Balog hails Roma culture at Holocaust remembrance

Budapest (MTI) – The human resources minister commended Hungarian Roma culture and history at an event in Budapest held to remember the Roma Holocaust.

Zoltán Balog said late on Tuesday that it is “our duty to liberate the huge reserves of power” in Roma culture “to serve our common future.”

He said Hungarians by now had no excuse not to be aware of the “dreadful tragedy” of the Roma Holocaust.

The minister said the change in political system in 1989-90 had created the freedom and the possibility to “confront out past and thereby rediscover those with whom our common fate lies … in communist times we could hardly know about each other.”

Church communities, national minorities and civic communities that did not officially exist had to discover each other, their stories and their wounds, he said, adding that this was hard since everyone at first was only concerned with their own suffering and losses.