“We trust that Hungary will remain an island of peace for the Jewish community, for all Hungarian peoples and for everyone else, where nobody has to fear that they will suffer discrimination because of their origins, traditions or culture”, Bence Rétvári said on the Day of Remembrance for the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust.

At a commemoration held at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest, the Deputy Minister of Human Capacities and the Ministry’s Parliamentary State Secretary expressed his hope that in future the government will continue to defend Jewish communities not only against the old kind of anti-Semitism, but also against the new kind.

“In recent years, Hungary has not only spoken out against anti-Semitism, but has also taken action, thanks to which anti-Semitic speech is on the decline”, he stressed.

He pointed out that according to Hungary’s Fundamental Law and Penal Code in the case of an attack against a community, any member of that community can take action and demand the perpetrator be banned from committing the offence.

The Deputy Minister said the establishment of the Jewish Community Roundtable, the dialogue between administration officials and representatives of Jewish communities, and the resulting achievements, was an important step. As an example, he cited the fact that in recent years synagogues had been restored and refurbished and community spaces had been created throughout the Carpathian Basin.

Mr. Rétvári also mentioned the fact that the authors of new school textbooks had written the chapters on the history of the Jewish community, including the Holocaust, in collaboration with Jewish experts. “Accordingly, everyone is receiving a genuine portrayal of what happened in Hungary and the world in the middle of the 20th century, to ensure that we can avoid anything similar happening again anywhere else in the world”, he said.

Israel’s Ambassador to Budapest Joseph Amrani spoke about the fact that Budapest was witness to the destruction of Jewish life, the rounding up of thousands of people and their confinement in ghettos, the deportations, and the barbaric slaughter of innocent people on the banks of the Danube and in other locations. “The tragedy of Budapest’s Jewish community is written on the streets and the city’s buildings, it is part of the cityscape”, he said.

These days, however, “we are witnessing the revival of Jewish cultural and religious life” and of a life that is conquering the destruction, he added.

The Ambassador also spoke about the fact that commemorating the victims not only represents justice, but also assures a better future for coming generations. “A future in which nobody can come face-to-face with such evil; a world in which suffering is not ignored, and from which discrimination, hatred and darkness are banished”, he highlighted.

Ambassador Amrani called on the Hungarian Government to do even more to educate young people so they know about the past and can learn the “historic lesson”.

On the subject of Israel, which is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its founding, he stressed the importance of independence for the Jewish people. “However, the Holocaust also reminds us of the laws of democracy and helps us recognise that democracy and elections do not guarantee the protection of human rights”, he noted.

Chairman of the board of trustees of the Holocaust Documentation Center Memorial Collection Public Foundation Andor Grósz stressed: “The tragedy that the Jewish people had to suffer during the Holocaust is unimaginable, as is the loss that was suffered by the whole Hungarian nation”.

“We cannot imagine to what extent Hungary would be stronger and richer had the victims and all of their descendants ‘worked in unison with us’, and it is impossible to guess how many masterpieces would have come into being had Miklós Radnóti, Antal Szerb or Jenő Rejtő been able to complete their life’s work”, he said.

“The blood of every single innocent victim cries out for justice, and when we commemorate them we are not just remembering the hundreds of well-known names, but also the hundreds of thousands of everyday people, engineers, doctors, craftsmen and factory workers”, Mr. Grósz said.

“Commemoration is not just a right, but also an obligation, which we owe not only to the memory of those who were deported, but also to future generations”, he added.

At the end of the ceremony, the participants recited the Kaddish and placed candles and stones at the commemorative wall for the victims.

The event was attended, amongst others, by Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Esztergom Cardinal Péter Erdő, Deputy State Secretary Csaba Latorcai from the Prime Minister’s Office, President of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities András Heisler, former Prime Minster Péter Boros, and Chairman of the Council of Human Dignity Zoltán Lomnici.

In accordance with the decree issued by Parliament in 2000, the Day of Remembrance for the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust has been held since 2001 on 16 April of every year in commemoration of the fact that it was on this day in 1944 that Jews began being confined to ghettos throughout the Carpathian Basin.

(MTI)