Representatives of ultra right wing parties they accuse of reviving anti-Semitism in the region, BosNewsLife has learned.
The new challenges come after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres described hatred towards the Jews as “poison” in discussions this week with media, Government leaders and Socialist opposition leaders.
In Romania’s Capital Bucharest the Jewish community accused an ultra nationalist lawmaker of inciting hatred towards Jewish people with his new book “The Nationalist.” Author Vlad Hogea, a member of the influential Greater Romania Party, writes in his book: “Whoever fights the Jews, fights the devil.”
The book bears the stamp of approval of the Romanian Academy, the country’s most prestigious academic and cultural institution, The Associated Press reported. Anti-Semitic publications have been on the rise since in Romania since last December’s elections.
HOLOCAUST
Local media depicted it as downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust. It also implies that Jews have too much power in the country. In an interview published Wednesday by the daily Evenimentul Zilei, Hogea was quoted as saying that borrowed the phrase from Julius Streicher, a leading member of the Nazi Party, who was executed for war crimes in 1946.
Romania’s Federation of Jewish Communities said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press that the book “constitutes a grave incitement to interethnic and racial hatred.” There are some 12,000 Jews in Romania today, a far cry from the 800,000 who lived here before World War II.
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About half of them died under the rule of pro-Nazi dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu. Most of the remaining Jews emigrated to Israel during the Communist regime, which ended in 1989.
HUNGARY
In neighboring Hungary, where about 100,000 Jews live, the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities (Mazsihisz) filed a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office after Budapest Prosecutors refused to launch legal procedures against the Vice President of the Hungarian Justice and Life Party, MIEP.
Budapest Prosecutors argued that Vice President Laszlo Bognar was within the law when described the sale of Hungary’s most popular football (soccer) club Ferencvaros by the Jewish owned retail company Fotex Rt. as “an act conducted against the Hungarian nation.”
However Mazsihisz said the comments must be investigated by Prosecutors, as they seem to violate international conventions ratified by Hungary decades ago, such as the 1969 New York Agreement and the Agreement on Civil and Political Rights promulgated by decree in 1976.
Like in Romania, anti-Semitism remains a very sensitive issue in Hungary, which was a close ally of Nazi Germany during most of World War Two when 600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered. There are fears among Jewish Holocaust survivors and some analysts that former East Block countries will see a repeat of the thirties, when anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic laws were a prelude for the Holocaust.
