Dr Csaba Latorcai, Deputy State Secretary for Priority Social Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office attended and delivered a speech at the commemoration which was organised by the Austrian Mauthausen Committee on the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
The Deputy State Secretary described what happened at the Mauthausen and other concentration camps during World War II as a tragedy of humanity that we can never get over, and at the same time drew attention to the fact that we must commemorate the victims of every dictatorship of the 20th century.
Mr Latorcai highlighted: it is important that young generations should know about what happened to their grandparents and parents, all the more so because the examples of martyrs and the heroes who rescued lives may help them to make responsible decisions, may contribute to the development of a stronger identity, and may help shape their outlook on life.
He added: when one makes a decision for or against something out of one’s own free will, using one’s freedom, one is able to make a good decision if one does so with responsibility.
It is with this responsibility that the Government of Hungary wishes to make constructive efforts to heal the visible and invisible scars of the Holocaust and World War II together. One of the means to achieve this is the programme launched by the Government which seeks to refurbish and renovate synagogues and abandoned cemeteries, for the purposes of which an allocation of HUF 1 billion will be available in the next few years.
The Government wishes to extend this programme to cooperation with the Member States of the V4 which, in addition to a number of other initiatives, is intended to reinforce our commitment to the fact that the preservation and development of our religious and cultural values also reinforces our identity stemming from our Christian-Jewish roots, the Deputy State Secretary said.
Upon closing his speech, Mr Latorcai called upon Europe’s leaders to take responsible actions and to make responsible decisions. At the same time, he rejected any anti-Semitic accusations levelled at the Hungarian Government and the Hungarian Prime Minister, adding: those who make unfounded libellous claims and incite hatred by accusing a Prime Minister, a government, a country of anti-Semitism just because they have run out of sober and reasonable political arguments exploit the pain of millions. There is no room for people who make such defamatory claims without foundations in politics, and they must leave.