Tag #136003 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

In 1956 the atmosphere was quite tense at the radio because of the events in Hungary [1956] [26]. It was quite difficult to make programs in Hungarian because Bucharest, that is, the center, kept asking us for materials condemning the counterrevolution. And there were few Hungarians, of course, who condemned the counterrevolution. So, it was a rather difficult situation, and on top of it, there was a strong wave of arrests; young Hungarian educational cadres from Bolyai University and secondary school students were mostly arrested, so the atmosphere was dense. It was difficult to get materials as well, and, although there's nothing to be proud of now, we still tried to minimize the amount of these materials. As people could get the broadcasts of the radio of Kolozsvar in Hungary as well, the programs had to be in line with Hungarian politics, so we broadcast materials that called upon people to stay and materials in which people who had went from Romania or Hungary to other countries, especially to capitalist countries, in the interwar period, described how hard it was to live abroad and how foreign countries didn't receive well the Hungarians. So, the atmosphere was like this a bit. No one from the radio was arrested, only one person, Zoltan Keresztes – who died since then – was advised to leave because of some statements that he had made in the radio.