murder of Jews and other people the Nazis didn’t like.
In a statement monitored by BosNewsLife on Monday, December 18, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry recalled that an estimated 600,000 Hungarian Jews were among the six million Jews who died in concentration camps during World War Two.
"Hundreds of thousands of innocent Hungarian Jews had fallen victim to the mass murders of World War II. Holocaust denial is tantamount to opposing the universal values of civilization, «said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Viktor Polgar in remarks distributed by Hungarian News Agency MTI.
It came shortly after a memorial to Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz (1895-1975), who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was unveiled in a park adjacent to the American Embassy at Budapest’s Szabadsag (Freedom) Square.
MANY SAVED
As vice consul at the Swiss embassy in Hungary from 1942 to 1945, Lutz extended diplomatic immunity to seventy-two residential buildings in Budapest, saving the lives of some 62,000 Jews who were living in them, according to estimates.
"Carl Lutz was determined to save the lives of as many Hungarian Jews as he could," said US Ambassador April H. Foley at the ceremony. Under Communism remembering the Holocaust was not high on the agenda, and only in 1991 a memorial remembering him was established at the entrance to the old Budapest ghetto.
Decades earlier in 1963 however, a street was named after Lutz in Haifa, Israel. He also was also awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations," Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Swiss Ambassador Marc-Andre Salamin said Lutz had been the designer and leader "of the biggest and most successful rescue action of the 20th century."
CHURCHES COOPERATE
It comes at a time when Christian churches and the Jewish community increasingly cooperate to overcome the wounds of the Second World War when Hungary was a close ally of Nazi Germany.
Last month, November 26, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary (Mazsihisz) presented its award ‘For Jews in Hungary’ to Cardinal Peter Erdo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, for promoting a dialogue between Jews and Catholics. The group also recognized his work to keep alive the memories of Holocaust victims and those who saved Jewish people.
Mazsihisz Managing Director Gusztav Zoltai noted that Erdo had delivered a speech in Parliament to mark the first International Holocaust Day of Remembrance last January and celebrated the beatification mass of Sara Salkahazi, a murdered nun who saved many Jews from deportation to concentration camps.
There are currently an estimated 100,000 Jews still living in Hungary, the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe outside Russia. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos).
