At the end of 1939 the International Esperanto League's journal noted that for several months the Italians had been 'enjoying' reading matter of a kind already well known in Germany, to the effect that Esperanto was a Jewish language.[487] In October 1941, a fascist magazine rained insults on the linguistic creation of the Polish Jew Zamenhof, 'an instrument of Zionism and international subversion',[488] thereby espousing, somewhat late in the day, Nazi conspiracy theory. The Esperanto broadcasts of Radio Roma, long a source of unease for the German Gestapo,[489] continued for a while, though they consisted primarily of the reading of military bul- letins.[490] There was no longer much opportunity for Esperanto in Italy.
I n Hungary and Bulgaria, where there were strong organizations of worker Esperantists, for a long time it seemed that the neutral movement could avoid difficulties with the authorities simply by emphasizing its dis- tance from these leftist associations. But in 1935 the Hungarian Esperanto Federation (HEF) was founded. HEF, as opposed to the neutral, moder- ately progressive Esperanto Society of Hungary (HES), argued for submis- sion to the regime's political line. HES was obliged to yield and join the Federation; the journal Hungara Heroldo tried to demonstrate that 'inter- nationalism and Esperanto are different things'.[491] Although during the war the Federation shifted considerably to the right, it resisted official pressure to expel its Jewish members, and the Federation president, Jozsef Mihalik, tried to save the lives of young people ofJewish descent.[492] In 1940 the Nazi RSHA angrily labeled Hungary a country 'currently least resistant to the advance of Esperanto-Jews and their helpers'.[493] As long as Horthy's govern- ment could maintain some semblance of resistance to its powerful ally Nazi Germany, a modicum of freedom of action still remained for Hungarian Esperantists, but the short but bloody duration of the government takeover by fascist 'Arrow Crossers' beginning in October 1944 brought an end to the organized movement. In these last months before the conclusion of the war, many Hungarian Esperantists fell victim to the fascists.[494]
In Bulgaria, too, the neutral movement tried hard, particularly as of the end of the 1920s, to disperse any suspicion by the authorities that it served as camouflage for communist activity. After the disbanding of all communist organizations, the neutral Bulgarian Esperantist Association (BEA) used various artifices in an attempt to survive; during the war it avoided any public demonstration of its existence.[495] Intentionally, BEA delayed acceptance of an invitation to join the organization Otets Paisii, in which almost all intellectual organizations in the country were assem- bled, for so long that the authorities eventually forgot about them. The last issue of the journal Bulgara Esperantisto appeared in June 1942. A little earlier, in the middle of February, Radio Sofia, which broadcast a regular program in Esperanto, one day received a visit from the German cultural attache; that same evening, the Esperantist in charge was informed that the broadcasts were ended—at the 'suggestion of higher authority'.[496]
It is interesting that, of the allies of Germany, Japan was the only country that did not follow the Nazi model. The Japanese Esperanto movement was not persecuted, even during the war. When, after the mid-1930s, so-called proletarian organizations of Esperantists were obliged to cease activity, the Japanese Esperanto Institute (JEI), earlier criticized by the left, now opened itself as a refuge for its critics and willingly employed their knowledge and experience on behalf of the neutral movement. Understandably, JEI was forced to make concessions to the reigning ideology, but its influential leaders succeeded in steering the Institute through the war years by rigor- ously defining itself as a purely linguistic organization, in this way escap- ing both persecution and compromising implication in the hypocritical supranational rhetoric by which the regime sought to justify its expansion in Asia.[497] In Korea and Taiwan, in connection with the planned spiritual mobilization following the opening of the Chinese-Japanese War of 1937, the Japanese liquidated the modest remains of cultural autonomy. In 1938 they also abolished the teaching of the Korean language in all primary and secondary schools. The policy of forced assimilation led to the compulsory use of Japanese even on the street. While the suppression of the Korean language continued, the Esperanto movement in Korea was also obliged to remain silent. In October 1937 the first issue of Korea Esperantisto, a handsome magazine entirely in Esperanto, was published. No second issue followed it, since the publisher, Hong Hyeong-eui, was promptly impris- oned. Until the end of the war, the publicizing and teaching of Esperanto were severely forbidden; but in Japan itself, even at the height of the war in 1942, it was still possible to publish the opinion of one brave soul, Inoue Masuzo, who, speaking out against the language policy then being applied by the Japanese in the occupied regions, proposed Esperanto as a means to bring the peoples of Asia closer together outside the circle of the elites.[498]
The plea was published in the journal ofJEI, La Revuo Orienta, which was able to continue publication until March 1944, long after legal Esperanto periodicals had ceased publication in the heart of Europe.
A Healthy Lesson for the Neutral Movement
We end this part of our narrative by turning our attention to Yugoslavia, where the Esperanto movement quickly understood the consequences of the Nazi declaration of war on Esperanto, and its conclusions also had an effect internationally. Emerging in a country characterized by fundamen- tal sociocultural diversity and a strong, often scarcely bridgeable, antago- nism among its constituent nations, the Yugoslav movement as a whole adopted a generally more progressive approach than that in neighboring countries. As early as 1922, in connection with the preparations for the founding of a South Slav Esperantist League, the desire was expressed
[to] use all available means so that at least within our own circles we might preserve the idea of Man as a citizen of the whole world and not simply of the piece of ground where he was born. Everyone should understand this: Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes and others, Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims and others—and we should show to our compatriots the solidarity that is the foundation of our success and the most effective path to influence.[499]
In line with this call for unity across national and religious boundaries, the Yugoslav movement was also able to maintain greater internal coher- ence than the movements in other countries. Although as a result of a resolution in favor of Esperanto accepted in June 1920 by the Second Congress of Communists in Yugoslavia,[500] many left-wing members joined its ranks, the movement did not split apart between middle-class Esperantists and workers in the way that it did in other countries. Of course there were plenty of collisions between more progressive members and those who, fearing pressure from the regime, argued for a strict focus on linguistic activity, but the conflicts did not shake the fundamentally unified organizational structures.[501]