Holocaust Memorial Day was held in Hungary

“We trust that Hungary will always remain an island of peace and safety for the Jewish community, Hungarians and everyone else,” a government official said on Monday marking Holocaust Memorial Day. The prime minister’s office also pays tribute to the almost 600,000 Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, persecuted mostly because of their Jewish faith, the office said in a statement.

The government trusts that Hungary will remain a country in which “nobody has to be afraid of being discriminated based on their origin, customs or culture”, Bence Rétvári, state secretary at the human resources ministry, said at the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest.

Rétvári expressed his hope that Hungary would be able to protect its Jewish community, not just from the “old”, but also “the new kind of anti-Semitism”, in the future, too.

He said that in recent years, the government has combatted anti-Semitism not just in words, but in action as well.

Holocaust Memorial Day in Hungary, photo: MTI

Prime Minister’s office marks Holocaust Memorial Day

The whole of Europe bears responsibility for educating future generations to learn from the sins of the past and understand the consequences, the statement said. The Hungarian memorial day keeps the memory of the “martyrs and life-saving heroes” alive, it said. It also calls on all to strengthen solidarity, a feeling of community and mutual tolerance, it said.

Growing religious intolerance in western Europe, a direct consequence of the EU’s “irresponsible migration policy”, makes this day particularly relevant, the statement said.

Europe has to return to its Jewish-Christian roots and values, and an “honest and responsible reckoning with the problems” has to replace “fake political correctness”, it said. Decisions made by the Hungarian government to this aim have turned the country into one of the safest in Europe and the world, it said.

The Holocaust Memorial Day commemorating the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust has been held on April 16 since 2001, marking the first day of the imprisonment of Hungarian Jews in ghettos.

As we wrote today, members of the municipal government and the clergy marked Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Day at the House of Terror in Budapest late Sunday. Read more HERE.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI