ANDREI SILVIU AND NICOLAE RAJKOVIČ, DEFENDERS OF THE CITY OF ORADIA, KILLED BY HUNGARIAN HORTYSTS ON 9 OCTOBER 1944

Abstract

The battles for the liberation of Oradia and Bihor from the Hortyst-German occupation involved a number Romanian Army divisions (the 3rd Mountain Brigade and Tudor Vladimirescu Brigade), as well as divisions of the Red Army and were particularly ferocious and long-lasting (5 September - 12 October 1944). Several offensives and counter-offensives of the Hungarian-German and Romanian-Soviet military divisions took place with the purpose of preserving/liberating the city of Oradea, the administrative centre of Bihor County, a critical land and air communications hub for the entire western region (roads, railways, airport). In the battles for Oradea, the region experienced several days of power vacuum, with the fascist troops retreating from the city in order to prepare for a counter-offensive, while the Romanian-Soviet troops were regrouping outside the city for a decisive offensive (25 September - 28 September). At the same time, three citizens of the city, i.e. Andrei Silviu – a Romanian ethnic, a former civil servant with the City Hall and reserve officer of the Romanian Army, who had a local Israeli wife, Nicolae Rajkovič - a Romanian citizen of Serbian origin who was a local barber, and Papp Tibor – a civil servant with the City Hall, a Romanian citizen of Hungarian origin, established a “civil guard” comprising 45 citizens of Oradea with different nationalities, who were armed with rifles from a City Hall warehouse. The role of the guard was to maintain peace in the city and to defend the life and property of the citizens, primarily the workshops and shops in the city against the lumpenproletariat who were prone to looting. The return of fascist occupiers in the city leads to the arrest of the three guard organisers. They are brought in front of a military court and sentenced to death for organising “partisan troops behind the front”. Andrei and Rajkovič are shot in the Oradia Fortress three days before (9 October) the liberation of the city (12 October), while Papp is saved by his family and sentenced to 15 years in prison, due to the fact that he was a Hungarian ethnic. Although historians and patriotic local councillors proposed (in 2007, 2013, 2015, and 2020) that the two murdered locals should be honoured as heroes of the city, the political parties or coalitions that held the majority in the Oradea City Council (the Democratic Party (PD) + the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), the National Liberal Party (PNL) + the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR)) kept rejecting the initiative. This year, several cultural and patriotic organisations will bring up the proposal once again, since the idea behind it still makes a valid point.