Hungary commemorates victims of the Holocaust
Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, attended a commemoration of the Holocaust on Thursday, and said “we must not only not forget who the murderers were but we must also name them”.
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The people “persecuted, tortured and killed because they were Jews belonged to us, they were part of the Hungarian nation,” Gulyás said. There is no such thing as collective guilt because “if everybody is guilty, in fact nobody is”, Gulyás said, but added that “the state however has responsibility”. Ever since the 1989 regime change, Hungarian governments have always clearly stated their position that during the Holocaust, the Hungarian state “was not able to, and in many cases would not want to” protect its citizens, while the Hungarian authorities participated in the deportation of several hundred thousand of Hungarian Jews, Gulyás said.
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He said that the heroes must also not be forgotten, people who did not look away and took risks or even sacrificed their lives while protecting Jews.
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Hungary is currently one of the safest places in Europe for the Jewish community,
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he said. The government makes clear its stand against all forms of anti-Semitism also on international platforms and considers remembrance and the protection of the freedom of thought important, he said. Gulyás warned about the dangers of the current era, saying that giving up on Europe’s Jewish-Christian roots and culture “poses a danger to us all”. Migration, unless going along with integration in society, threatens the Jewish community the most, he said.
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French Ambassador Pascale Andreani told the commemoration that the Holocaust had been the most serious crime ever committed in human history, adding that six million people, three-quarters of Europe’s Jewish population and more than a third of the world’s Jewish population, were exterminated.
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Israeli Ambassador Yacov Hadas-Handelsman said that 77 years after the Holocaust “we are still three million less” than before the start of the second world war, adding that the reason for mourning would “will stay with us forever”.
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Russian Ambassador Evgeniy Stanislavov told the event that it was impossible to understand how people had been able to commit the cruelties of the Holocaust and it was equally impossible to understand that neo-Nazis were still holding marches on the streets of some modern European states. “This is why it is important to preserve the truth so that it stays with us as a lesson as well as a warning,” he said.
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Hungary on Wednesday and Thursday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the logo of the #WeRemember campaign appearing around the country, the Israeli Embassy in Budapest said in a statement. Launched by the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the #WeRemember campaign raises awareness of the importance of remembering the victims of the Holocaust, and is aimed at ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust will live on in the digital age, the statement said.
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The embassy considers it important that the innocent people who lost their lives in the second world war merely because of their ethnicity or political or sexual identity are not forgotten in Hungary, Europe or anywhere in the world, it said.
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This year, more than 25 organisations, including local councils, diplomatic corps, sports clubs and other organisations joined the #WeRemember campaign organised by the embassies of Israel and Austria, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the WJC, the statement said.
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The United Nations General Assembly declared January 27th, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005.Â
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Parliamentary parties commemorated the victims of the Holocaust on Thursday, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ruling Fidesz said in a statement that “Hungary is one of the safest countries in Europe, also for our Jewish compatriots”. Mass migration results in a growing number of attacks against European Jews in immigrant countries, it added. “Hungary must move forward and not backwards,” Fidesz said, adding that “we must not go back to the past in terms of threats against Jews, either”.
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The opposition Socialists said “the most terrible sites of our history, the death camps that operated in the middle of Europe, warn us even today that it is a common responsibility to act against the spread of extremist ideologies”. Over seventy years after the terrible tragedy “the best way to pay respect to the memory of victims is to say no to hate, stigmatisation, exclusion and indifference,” the party added.
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Opposition DK said in a statement that one must never forget “the suffering of the innocent because it is the only way to learn from the horrors of the past”. “It is our obligation to preserve the memory of victims and protect fragile human lives, and prevent the spread of ideologies that promote discrimination,” it added. Opposition LMP said it was important to remember the victims of the Holocaust in order to pay respect and also “because it is worth reminding ourselves from time to time where hate and discrimination could easily lead to”.
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Source: MTI