Holocaust Remembrance Day marked in Budapest

Commemorations were held in Budapest on Sunday, to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945.

Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in his address at a ceremony held at the Holocaust Memorial Centre that the Hungarian state had “failed to protect its citizens at the time of the Holocaust”.

“There was no collective crime, responsibility lay on the state,” he said.

Referring to political developments in Hungary before WWII, Gulyás said that “Hungarian society was not left untouched by an increasing anti-Semitism, which was manifested by untolerable curbing of the rights of Jews”. “It is a fact that Jews were deported after Hungary’s German occupation, however, all that could not have happened without participation by the Hungarian administration”.

The Hungarian government is “proud that Jews and non-Jews now live side by side in security, among flourishing cultural and religious activities,” Gulyás said.

“Hungary has learnt the lessons of the past and is aware that a shared future must be planned and built together with the Jewish community.”