"It is held in the weekend that Jewish people remember the victims of the Holocaust around the world, and in Hungary from Sunday till July 9," one of the organizers, Rabbi Slomo Koves, told BosNewsLife.
Jewish leaders fear that nearly eight decades after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany the influence of his ideology lives on with increasing numbers of racist and anti-Semitic attacks reported in especially countries of the former Soviet Union.
In Hungary there is particularly concern about the Magyar Garda, or Hungarian Guard , a uniformed wing of the far-right Jobbik party with at least 1500 members.
CONTROVERSIAL FLAG
The gardists are wearing uniforms and walk behind flags associated with Hungary’s Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross party during World War Two, which was responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Magyar Garda denies it is an extremist group, saying all its followers just want to "defend the Hungarian nation."
Sunday’s Jewish gathering will also see the re-opening of Hungary’s first synagogue build since the Holocaust and a Jewish culture, education and prayer center, said Koves, who became Hungary’s first newly appointed Orthodox rabbi since the war.
The meeting is held amid tensions with the Hungarian government over support for religious Jews. Under Communism, Jews were forced to unite in one organization, but after the democratic changes in 1989 traditional Orthodox Jews "began their own community" comprising at least 7.000 people, Koves said.
The government, which includes former communists, has not done enough to help revive the Jewish religious community, he suggested. Some 600.000 Hungarian Jews were killed during World War Two. Up to 100.000 Jewish people still live in Hungary, the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe after Russia.
