“We Hungarians can never forget what happened, because it happened to us; the Holocaust is our national tragedy”, Antal Rogán, Minister heading the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister said at an event to commemorate the Day of Remembrance for the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust in Budapest on Sunday.
The ceremony held in front of the House of Terror Museum commemorated martyr and theology teacher Vilma Bernovits (1901-1944). In his speech at the event, the Minister stressed that “during the Holocaust there were some who entered foreign service and betrayed the Hungarian nation, who sent their Jewish compatriots to their deaths and by doing so humiliated the whole country”. “The events must be remembered so they can never happen again”, Mr. Rogán stressed.
“However, our Members of Parliament still include some who a few years ago wanted to draw up a list of Jews and who spat into the Shoes on the Danube: Márton Gyöngyösi and Gergely Kulcsár”, he said, adding that “Gyöngyösi’s suggestion is a neo-Nazi idea, and Gergely Kulcsár’s act was a neo-Nazi act”.
“The facts must be stated, because their presence in the National Assembly is unworthy of the memory of the victims (of the Holocaust) and is unacceptable”; no decent person can tolerate them continuing to be Members of Parliament, he said.
“We commemorate those we lost in inhuman conditions during the Holocaust, which did not spare the Hungarians either, and strong communities never forget, they also want to and dare to remember the difficult things, which the human mind cannot fathom. The 20th century was a woeful century from which the horrors of the holocaust stand out and remain a tragedy that is still with us to this day”, he said.
The Minister said that in his opinion what happened must be stated, because what has now become history was once a bloody reality. “Every tenth victim of the Holocaust was Hungarian and the people who were dragged off were those who wanted the best for the country; innocent people were made scapegoats and murdered”, he pointed out.
Mr. Rogán also said that we must face the whole truth, and no matter how difficult it is we must declare that the Hungarian state at the time was incapable of protecting its citizens, and the fact that the same thing occurred in other European countries is no excuse.
He also mentioned that at the same time many everyday Hungarians became heroes in those bloody times; many protected their persecuted compatriots. “It was they who gave the nation the chance to get back onto its own two feet after the war; they offered an example, hope and the strength to carry on, proving that there is no dark and evil force that cannot be conquered”, he said.
In his speech, head of the Unified Hungarian Israelite Community, Chief Rabbi Slomó Köves said: “These days there are more and more Holocaust commemorations and one would think that this should have a positive effect on people’s thinking. But according to studies by the Action and Protection Foundation the number of people with holocaust denying views increased from 9 percent to 19 percent between 2006 and 2016”.
The Chief Rabbi said that in his opinion public dialogue shouldn’t be about “measuring” whose grief is greater, or about who bears the greater guilt, in addition to which we must also move beyond the fact that commemorative events are often full of “hollow and empty phrases” and regularly repeated statements that do not compel people to think.
Rabbi Köves stressed that remembering the Holocaust is important to everyone and we remember because remembering should have a positive effect on everyone.
In her speech, Director-General of the House of Terror Museum Mária Schmidt said: “We have been commemorating the victims of the Holocaust with an open air concert in front of the Museum for the past ten years, and each year the commemorations serve as a warning for both present and future”. “It is through commemoration that the important is separated from the unimportant, because we can only commemorate that which truly moves us”, she pointed out.
“What never should have been allowed to happen happened, and the communities that retained their sobriety have always known that what happened was the denial of everything on which our homeland and Europe are built, and of everything we can be proud of”, she highlighted.
“In Hungary we stated the names of the guilty and served historical justice, but we perhaps deal too little with the lives of people who serve as worthy examples such as the life of Vilna Bernovits, whose moral strength always provides direction and who we can be proud of”, she said.
Martyr and theology teacher Vilma Bernovits (1901-1944) regularly took food, clothing and identification papers to those in need after the capital’s Jewish ghettos were set up. Many have her inventiveness and devotedness to thank for their lives. In December of 1944 she was arrested by the Arrow Cross together with Sára Salakházi, a nun from the Sisters of Social Service Catholic women’s institute, and taken to the Pest bank of the Danube, where they were stripped and shot and their bodies thrown into the river.