Journal index

This study discusses the connections between Kálmán Sass (1904–1958) and the Welti family during the communism in Romania. Kálmán Sass served as a Reformed pastor in Mezőtelegd (1933–1936) and Érmihályfalva (1936–1957). The recently discovered autobiography of Sass reveals the new circumstances from 1942 onwards, and helps to rethink misinterpreted turns in the life and oeuvre of the martyr pastor. During the communist dictatorship in Romania his books and essays were withdrawn from libraries, his name was not even allowed to be mentioned. The bibliography in this study includes various articles of Sass, which disclose his theological and political thinking as a representative of a generation that had had the opportunity to study in Basel, Strasburg and Zürich. The show trial of Kálmán Sass and other anti-communists throughout Partium, following the 1956 Revolution of Hungary is elaborated upon. Sass was executed at Szamosújvár (Gherla, Romania) on December 2, 1958. He has never been rehabilitated. Historian Zoltán Tófalvi concludes: “Of the assassinations, atrocities and wholesale reprisals – ordered by the communist party after the Second World War – we have only piecemeal knowledge in which there are large gaps even now. Many do not even believe that the dictatorship’s executioners carried all this out with such brutality and sadistic pleasure”. The Welti family in Basel and the theological relations in Switzerland between the two world wars were of great importance. In the famous book of Vilmos Balaskó, Life under the ground, we find some information about the Welti family. The discovery of the notebook of Bertha Welti provides us with new and valuable information regarding the church’s history in Eastern Europe.