Esterházy, János

Count János Esterházy




* 14.03.1901, Veľké Zálužie
+ 8.03.1957, Mírov




Count János Esterházy was born on 14 March 1901 in the village of Veľké Zálužie near Nitra. His mother Elisabeth Tarnowska was Polish, his father Mihály Antal Esterházy belonged to the Galant (Transylvanian) branch of the Esterházy family. His father died when János was 4 years old. He graduated from a grammar school and a business academy in Budapest. On 15 October 1924 he married Countess Lívia Serényi and had 2 children János and Alice.


He belonged to the Hungarian nobility, who never accepted the political order after World War I and the separation of Slovakia from Hungary. He was very actively involved in the political life of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. In 1931, he was the head of the League of Hungarian Co-patriotism in Czechoslovakia (Csehszlovákiai Magyar Népközösségi Liga), which operated under the League of Nations. On 11.12.1932 he became the chairman of the Regional Christian Socialist Party in the Czechoslovakia (Országos Keresztényszocialista Párt). After the 1935 elections, he was elected to the National Assembly in the Košice constituency. On 21 July 1936, after the unification of the two strongest Hungarian parties, he was elected executive chairman of the United Hungarian Party (Egyesült Magyar Párt).


János Esterházy worked as an agent of Hungary in Czechoslovakia under the name "Szalma" with the number "221". In the following period, Esterházy supported Slovak autonomism, represented mainly by the Hlinka People's Party. The break-up of Czechoslovakia promised to satisfy Hungarian interests and therefore had to be supported. On 14 March 1939 he welcomed the establishment of the Slovak state in a radio broadcast. He remained active in Slovakia and founded the Hungarian Party in Slovakia (Szlovenskói Magyar Párt). It defended the minority rights of the 70,000 Hungarians living in the first Slovak republic and at the same time demanded that the Hungarian government respect the rights of the Slovak population in the reannexed territories. On 15 May 1942, as the only member of the Slovak Parliament, he voted against Constitutional Law No. 68/1942 on the eviction of Jews, which made him the target of attacks by the Slovak press. In 1944 János Esterházy helped hundreds of persecuted Jews, Czechs and Slovaks to escape from Slovakia via Hungary. In October 1944, he protested in a memorandum against the occupation of Hungary by the German army. Members of the Arrow Cross Party briefly interned him, and the Gestapo issued an arrest warrant for him.


After the war, János Esterházy fell into the hands of the Soviets directly in the office of Gustáv Husák, with whom he protested against the introduction of the principle of collective guilt for all Hungarian citizens of Slovakia. In the USSR, he was sentenced to ten years and sent to the gulag. In Slovakia, meanwhile, a retributive trial took place and sentenced him to death. In 1949, Esterházy was returned to Bratislava, where the court first upheld the original sentence but eventually commuted it to life imprisonment the following year.


Count János Esterházy died on 8 March 1957 in Mírov Prison near Mohelnice.

Source:
www.noveslovo.sk,
www.rozhlas.cz,
sk.wikipedia.org