April 11, to remember 600,000 Hungarian Jews and others who were massacred during World War Two when the country was a close ally of Nazi Germany, a fact historians say was long denied under Communism.
The Memorial Week comes as organizers race against the clock to capture memories of survivors and those who witnessed one of the country’s darkest chapters, amid fears there may soon be no people left to tell their stories to future generations.
It seems timely as Hungary also marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World
War and the liberation of Jews at concentration camp Auschwitz. At least one-third of the over 1.2 million Jews massacred there are believed to have been of Hungarian origin.
As part of the week long events, which began over the weekend, a new 70 minute Hungarian
documentary on the Holocaust sheds light on the suffering of Jews from a fresh angle with non-Jews who witnessed the deportations of their one-time neighbors.
NEIGHBORS WATCHED
In an unprecedented move, the film explains what they did, or could have, done to prevent
their neighbors from being send to the concentration camps.
"While many former documentaries featured accounts by survivors, eyewitnesses have rarely been filmed," said Zsuzsanna Varga, the director and photographer of the film, in an interview with Hungarian News Agency MTI. The film was shot last September, and its debut was to mark the highlight of the week, a forthcoming Holocaust Memorial Day, Saturday, April 16.
The film, captures the memories of witnesses who lived in the Hungarian town of Koszeg, near the Austrian border, where deported Jews and forced laborers were rounded up before they were herded as cattle in train wagons heading for Germany.
REMEMBRANCE STONES
In addition, stones of remembrance will be placed, candles lit, and the names of victims read aloud at the Holocaust Memorial Center inside the one-time Pava Street Synagogue, organizers said. Other events are expected to include discussions with teachers who will explain how they teach today’s young people about the Holocaust.
Also part of the program is a roundtable on women and survivors of the Gypsy community, who prefer to be known as Roma, as well as an analysis of why it has proved so difficult for them to speak about what they went through.
Participants may even be able to travel to the different Memorial Week events in one of 46 metro cars, displaying pictures from New York-based artist Art Spiegelman’s "Maus," a comic book novel depicting Jews as mice and Germans as cats.
BLACK AND WHITE
The pictures must be seen as a black-and-white interpretation of Spiegelman’s own parents’ survival of the Auschwitz death camp, suggested Hungarian Culture Minister Andras Bozoki. "What happens when there are adults who never grow up, for whom the use of force and murder are only games," he asked recently at the exhibition’s opening at one of the capital’s metro stations.
The Holocaust Memorial Week is also an attempt to combat anti Semitism in Hungary, which government officials admit remains a problem in the post-Communist nation. Earlier this year Swastika signs were painted on several key building and monuments in the Hungarian town of Debrecen, while right wing extremists destroyed Jewish cemeteries across the country. There are also concerns about anti-Jewish sentiments within right wing political parties and groups, and anti-Jewish slogans at football marches.
In addition, last year, Hungarian police prevented a major terrorist attack on a Jewish memorial. However Hungarian churches and the Jewish community have in recent years stepped up cooperation in an effort to reach reconciliation. And reconciliation is urgently needed, Jewish groups argue, as Hungary has a Jewish population of up to 100,000 people, the largest Jewish community in Central and Eastern Europe outside Russia.
(With: Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research).
