THE REVEREND BÉLA SZÁZ

1930-2005

by

John William Shirley

Száz Béla was born in Tornalja on October 13, 1930, where his father was manager of a local bank.  After attending the local elementary school he entered the Sárospataki Református Gimnázium as a first year student in September, 1941.  Following the occupation of Hungary by German forces on March 19, 1944, and the closing of the school, he returned to Tornalja where he was witness to the deportation of the eighty-seven Jewish families of the town, an experience that deeply affected his intellectual and moral development.  Indeed, the courage of his own father, and of the martyred father of his close friend and classmate, Martin Tornallyay, in saving the lives of a number of their Jewish neighbors, stood as examples to Száz Béla for the rest of his life.

 Between the end of the war and the reopening of the Gimnázium in 1947 he shared the hardships suffered by most young Hungarians, particularly those whose homes were in the Felvidék, or in other formerly Hungarian regions, but who attended school in the mother country.  Száz Béla managed to continue his studies with the help of tutors, made a number of surreptitious and dangerous border crossings to take private examinations in Sárospatak, and managed to secure advancement to the fourth, and then the fifth forms, notwithstanding unremitting personal deprivations typical of the period.  An outstanding student throughout his secondary school years, he graduated in 1949, determined to continue his studies at the Theological Seminary of the Sárospatak Kollégium.  But history, this time in the form of the Communist seizure of power, again intervened, the Református Kollégium was nationalized, the Seminary closed, and Száz Béla was forced to look beyond the ministry for ways to serve mankind.

As a person considered “politically and socially unreliable” by the regime, he spent many harsh months in the labor service (Munkaszolgálat), followed by training as an emergency medical assistant and over a decade of work in that field, although he never relinquished his determination to fulfill his vocation for the ministry.  His chance came in 1965 when he obtained a visa to visit the Federal Republic of Germany, and once there,

-2-

requested and was granted political asylum.  There followed several years of hard work in a Heidelberg hospital, admission to the University of Heidelberg’s Theological Seminary, and the successful completion of his studies. 

The newly-created Reverend Száz immediately set to work in the parish of Kastel where he conceived, oversaw the construction and subsequently took charge of an old people’s home.  Active in a number of peace movements, he was also a strong proponent of ecumenical Christianity.  In 1972 he was elected pastor of a large congregation that he lead for over twenty years.  The many hundreds of parishioners who attended his memorial service, and the tributes paid him by leading clergymen and distinguished laymen, stand in eloquent testimony of the respect and affection in which he was held by all those whose lives he touched.

As so often happened in the unhappy twentieth century, war, politics, and human folly in the form of cruel and senseless ideologies not only swept away ancient cultures and imposed terrible sufferings, but also separated families and friends fated never to meet again.  But here and there, now and again, there is an exception.  Such was the meeting on a cold and foggy November evening in 1991 at the foot of the Kossuth statue in the beautiful garden of the Sárospatak Kollegium of ten or so men and women who in distant 1941 had together become students of the I/Á class of the gimnázium. For this reunion three of us came from the far away United States. One from Australia.  One from Germany.  One from Slovakia.  Most, of course, were sons and daughters of the surrounding countryside; Patak itself, Ujhely and Miskolc, and a few from further afield in Hungary.  Száz Béla was one of the group.

This assemblage of no-longer-young men and women who for the most part had not seen one another for close to a half century, resolved to serve their old and beloved school in some practical way, and soon established a foundation dedicated to helping finance the educations of talented, but financially less well off, students of the gimnázium.  Thus was born the I/Á Ösztöndij Alapitvány that since 1991 has awarded over six hundred scholarships to hundreds of deserving youngsters.  In the work of this institution Száz Béla played a leading role from the first. His financial contribution was always generous.  He actively participated in the administration of foundation. Over the course of the years, he interviewed hundreds of students. Although his hands were fully occupied translating important theological documents from German to Hungarian and tutoring students in German, he was always there for the youngsters, with good advice, an encouraging word, a cup of warming tea.  And those boys and girls reciprocated the affection he bestowed on them.  They loved their Béla bácsi.

Mourned by his devoted wife Csilla, the Reverend Száz Béla now lies buried next to his daughter, who did not survive infancy.  He has come to rest in the soil of a country that opened its arms to him and gave him the opportunity to serve the men, women and children of his community as he had always wished:  as a clergyman of deep faith, the pastor of a loving and loyal congregation.  He deeply loved his Hungarian homeland, his mother tongue, his school and the streets and trees of Patak where he was so completely at home.

It is not often that men as kind and gentle and compassionate as Száz Béla sojourn among us, and we are fortunate when they do.  But there is a special sadness when they leave us, for we are  so greatly impoverished when they depart.

(the author is a retired United States ambassador, who by an accident of history spent World War II in Hungary. He was a student of the Sárospatak Református Gimnázium during the war years and a classmate of the late Reverend Száz. Ambassador Shirley is a holder of the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Hungarian Republic).