Opening a commemoration event at the Erkel Theatre in Budapest on Tuesday, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog said that when we remember the victims of the Gulag, we also remember and are reminded of all forms of terror inflicted on Hungary.
Mr. Balog said that we must reject every form of terror, dictatorship and “human social experiment”. He said that we must also reject the attempts of groups of people sitting behind desks, devising “inhuman and unholy experiments wrapped in humanism” which affect families, communities, nations, our common Europe and the world.
The minister – who is also the President of the Gulag Memorial Committee – said that the global catastrophe of the Gulag, just like that of the concentration camps, was rooted in men claiming God’s right to judge good and evil, faith and belief, culture and lifestyle, truth and falsehood.
Mr. Balog said that the Gulag Memorial Committee (which was founded this year), the World War I Centennial Memorial Committee and the soon-to-be-established 1956 Memorial Committee are means of paying tribute and forging national consensus. This consensus is that in that every loss we share a common loss and that we can be proud of the heroes and resistance fighters.
He said that it remains to be seen whether we will have the strength to “show what is common in all our sufferings and survival, despite our disagreements and differences”.