President: Erzsébet children’s camps ‘represent what it means to be Hungarian’
Erzsébet children’s camps represent what it means to be Hungarian, as well as providing a secure environment which fosters friendship, President Katalin Novák said on Monday in Zánka, in western Hungary, marking the 10th anniversary of the church-based camps.
“In Erzsébet camps you learn what it means to belong to a thousand-year-old nation and what it means to be Hungarian in the Great Plain, in Zala, Tolna or Borsod County, in the Carpathian Basin, in southern Slovakia, in northern Serbia, in Transcarpathia, in Transylvania, or in the diaspora,” Novák said.
They provide spiritual and physical security so that parents need not worry about their children, the president said, adding that “new friendships are made and old ones become stronger” in the camps.
Novák noted that the camps operating in the newly refurbished facilities at Zánka and Fonyódliget, at Lake Balaton in Hungary, and the one in Transylvania, have hosted one million children in the past ten years.
Tibor Hornyák, the director of the Erzsébet Foundation, said it was expected that the camps will have hosted as many as 180,000 children this year, up from 30,000 in 2012, with children from Transcarpathia, Transylvania, northern Serbia, southern Slovakia and Croatia attending.
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Source: MTI
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1 Comment
The original concept for this sort of thing started in Britain in 1909 with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts attended the first rally that led to the Scouts movement. This idea quickly spread to Germany and was enthusiastically. The National Socialist Party the potential of this and set up their own youth movement in 1922. By the end of 1933 that youth movement, complete with summer camps and so forth had more than 2 million members.
During the following few years that it became mandatory for young people to be a part of this Jugendvolk. “Not only did it allow the Third Reich to indoctrinate children at their most impressionable, but it let the Nazis remove them from the influence of their parents, some of whom opposed the regime.”
Let’s compare that with the stated aims as articulated by Novák:
“In Erzsébet camps you learn what it means to belong to a thousand-year-old nation and what it means to be Hungarian in the Great Plain, in Zala, Tolna or Borsod County, in the Carpathian Basin, in southern Slovakia, in northern Serbia, in Transcarpathia, in Transylvania, or in the diaspora,” Novák said, along with “They provide spiritual and physical security so that parents need not worry about their children,”
There is an eery and many would say sinister similarity. The Germans were creating a fervour among young people for the lands of Germany as they were before WW1. It appears that Novák and the Hungarian government wish to do the same with regard to lands that were formerly Hungarian before WW1. Doubtless the kids will also be indoctrinated into the idea that only Fidesz can deliver greater glory and a pure race.
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis