“Father, I killed…”

A conversation about faith with Eduardo Rózsa-Flores

Written by Ilona Rodek – Translated by László Hege.

Published in the magazine of the Hungarian Writers’ Union, March, 2004, Budapest.

“With pleasure,” said the young man with traces of shrapnel wounds on his face when I asked him about doing an interview. They were showing the feature-length documentary about his life at the 1,000-year-old monastery of Pannonhalma and he was there to speak about the pivotal points in his life dramatized in the film. He ended up in the Croatian war as a result of one of these difficult decisions where he fought alongside the people who were defending their country and their freedom. He almost died there.

There is a wrought-iron gate in front of his apartment entrance and there’s a dog behind it. Looks like an old dog. It shows that he’s much loved. Inside, the apartment looks like a stage set. Mementos jammed all over the walls, as Baudelaire used to say: “as many as if I had been collecting them for a hundred years.” Well, Eduardo’s recollections could be even more, as if he’d been collecting them since time immemorial. In the inner room there’s a huge Croatian flag, photographs on the walls, among them a picture of a destroyed, shot-up church. Beautiful, as it still stands defiant, with its fallen spire and four bare walls reaching boldly up to the sky, its windows all shot out. There are two young guys just leaving the apartment and another one who stays with us, discreetly waiting in the kitchen. I sit in an old stuffed chair. The mood is perfect. We bring up each memory as if we were visiting distant countries.

First of all, I ask him: What does faith mean to you?

In my case, faith is tied to the period of stability in my life, it means stability for me. To me it means not only peace but it conveys strength, it gives and has given me energy also. What I’ve done so far, what I’ve believed to be good, if I do it, because it is my duty to do it, that’s what I should continue doing, without fear, in complete confidence.

Where is your mother from?

She was born near Barcelona in 1929. She was of one of the oldest Catalan families, and as it is natural on the Iberian Peninsula, in a deep Catholic environment. In Central Europe, in Hungary, the word “faith” sounds strange today. There, it is part of everyday life. Society is imbued with it. To me, the most recent 13 years were a time of astonishment and trials of recovery. The Spanish are not any different from us, the Hungarians, why should they be? The poet Dezsõ Szabó has written, “People are not born as eagles in other countries either.” In the Spanish civil war our family was torn apart. One side, as they express it there, which doesn’t necessarily mean the same here or in other countries, stood on the side of the nationalists, that is on the side of General Franco. The other side however became republicans. Actually this meant that “monarchist” stood for contra “republican”. Republican did not necessarily mean communist, although a good part of them were communists in spirit. The aims of the Spanish communist party however, was to change the fight for the republic to that of a Bolshevik revolution. When the republicans lost, that part of the family which was sympathetic to this cause was forced to emigrate. About one and a half million Spaniards left the country at that time. 90% of them ended up in Latin America. My grandparents and my mother and her brothers went first to Argentina and then to the subtropical part of Bolivia, to Santa Cruz. My father was born in Budapest. My grandfather was Jewish. My grandmother of the Obermayer family was Catholic. My father called himself an atheist all his life.

That’s a kind of a faith too…

True. The atheist is not necessarily an evil person, only – I believe – somewhat deprived.

Are you religious?

Absolutely! I could say that I have my own private confessor, to express it crudely. My father was confirmed in a nearby church here, near where I live now. That’s where I keep going back to now, for my confessions.

Where did he live?

He finished art school at the Beaux Arts University in 1945 at the end of the war. In 1946 he received a scholarship to study in France. He returned in 1947, got an extension on the scholarship, (and) went back. In the meantime, the communist party came to power in Hungary; he was the only one who was not a French citizen. When the expedition ran out of money the Frenchmen could get funds from home for a return ticket but not my father, he didn’t have anything and he had to stay there. He started to teach. At a party in 1958 he met my mother. They were attracted to each other and married in 1959. The adventures only started when it was revealed that my father is deeply left-oriented, not the sit-at-home but the bohemian type, although with deep convictions. Especially in Latin American conditions, these feelings were even more prominent. I was born in 1960 in Santa Cruz. My childhood was varied. I went to school with the Cistercian order. My communist father insisted that I get my schooling from the priests. My deeply religious mother however, was against it. According to her, the child shouldn’t go to a religious school but to a state institution to get to know reality. The school, run by a religious order, was considered an elite school. My mother was teaching history and geography, (and) as a teacher identified herself with social causes. But that doesn’t mean she was a leftist. My father was the founder of the Bolivian National theatre, life of the theatre started with him in a country where the staging of a play was considered a political act. He wrote the play for the opening. It was banned. He was arrested; the students went on strike to let him out of jail. My childhood was about this – where’s my father, do I have a father or don’t I? Many times he was “expelled” from his home. But only him, his family could stay. When he was forced to go into hiding, it was the priests who were saving his life. There are churches where his frescoes are decorating the walls. The first arts school in Bolivia is also connected to his name. In 1971 he was already rector of the La Paz University and when the putsch broke out he had to escape to Chile. We went after him a few months later. There I attended a Jesuit school.

