that the unique characteristics of the Magyar race and its national uniqueness could only be ensured through the Magyar peasantry. To him, the people were the peasants, its best characteristics and virtues were embodied in the peasantry, a significant improvement in the financial and cultural status of the Magyar peasantry was an historical necessity, in the interest of the entire nation [since] the peasantry was the sole social segment that remained true to Hungary’s Christian and national traditions through the revolutions of 1918 and 1919". Szabó has been considered the first "intellectual anti-Semite among Hungarian writers", and he was a regular contributor to the journal Virradat, one of the most rabidly anti-semitic papers of the inter-war period, in which he published no less than 44 articles during three years. These articles were couched in highly apocalyptic and alarmist tones, reprimanding the Hungarian nation for its "feebleness". He was against the influence of Jews and Germans in Hungary, and although he proclaimed himself a non-anti-semitic, because of his articles and views cited above, he is considered to be anti-semitic. Due to this, there is also an accusation that Szabó explicitly called for the physical extermination of the Hungarian Jews. According to Yehuda Marton, an Israeli-Hungarian scholar who wrote the article about Szabó in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, Szabó did make such a call for extermination at a public meeting in 1921. Apologists for the writer note that in "The Eroded Village" Miklós (a key figure of this main work) says to an old Jewish friend: "If you should know that all my anger comes out from that I know that we depend on each other, because I love you". In an other book he also wrote "I consider the honest Hungarian-Jew cooperation as a must for the two races and the foundation of a more human future". At the same time Szabó was also vehemently anti-German, embarking in 1923 on a "Campaign to eradicate German influence in Hungary". After 1932 he was also outspokenly opposed to the Arrow Cross Party, the Hungarists—without abandoning his anti-semitic views. This combination of views was due to his own specific brand of racism, which Szabó termed "The Apotheosis of the Hungarian Race". Szabó died in January 1945, during the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Army. Works Az Elsodort Falu (1918) Csodálatos élet (1920) Jaj! (1925) Feltámadás Makucskán´ (1925) Karácsony Kolozsvárt (1931) References Hungarian writers 1879