It was unveiled in Budapest late Monday, October 15, at the site of a former boarding school where the nuns sheltered the children from the German Nazi death squads and Hungarians cooperating with them. About 600,000 Hungarians Jews died however in the Holocaust.
The school, which today houses the state prosecutors’ office, was on the same block as the headquarters of the Arrow Cross, the leading Hungarian fascist party that controlled Hungary from October 1944 to April 1945. However Monday’s event was overshadowed by a gathering elsewhere in the Hungarian capital where supporters of the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) and its paramilitary Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard) in front of a court and detention center in Budapest.
Jobbik and Magyar Garda supporters, many holding Arpad flags used by the Arrow Cross party, gathered to commemorate 44-year-old teacher Lajos Szogi who was killed one year ago in northeastern Hungary by an angry mob of gypsies, who prefer to be known as Roma.
TEACHER LYNCHED
The lynching in the village of Olaszliszka came after Szogi accidentally sideswiped and slightly hurt a 14 year-old Roma girl while driving through the village, investigators said. Rights groups have accused Jobbik and the Magyar Garda however of using the incident for their own anti-Roma and anti-Jewish agenda.
"Unfortunately there are many Roma in Hungary," said Gabor Vona, the leader of the far-right Jobbik party and a co-founder of the Magyar Garda in an interview with BosNewsLife. He defended the use of the Arpad flag saying it symbolizes an important royal family and Hungarians traditions. "The Arrow Cross was just stealing that flag for a small period, but I don’t see any problem using the flag now," he added.
The president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, Peter Feldmayer, sees that differently. "There is no doubt in my mind that they are fascists and think as fascists," he said about the Magyar Garda. "There are about 200,000 Hungarians hating Jews," Feldmayer told BosNewsLife. "Ofcourse that’s perhaps not many on a population of 10 million people. But don’t forget there are about 100,000 or 150,000 Hungarian Jews living in Hungary. So it’s a large crowd that opposes us," Feldmayer added.
JEWS LEAVING?
Feldmayer said he does not rule out that Jews will "perhaps" leave Hungary. He said it was unfortunate that sentiments from World War Two, when Hungary was a close ally of Nazi Germany, still prevail in this former Communist-turned-European Union nation. "During the war there were only about 2,000 Hungarians really trying to help the Jewish people, but about two million were against the Jews," Feldmayer said, speaking in front of a Holocaust memorial near the Great Synagogue in Dohany Street, the largest Jewish prayer house in Europe.
Among those helping Jews were nuns providing shelter for some 50 Jewish children and 20 of their parents at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to Nazi death camps over a few short months in 1944. The founder of the Saint Mary’s Order, Sister Zsuzsanna Van, stood out, said Sister Maria Molnar, who worked under Van between 1944 and 1945. "One day, a Jewish mother came with her child to seek shelter. Sister Zsuzsanna said that even though the school was full, the child could stay but the mother would have to leave" so as not to arouse the suspicion, Molnar said in comments published by French News Agency AFP.
"It was the only time I heard Sister Zsuzsanna say ‘no’ to anyone. But just as she started walking into the school with the child, she suddenly stopped in her tracks and called out to the mother. The mother also ended up staying," Sister Maria added. After the war, the Arrow Cross party headquarters served as the headquarters of the communist-era secret police. It now houses the House of Terror Museum that documents the ruthlessness of the Nazi and Communist regimes.
Hungary also hosts a Holocaust memorial center aimed at both remembering the victims and helping Hungarians to rediscover parts of their history that were long taboo topics under decades of Communist rule.