But they’re the strictest…

It is (the) only idiocy that I couldn’t stand in my life, that’s why later I didn’t finish military academy either. Discipline in itself, if it makes sense for the child, if they can get him to understand why it is needed, and it can be explained reasonably, that’s when it doesn’t cause problems. Besides the fact that I administered at mass every morning in the chapel of the school, in the early evenings I went with my older friends to write graffiti in support of Allende on the walls. There was no feeling of conflict between the two. The Popular Front was made up of several coalition parties where social democrats, socialists, communists were all together, but the three Christian parties were there too. To be a leftist and a Christian also, was not oppositional. This is especially true in Latin America. I used to say, we need to pay attention to the differences. Seen from here, the obliteration of the Soviets and their whole evil empire was a positive thing, but seen from Latin America, it is the USA that embodies the evil empire. They play the same role there as what the Soviets played in Hungary at the time. The best would be to have every small country decide its own fate: where it wants to belong so there would be no need for it to rub up against some great nation. Because with that goes, inevitably, the loss of independence, it has to give up its freedom. Among other things, that’s one of the differences between those who think in terms of state and those who think in terms of nation.

How was your connection with your family?

My father and I laughed together a lot – before the break with him which came about because of my role in the Croatian war – about the strange chance of events that made me buy an apartment in the same Budapest neighborhood where he was born. When I was still in Croatia in 1994, I was no longer in action; it was a time of transition. I received a message in Zagreb to come home to Budapest. The family was living together on Durer Lane. They asked me to decide a dilemma, go with them back to Latin America or if I wanted to, I could stay behind with a certain amount of money to buy an apartment for myself, they have had enough. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t take it seriously, I had to hurry back. In May of that year the socialists came to power. Right after the elections I got a fax to come home immediately. I came back and I said, “Dad, now it is your people who are in the government, why do you want to leave?” By then I have completely distanced myself from his political “example,” that is in a political sense – we almost broke up completely because of it. But in an ethical sense, I respected him; he’s my idol to this day. To this my father said: “I didn’t have anything to do with the Stalinists back then and now these mercantile leftists have nothing to do with me either.” He was 71 years old when he packed up and went back to South America with my mother, he died there in 1997.

Why did you go to Croatia?

I was a newspaper man, I went as a correspondent.

And why did you fight?

It is probably in my upbringing, ever since my childhood – that’s why I entered military academy. Back then – I was 15 years old when we came back home to Hungary – I wanted to go back to Latin America to finish the revolutions which were bungled up by my father’s generation. But I realized the military life is not for me. I didn’t continue. I went to the university. I didn’t fit in, I literally partied throughout the entire eighties – played music, wrote poetry, I was the engine of many other guys. In the beginning I almost went to Nicaragua, I said, this, what was going on here at the time, that institutionalized socialism, is something I have nothing to do with. I felt I had to help the people somewhere, somehow. This feeling sort of went to sleep by the end of the eighties. I hated what was going on, I just locked my door and everything remained outside. I felt not as one of the opposition and not as one of those on the other side either. I felt that their lies had nothing to do with the ideals of communism. Now, when I say this, my behavior may appear childish after the fact, but if somebody says it was otherwise, he’s lying. Just for fun, back in 1988 I accepted the lead office of KIS, the Young Communist organization at the university. At that time, they were unaware of certain Latin American methods of campaigning, which I successfully used to get myself elected. Back then Gurcsany and Szilavassy were the university council’s leaders. To them I was some kind of an ultra-leftist, Guevaraist, Trockiyist, and Stalinist guy; therefore I couldn’t possibly be the KIS leader at the school. Doesn’t matter, I said, my associates will decide if I can be or not. I put up a campaign which at the time was unusual. It was not an oppositional stance at all; just designed as “comrade-irritation”.

