resource for socio-economic participation in Romania and Europe. Despite constitutional guarantees, however, in practice their bilingualism is a barrier to full participation. The problems they are facing have nothing to do with bilingualism per se and everything with ideologies about what it means to be Romanian. These ideologies disallow pragmatic solutions to local problems and ensure that, for the time being, bilingualism remains a problem for Székely Hungarians.

Kiss, Z. (2011). Language policy and language ideologies in Szekler Land (Rumania): A promotion of bilingualism? Multilingua – Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 30 (2), 221-264 DOI: 10.1515/mult.2011.010