the country was a Soviet satellite state. Hungarian State Secretary for International Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Culture Katalin Bogyay told BosNewsLife that her delegation signed a special agreement in Jerusalem with Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the Yad Vashem Institute.
"With the Yad Vashem Institute we have a program for ten years now and we will renew that. It is very important for teachers to learn how to teach the Holocaust. And this Yad Vashem agreement is about finding the right tools for Holocaust education," she said.
The accord came nearly three years after Hungarian and Israeli government officials attended the emotional inauguration of Hungary’s first ever Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest.
WIDER PUBLIC
The Center was to make the wider public and researchers better understand the period when 600-thousand Hungarian Jews were massacred in and outside concentration camps during World War Two, when Hungary for the most part was a close ally of Nazi Germany.
Yet, the Hungary’s Socialist-led government has suggested that much more has to been done to educate future generations about one of the darkest chapters in Hungary’s recent history.
Following the war, under Soviet domination, teachers knew very little about the Hungarian Holocaust or were discouraged to teach the subject by Communist authorities, who also restricted Jewish studies and religious observance.
As a relative new European Union member, Hungary now wants to improve the education
situation, Bogyay said. "There will be educational collaboration programs between universities, between schools. There will be strong programs and strong scholar ship programs."
JEWISH REVIVAL
The program comes amid a Jewish revival in Hungary, despite several anti-Semitic attacks in recent years. Although most of them were killed and many fled to Israel, Hungary still has Eastern Europe’s largest Jewish community outside Russia, numbering about 100-thousand.
Besides Jewish, many Roma, or Gypsies speaking the Lovari language were killed during Word War Two. Hungarian Culture Minister Istvan Hiller was to attend the unveiling of a Lovari language prayer board in Jerusalem commemorating what became known as the Roma Holocaust.
Hiller was also to discuss Holocaust education and Jewish culture with Defense Minister Amir Petetz, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Israel’s Chief Rabbi – Ashkenazi – Yona Metzger. He also will present the ‘Pro Cultura Hungarica’ awards to Israeli personalities who have nurtured cultural ties with Hungary, officials said.
Hungary’s government, which includes former-Communists, has suggested it hopes the measures will further attribute to more reconciliation and less nationalism in the region. (This BosNewsLife story also airs on the Voice of America network and Deutsche Welle Radio. Click on http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-01-15-voa12.cfm or http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,2142,266,00.html and click on Radio live).