In the summer of 1989 I accepted the assignment of La Vanguardia, the Barcelona newspaper to go to Transylvania and do an interview with the Hungarian dramatist András Sütö during the time of troubles when the Romanians were bulldozing away the villages of the ethnic Hungarians. Because of these articles, Transylvania, (a former province of Hungary) became a theme in the Spanish-language media where it was unheard of before.

(I was surprised already in 1985 that I, who reputedly had communist sensibilities, was selected to write for a Catholic, very conservative paper with a huge tradition in Spain. Ricardo Estariol asked me to write for them. I asked him, how does he dare to ask me? He just laughed, we remained friends. Then every time he came to Hungary he always looked me up, hoping that I would accept an assignment. He wasn’t forceful, just persistent until I accepted.)

It wasn’t without trauma for me or for András Sütö. I went to Transylvania to conduct an interview with him, ask him about the circus which was going on at the time. I didn’t have any kind of emotional attachment to the whole thing. I arrived in the town of Marosvásárhely; I did the interview and started to worry. I asked myself the stupid but logical question: if this is a socialist country, why do I have to be afraid here? I came home, wrote the article. With that interview I started to work for this “clerical right-wing” paper, I did for them the entire collapse of the communists, the so-called “change of order” in Eastern Europe. The circus in Prague was nothing, then Berlin, whatever it was it wasn’t much; it all played out all right, but then came Albania! I arrived there in the summer of 1990 when the country was still very much closed up. I made contact with the Italian embassy there where they asked me if I wanted to go to Skodra, in the north of the country. Skodra is a Catholic town with a Catholic countryside around it. Albania was that communist country where they made atheism official. There was actual, practiced atheism. In the other countries they also locked up the priests or killed them, but in Albania they have forbidden religion entirely. That’s where I met Dom Simon Jubanit, the Albanian priest who spent 25 years in work camps, mines and other forced labor places. He was released from jail a few weeks before I got there, where he wowed vowed that he will say mass as soon as he’s released. We were sitting together, talking. There was no church. They changed the churches into gyms or stores. An Albanian boy said there’s a chapel in the cemetery. It needs to be sanctified again, said Dom Simon. The next day he did that and it became known in the town that there’s going to be a mass celebrated in the cemetery. There were 50,000 people there for this mass. About 80% of these 50,000 people were not Catholics but Moslems. They were watching the Catholics and did exactly what they did, when they kneeled, etcetera, they tried to follow them. It was raining; there was mud in the cemetery. Dom Simon said he couldn’t celebrate mass without altar boys. That’s when I volunteered; I knew how to be an altar boy. I was extremely proud and felt warmness all over myselfelated that I was the one who was there at the time.

The paper offered that I should go somewhere to rest, wherever I wished. I was thinking that if my identity is no longer remembered in Hungary, I cease to be at home there, because everything is changing, so where is my home? I had to belong somewhere. I knew that my grandfather died in the war but they didn’t tell me how. I learned in 1984 that he was a Jew. During the war he was shot dead and thrown into the Danube.  I went to the libraries; I tried to read everything I could find about this, I searched for people who could tell me something about these events. I visited the rabbi seminary also, where on Fridays the wise Sándor Schreiber, the chief rabbi spoke. I wanted to know if I belonged there or not. I chose Israel.  . By then I’ve had a lot of conversations with Ricardo who belonged to Opus Dei. The founder of this organization, Monsignor Escrivá de Balaguer, was made a saint in 2002. In the eyes of the leftists Opus Dei is a fascist, far-rightist ultra-conservative organization, if they hear its name they imagine and quote the Inquisition. It was organized in Spain and recognized by the Holy Father. Ricardo has given me 50 copies of the book “Road” written by the founder, to take to Jerusalem to the archdiocese where they expressed the need for more copies. I arrived there but for some reason I didn’t go to Jerusalem, I don’t know why, until the last five days. I had the books in my backpack. Two days before leaving I felt an inner need, I felt forced to go to the wall and pray. I felt neither hot nor cold, I had an incredibly good feeling, I felt good. I had the kipa on me, and asked myself, what am I doing here? In front of the wall I prayed “Our fathers” in Spanish. After that, without wondering why or what was happening, I knew, that for some reason – which I didn’t dare to conceptualize at the time – things were back in their right places. When my prayer for the “Our father” was over I also felt like saying, “thank you”. I was overwhelmed. 

