people Saturday, February 14, for denying the Holocaust took place in his home country and insisted that the Bible had "changed" his heart, Romanian media reported.
"I am asking God and the people I have hurt for forgiveness," said Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the leader of the Greater Romania Party, who hopes to become Romania’s next president. "I repent now and forever and I promise I will never repeat it again, "he stressed in an open letter published in several newspapers.
Tudor, long known for his anti-Semitic views, said he begged for forgiveness for denying hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed during World War Two in Romania and for his "terrible words" against Jewish leaders.
"I am asking for forgiveness from all Jews," Tudor said. "I’ve changed." Romania was home to 760,000 Jews before World War II, but an estimated 420,000 were killed. About 6,000 Jews now live in Romania.
"PILGRIMAGE"
Tudor, said he would lead a "pilgrimage" of party members, including youngsters, to the site of the Auschwitz camp in southern Poland this year.
He also promised that if he became president, he would introduce the study of the Holocaust in schools. Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany during most of the Second World War but critics say that unlike Germany, it still has to deal with its controversial history.
Tudor already inaugurated a statue of Israel’s slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the Romanian town of Brasov despite protests from Rabin’s family and Israel. He said that he now wants a Holocaust museum in the Romanian capital, Bucharest and to hire the firm that ran Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s election campaign, to help him win the presidency.
OPPONENTS
But opponents of Tudor have described the comments as no more than an election stunt to boost his popularity in the impoverished Balkan nation, where millions have been suffering under tough Western style reforms. His remarks came amid international concern about rising anti Semitism across Central and Eastern Europe.
In neighboring Hungary hundreds of supporters of a far right group gathered on Budapest’s Heroes Square Saturday, February 14, to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the failed attempt by German and Hungarian forces to break out from Buda Castle besieged by Soviet troops.
The commemoration was organized by Blood and Honor, an organization registered as a cultural association and propagating neo-fascist views. Several demonstrators carried ancient Hungarian Arpad House flags which symbolized the Hungarian Arrow Cross (Nazi) party during the Second World War, the Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.
PROTESTS
Meanwhile Hungary’s Jewish community and the Hungarian Socialist Party have protested against plans by right wing groups to erect a statue of wartime premier Pal Teleki who introduced Europe’s first anti-Jewish laws that restricted university entry to Jews.
In 1938-39, he introduced the first and drafted the second of a series of further anti-Jewish legislations that experts say eventually led to the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry
The initiative was made by the Pal Teleki Memorial Commission and endorsed by the Metropolitan Council’s cultural committee on January 22, Hungarian media reported. Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky has reportedly asked the memorial committee to withdraw its request, and suspended the licensing procedure.
Hungary is scheduled to join the European Union May 1, but the organization has made clear it does not want to see a revival of nationalism and anti-Semitism within its borders.
