APRIL 16, 2014 BY RICHARD FIELD
Hungarian Holocaust remembrance day 2014: Protestors dismantling a fence around the construction site of a controversial memorial to the victims of the German invasion of 19 March 1944.
Andras Heisler, president of the Alliance of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) received a letter today from Prime Minister Viktor Orban on the occasion of Hungary’s national day of remembrance of the victims of the Hungarian Holocaust.
Mazsihisz managing director, Gusztav Zoltai, resigned last week in protest after construction of a controversial memorial to the victims of the German invasion of 19 March 1944 began on 8 April– just two days after the 6 April general election–despite an earlier letter from Orban clearly implying that the start of construction would be postponed until after consultations with Mazsihisz had taken place after Easter, which falls on 20 April this year.
Critics of the monument claim that it is a brazen attempt on the part of the current government to place all of the blame for the torture and murder of some 500,000 Hungarian Jews during the Second World War on Nazi Germany when, as historian Laszlo Karsai clearly explains, it was the Hungarian government that made the decision (albeit after a few thousand German troops entered Hungary) to deport 437,000 Hungarian Jews–mostly women, children, and the elderly–to Auschwitz in May-July 1944. (Able bodied Jewish males had already been conscripted into forced labor units attached to the Hungarian army, many of which eventually became casualties of war or simply victims of torture and murder). This was the tragic, penultimate result of nearly a quarter of a century of state sanctioned anti-semitism that witnessed the passage of over 100 anti-Jewish laws, beginning with the numerus clausus act of 1920. (It was not until the Nazis came to power in 1933 that Germany got around to adopting its own numerus clausus act).
It is not our place to advise Hungary’s Jewish community how to respond to the Prime Minister’s letter, translated below. However, we think it regrettable that Hungary’s new Fundamental Law does not state that “deeds speak louder than words”. If Hungary is to undergo “a spiritual and moral renewal” its leadership must first dispense with the hypocrisy of telling a religious community one thing even as it does the very opposite.
In addition to tolerating anti-Jewish pronouncements on the part of Fidesz publicists and others close to the governing party, the second Orban government has allowed (and even encouraged) state television to broadcast overtly anti-Jewish programs (including a three part series aired at the beginning of this year) having no place within the European Union or in any other civilized country for that matter.
At the heart of the nationalist conservative ideology and rhetoric of the Fidesz-KDNP government is the notion that Jews (communists, socialists, liberals, bankers, journalists) past and present are to blame for Hungary’s problems.
In our opinion it is the nationalist conservative ideological agenda promulgated by the government through state media and government policy that is responsible for alarming gains made by Hungary’s radical right wing party, Jobbik, in the recent general election.
As for the inviolability of Hungary’s Fundamental Law, the fact that the Fidesz-KDNP controlled parliament has repeatedly modified it at the drop of a hat to suit Orban’s mood suggests it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Mr. Andras Heisler
President of the Alliance of Hungarian Jewish Communities
Budapest
Dear Mr. President:
Hungary’s Fundamental Law holds that human existence is based on human dignity. On this memorial day we profess in the words of our new constitution that “after the decades of the twentieth century which led to a state of moral decay, we have an abiding need for spiritual and intellectual renewal.”
Now is the time for renewal. The time has come for us to see the history of our nation in its entirety. The pain of Hungarian Jewdom is the pain of every Hungarian person. Although the horros of the Holocaust affected our fellow Jewish countrymen, and destroyed their lives and well-being, it was the nation’s comunal pain and loss. Our perception is namely that Hungarian Jewdom was part of the Hungarian people and remains that. I assure you that the Hungarian Jewish communities can calculate with the respect, friendship, and protection of the government being formed in the future.
On the occasion of the day of remembrance of the victims of the Hungarian Holocaust, I ask that you accept our sympathies, and allow me to express my large respect for the Hungarian Jewisjh community.
Budapest, 16 April 2014
Respectfully,
Viktor Orban
Hungarian Prime Minister