What did that mean?

I feel the same right now as we’re talking about it. One’s lungs open up; a general feeling of pleasure takes hold. If one is not disciplined, it’s easy to break out in tears.  A few hours later I went to the patriarchy, gave them the books and told them what happened. They invited me to dinner. At the dinner the patriarch was interested to know what kind of life I had so far, and then in the evening, in the company of a young priest we took a stroll on the Via Dolorosa. Dom Michel took my arm. Then I escorted them to the prelate. He sent me away with an admonishment to go find myself a priest for a confession. That’s what happened. I called Ricardo from Jerusalem since I wanted to confess in Spanish. That’s the language I felt most at home in, although I spoke Hungarian as well at the time, still, it’s not the same. I told him, I need a priest right away. He got scared, didn’t know what happened, what’s going on? I said, nothing, I just want to confess. Alright, he said, come, we’ll solve it at the airport. I arrived in Vienna; I went to the Karlskirche downtown which is also managed by Opus Dei. A Catalan priest came; we were at it for over four hours. We had a conversation. That was the confession. All the piled-up garbage inside me had to be thrown out. I felt like I was placed in a washing machine. Since then, everything is all right. I used to go out to him in Vienna. About two years ago he was moved to Spain, I haven’t seen him since then.

How did you get to Croatia?

At the beginning of February 1991 the students of the University of Tirana went on a strike. It was still called Enver Hodja University. They were striking to change the name of the school. I was in the office of the leader of the strike when the soldiers surrounded the building. Again, I couldn’t understand why, but I started to laugh. Across from me, the soldiers were wearing the red star on their caps and I couldn’t understand why I was again on the other side. They rushed the building, shot at the students but by that time the dictatorship was barely standing, they pulled down Enver’s statue, I was there, I screamed and cried with them for joy, the same way as they did. Next day all the red stars were gone. By then, I was the official correspondent of La Vanguardia and also worked for BBC World Service Radio, Spanish Division, out of Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Albania. When the Yugoslav conflict started I was sent to Croatia and Ricardo went to Slovenia. Between May and August I didn’t have anything to do although the situation was getting worse every day. I have seen more and more of the dead and the atrocities, which started to get to me after a while. I could not take it any more. I became nasty. As a foreign correspondent, I was the first and only one to see the first mass murder. It was in East Slavonia, the Serbs killed off the Croatians. The churches were in ruins. That wasn’t unusual for me any more. When you see an old lady with her rosary, praying, and there’s nothing around her but ruins and the dead, the effect of the rosary is multiplied many times. I could see this every day many times, more and more, this feeling started to grow, didn’t diminish, and it dawned on me that perhaps we’re bad journalists because we’re not making our reporting more effective, or what’s worse, there’s no sense to it at all. At that instant, when I could feel that perhaps there’s really no sense in writing those pages, I lost my objectivity and the keeping of a distance which is the requisite duty of any journalist. He’s sent to a given place not to fight but to report from there. In addition, I was captured, I was locked away for three days, and nobody knew, not even me, where I was until I got out. I felt there were three possibilities I could choose from: I stay, keep doing what I was already doing for what I was sent here, which didn’t make much sense and at the end of which I will turn into an alcoholic journalist just like the others who came here as foreign correspondents and stayed for a long time. The second option was that I leave it all and just take off. The third option started to form within me in the last minute – because I started to envy the gun in the hands of soldiers, the Croatian Guards. In some case I felt I was angrier than they were. When in the suburbs of Osiek – they killed the news cameraman who was with me – he was the 17^th victim among the journalists – I organized a group to go to the Yugoslav People’s Army (again the red star) where I told them, there was no declaration of war, tell us finally, is there a war? Why are they shooting at the journalists? Why did they shoot down Zarko Kaic? The answer was that the cameraman was an “unlucky victim of an accident”. The guard was shooting from a tank; he confused the camera with an anti-tank gun. When we are in fighting range, they said, close to the Croatian units, better remember that we cannot expect the soldiers to differentiate between the enemy and the journalists. Those journalists who wear Croatian clothes and move together with the Croatians are all considered enemy. This last I took as a personal declaration of war, from here on the war became a personal thing for me. I told off the red-starred major something foul and colorful and left him. I asked for uniform and gun from the Croatians and also my acceptance in the Croatian National Guard. Later I became the commander of the Croatian International Platoon. Again, things found their rightful place as always when I do not yet understand what’s going on around me.

