(Reuters) — Tamas Marton was a Budapest schoolboy in 1944 when Hungarians allied to Nazi Germany helped to deport half a million Jews, including his mother, to death camps. Seventy years on, as Hungarians still grapple with the past and many support the far-right Jobbik party, the government finds itself in conflict with the Jewish…
(JTA) — It isn’t every day that Jewish organizations reject funding for Holocaust commemorations. But that’s what happened in Hungary this spring when Jewish groups refused nearly $1 million in special state grants to protest what they see as the government’s whitewashing of Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. “We wanted to send a very strong message…
A town on the southeast outskirts of Budapest has reversed a 2012 decision to name its main square after Hungary’s Nazi-allied World War II leader Miklos Horthy. According to the Hungarian news agency MTI, the mayor of town of Gyomro said it had been a “mistake” to rename “Freedom Square” in honor of Horthy, who…
(Reuters) — Budapest’s Jewish community is vibrant, visible and patriotic; and yet seven decades after the Holocaust, the taboo about expressing anti-Semitic views is breaking down among many fellow Hungarians. Some Jews and academics blame this on the far-right Jobbik party, which has come from nowhere to become the second most popular party as one…
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Jewish community leaders he would build a controversial Nazi occupation monument despite their opposition. Orban presented his firm position on Wednesday during a meeting with leaders of the the Mazsihisz Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary, the news site www.nol.hu reported. Mazsihisz believes the monument of an eagle attacking…
Tens of thousands of Jews and Jewish supporters participated in the 12th March of the Living Hungary in Budapest. Sunday’s event, considered the largest civil anti-fascist event in Hungary, was held on the 70th anniversary of the mass deportation of Jews from Hungary by the Nazis. Holding posters saying “Never again” and “History cannot be…
European Reform Jews landed what they said was an important victory in their legal fight for equal recognition and funding from the governments of Hungary and Poland. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled earlier this month against the Hungarian government, the union’s president, Leslie Bergman, said on Thursday, during his organization’s…
The U.S. Embassy in Budapest called on the Hungarian government to resume dialogue with Jewish, national and international groups over plans for its Holocaust memorial year. In a statement issued Tuesday directed at the newly re-elected government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the embassy wrote, “As a fellow democracy, we continue to urge the government…
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