International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked in Budapest

The terrible loss suffered by Jews was a loss for Europe and the whole world, and the loss suffered by Hungarian Jews was a loss for the entire nation, a government official told an event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday.

Eszter Vitályos, the state secretary of culture and innovation, told a memorial event organised by the Holocaust Documentation Centre and Memorial Collection Public Foundation that the Auschwitz concentration camp which has become symbol for Nazism — where every third victim had been a Hungarian — was liberated 78 years ago. “Hungary has learnt from the past, and the Hungarian government practices zero tolerance against anti-Semitism,” she said. “It is dedicated to these basic values at home and in the world, and consistently stands up for them,” she added.

Andor Grósz, head of the Holocaust Public Foundation, said at the event that an important task of the memorial centre was trying to describe the events of the past, understand their historical roots and present them to society in an comprehendible way.

Commenting on the destruction of war in Ukraine, he said that when the martyrs of the Holocaust were remembered, “we must also think about the victims of today”. He said currently there was no mass expression of religious or ethnic resentment against Jews in Hungary and anti-Semitism remained at a peripheral, verbal level, so Hungarian Jews had no reason for existential fear.

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Source: MTI