Were they happy to have you?

Of course they were. I was the first foreign volunteer. After me there were lots of others. But there were foreigners in the Serb troops also, or rather “relatives”. The Serbs were joined by Russians and Ukrainians; they tried to create an all-Slav unit. But there was no religious section war there; several of my buddies were also Serb or all-Slav in religious orientation. To those who were born in Osiek it meant defending their birthplace.

What was this war about? Why did they have this war?

That’s very simple. Yugoslavia was an unnatural contraption. It was only natural that it fell apart. Croatians are a minority only in Hungary. Croatia is certainly a nation. The Bosnian is more difficult to define, they were a Muslim minority in Yugoslavia but thanks to this war, they also became a nation. They found their national identity in these fights – they have been called Yugoslav Muslims who lived in Bosnia up until now.

The reason for the war was that the Serbs started to feel that Yugoslavia was breaking up, so they tried to grab the largest possible territory in the last minute. The war in 1991 was about that. It was a territory-grabbing, robber’s war.

Did you turn to God when you realized that people are dying around you?

I’d divide the situation in my life at the time in two sections. In one section I was still a journalist, in the other I was fighting with gun in hand. As a journalist, if I happened to be in a place where there was a fatality, for example a mine exploded in a house or they shot down “only” three men “who were in the way”, there stood three old ladies, already praying. In that case I joined them. Quietly, praying only to myself of course, because I had a camera in one hand and a pen in the other – it wasn’t a place where one prayed out loud. Later, when I was fighting as a soldier, it was different. I felt it was my duty to – since I had a unit for which I was responsible – to have the least possible amount of casualties among my men. It was an intensive, merciless time. Other than in the ruins of the Calvinist church there were no priests or ministers around anywhere. After a while we made contact with the Franciscan fathers in Osiek. We went to see them sometimes. There were refugee nuns even, from a village where the Danube meets the Drava. We came in from the street, sat down to rest; they gave us a cup of hot chocolate and cake.  We didn’t want anything but a little quiet and they didn’t try to “convert us” either. We just gave each other spiritual support. However, at Christmas December 23^rd, - I was already responsible for several hundred men – I asked them who wants to go to mass? We knew that there were three places in the city that offered midnight mass on Christmas eve. Everyone raised his hand. That was both good and a difficult situation at the same time because if everyone goes to mass who’s going to stay on guard? It was simple. Bring the mass to the front. We found a house in the village with a big carpenter’s shop attached. We emptied it of everything and got a carpet down, a blue canvas back drop. The boys made a big cross; a table was the altar with the Christmas tree and benches. We made these out of the boxes for anti-tank ammunition. With one box on each side, a plank between them, covered with a blanket. Several hundred people took part; they came out of the cellars on the news about the mass. A couple of fathers came and three nuns who passed out cakes and sweets. I was the first who stepped up to one of the priests; I said that I want to confess. Naturally, I started with – because at that time I didn’t do anything else but dig much too deep into my nose or ears – that Father, I killed…

What did the Croatian priest say to that?

I can’t tell you that. He released me. I didn’t kill out of hate but because I wanted to defend others. He said, in that case, when we are the weaker ones, where ordinary people are being killed who are defenseless, neglecting the defense of the weak is the greater sin.

And then came the second and the third and the fourth and fifth guy and many more. A long line was formed. Everybody wanted to confess.

Do you believe in the afterlife?

Yes. I will be in purgatory for a few centuries but then I’ll go to a good place. The wounds on my face are visible; therefore I couldn’t possibly be the KIS leader at the school. Doesn’t matter, I said, my associates will decide if I can be or not. I put up a campaign which at the time was unusual. It was not an oppositional stance at all; just designed as “comrade-irritation”.