The Jewish community in Hungary is alive and strong; however, as regards the processing of the Holocaust, Hungary is only at the stage where the former West-Germany was in the seventies, Csaba Latorcai, Deputy State Secretary for Priority Social Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office said on Monday at the event of the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin held to present the portrait film I’m Not Gone – The Story of Gedeon Richter.
The presentation of the 2014 film on the founder of the modern pharmaceutical industry in Hungary was another episode of the series of events which has been ongoing for several years now at the Embassy and which is concerned with Jewish life in Germany and Hungary.
At the podium discussion held after the showing of the film directed by Dávid Spáh about the pharmacist of Jewish origin who was shot by the Arrow Cross into the Danube at the end of 1944, historian Professor Károly Kapronczy, Director General of the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History pointed out among others: the fact that the Treaty of Trianon did not affect the pharmaceutical industry also contributed to the growth of Gedeon Richter’s business.
Günter Morsch, the head of the museum which operates on the premises of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin highlighted: one of the weaknesses of the film is that a less-informed viewer does not find out what the Arrow Cross massacre entailed. The viewer is further left ignorant of the fact that there was another form of the attempts which served to exterminate the Jewish community in Hungary: deportation to concentration camps. The film likewise fails to reveal that anti-Semitism had “deeper roots” in Hungary.
He added, inter alia: one may observe that “new myths” are being created instead of “ruthlessly facing” the past. This is underlined by the concept of the Budapest House of Terror which “concentrates” on the role of the Arrow Cross, and “says nothing whatsoever” about the role of the Hungarian state agencies in the Holocaust, the German expert took the view.
Mr Latorcai highlighted: the Government has always acknowledged that the deportations were implemented with the involvement of the then Hungarian authorities, and “consequently, the Hungarian State was responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Jewish fellow-patriots”.
He added that the Government decided on the establishment of the Budapest House of Fates in tribute to the Jewish victims due to the criticisms that surround the House of Terror, among other reasons. The new memorial establishment has already been completed, but will only open its doors once the Jewish community in Hungary and international experts reassure the Government of their agreement regarding the “internal content”. The Government wishes to thereby ensure that there should be no disputes around the “narrative” of the House of Fates such as the ones that emerged in connection with the House of Terror.
The Deputy State Secretary stressed that the Holocaust “became a taboo” during communism, and “the processing of the events with a sincere facing up to the facts” could only begin at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties.