another Hungarian city, will soon display a statue to honor Hungary’s wartime prime minister Pal Teleki who introduced Europe’s first anti-Semitic laws. The Managing Director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary, Gusztav Zoltai, said that "setting up a public statue of the one-time prime minister who drafted anti-Jewish laws and had them enacted in Parliament, would be a sin against God," Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.
It was not immediately clear what fresh information he had about the plans, which were first launched in 2004 by rightwing groups. His statement came as Jewish Holocaust survivors gathered in four Hungarian cities on Sunday, July 3, to remember the estimated 600-thousand Hungarian Jews who died during World War Two, when Hungary was a close ally of Nazi Germany.
Survivors and relatives were seen burning candles and praying at the monument of Jewish martyrs, which was erected by the Emanuel Foundation in Budapest’s Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park in July 1990. The commemoration was also attended by Israeli Ambassador to Hungary, David Admon, and Hungary’s State Secretary of Church Affairs, Kalman Gulyas, MTI said.
MORE ‘HOLOCAUST’ CITIES
Holocaust victims were reportedly also remembered in the cities of Szombathely, Gyongyos and Gyor, whose Jewish communities were deported to Nazi concentration camps 61 years ago. An official at the Israeli Embassy in Budapest has told a BosNewsLife reporter that Teleki’s anti-Jewish laws "formed the blueprint" and "created the atmosphere" for the fast deportation of Hungarian Jews from especially Budapest.
Teleki issued a dozen anti-Jewish laws from as early as 1920 and signed over 50 anti-Semitic decrees, according to experts. The laws included the legislation ‘Numerus Clausus’, a Latin term for a restricted number, which limited the number of Jews who could be admitted to Hungarian universities, historians say.
Teleki’s supporters claim his policy was aimed at avoiding Hungary’s active participation in World War Two. As prime minister of Hungary he committed suicide on April 3, 1941. Teleki had served as prime minister in 1920 and 1939-1941.
FEAR OVER SUPPORT
Jewish groups fear a revival of support for Teleki, at time of concern over renewed anti Semitism in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. In recent weeks at least two Jewish Hungarian cemeteries were partly destroyed, and earlier far right groups held rallies in Budapest, including one last year where the Israeli flag was burned.
But Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, a former Communist turned Socialist, has made clear that as a new European Nation, Hungary cannot tolerate anti Jewish sentiments. He did not attend Sunday’s Holocaust commemorations, but said in a letter he was with the events "in spirit," MTI reported.
Up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews still live in Hungary, Eastern Europe’s largest Jewish community, outside Russia. (With BosNewsLife Research and BosNewsLife News Center in Budapest).
