“The March of the Living simultaneously promotes solidarity and commemorates the victims of the Holocaust” Csaba Latorcai said at the opening ceremony of an exhibition showcasing the thirty-year history of the international organisation, in the cemetery of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest on Thursday.

The Deputy State Secretary for Priority Social Affairs from the Prime Minister’s Office highlighted: “Taking part in the programmes of the March of the Living is synonymous with solidarity towards each other, dialogue, patience and respect”. “It represents a firm stand in support of the fact that today’s generations will never forget the atrocities that were inflicted on their Jewish compatriots in the concentration camps”, he continued.

“The Holocaust is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of not only the Hungarian Jewish community, but also of the whole of Hungarian society, the memory of which must be kept alive so that, in the knowledge of the past, future generations will not commit the same atrocities ever again”, Mr. Latorcai stressed.

“The kindling of this memory and the credible and balanced presentation of the Holocaust takes us closer to our goal: to make amends for what happened”, the Deputy State Secretary added, explaining that education was indispensable in this process, and enables the children of today to see and experience the causes of the Holocaust.

The establishment of the House of Terror Museum and Hungary’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on 16 April, within the framework of which thousands of schoolchildren commemorate the Holocaust every year, also serve this goal. At the end of his speech, the Deputy State Secretary announced that the Horthy commemorative mass planned for 27 January will not be held. “Although a commemorative mass for Miklós Horthy has been held every year at the end of January or in early February for the past twenty years, in view of International Holocaust Remembrance Day this tradition will now be broken”, he said.

On Wednesday, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary András Heisler submitted a letter to Deputy Speaker of Parliament Sándor Lezsák with relation to the fact that the Association of Christian Intellectuals is planning to commemorate Miklós Horthy within the framework of a holy mass on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and because in his opinion “this is tantamount to defiling the memory of all Hungarian victims”.

Vice Chairman at the International March of the Living organisation Aharon Tamir told the press that the exhibition of 64 photographs had arrived in Budapest from Poland, where it has been viewed by two and a half million people over the course of two and a half years. “Every photograph reminds us of the mission that the organisation has committed itself to for thirty years now”, he stressed, pointing out that Hungary’s March of the Living is one of the most important and most active participants of the international movement. “There is a great need for their work, to draw people’s attention to what hate can lead to, because “unfortunately, many anti-Semitic movements and phenomenon are still present in the region”, Mr. Tamir added.

Budapest’s Chief Rabbi Róbert Frölich warned: The Holocaust, the twenty-five years from the numerus clausus to Hungary’s liberation “is not just a Jewish matter”. Auschwitz is the world’s largest Jewish cemetery, but it is not just a Jewish cemetery, because Jews were not the only people sent to concentration camps. Accordingly, the Holocaust is not a purely Jewish matter, but “a matter that involves all upright Hungarian people”, because there are no Hungarian families who do not mourn at least someone who lost their lives during the Holocaust”, he declared.

“Our parents and grandparents provided us with a good model of how to live in this country as good Hungarian citizens” They were expelled and deported, and “it is we who go after them and are searching and looking for them”. “We follow their Jewish religion, which they had perhaps long given up, but which was why they were murdered”, the Chief Rabbi said. “We, who were born after the Holocaust must continue what they began: to live as Jews in this country. This is our mission”, Rabbi Frölich declared.

(MTI)