Consultation with the public is being launched over the fate of a memorial in Szabadság Square in downtown Budapest commemorating the German occupation of Budapest during the Second World War, Mayor Gergely Karácsony said on Facebook on Saturday.
The Budapest municipality and the government will decide jointly over the monument, Karácsony said, adding that the monument was “infinitely tasteless and infinitely deceitful”.
The memorial falsely suggests Hungary was blameless before the German occupation, ignoring the fact that anti-Jewish laws were enacted long before 1944, Karácsony said. The persecution of Jewish citizens began decades earlier, with the Hungarian state actively participating in the destruction of its Jewish population, he added.
“The claim that the Holocaust was solely a German crime against the Jews is a lie that must be erased from national memory,” he said, emphasising that the Hungarian state and its citizens played a significant role in the Holocaust.
The statue rightfully provoked widespread protest when it was erected 12 years ago, he said. After 12 years and political changes, its place on Szabadság Square must be reconsidered, he added.
He also noted that the memorial had inspired the Living Memorial project, where Hungarian citizens shared their family histories to counter the statue’s distorted narrative. Karácsony also warned that removing the statue could be exploited by the far right to fuel grievance politics.
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Jew here, a child of Holocaust survivors. Half my family was wiped out by the Nazis.
My two cents: DON’T CARE.
My concern is that Budapest and Hungary be safe for me, my family, and my people. Statues do not determine the present-day nomos or circumstances that inform or affect that concern.
It’s pretty rich to be getting apoplectic about a statue while advocating “open borders” whereby thousands upon thousands of violent anti-Semites from the third world would flood Hungary’s streets.
Besides, have all the major problems of Budapest been satisfactorily resolved? I didn’t get that memo.
That’s not how open borders work, stop playing the victim.
Good point. But it seems the memorial should be removed if it is really not true to the history. Humans make horrible mistakes and usually learn something from it… that is somewhat good I guess… but historically allmost all wars were heroic in the eyes of the present leaders who most likely initiated the war. I’m curious how future Russia will describe the war against Ukraine in the coming history books.
“Tasteless and deceitful” is a great description of much of what Fidesz did. Perhaps we can now put back the 1056 memorial and the Nagy Imre memorial that they removed from Parliament. You know why those were removed don’t you?