Hungary has acknowledged the responsibility of the Hungarian Government in office at the time for the Holocaust at the highest level and on a number of occasions, and has therefore announced zero tolerance today against every form of Holocaust denial and hate speech, Szabolcs Takács said in Zagreb. Mr Takács directed the work of the recently closed Hungarian Chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) as a ministerial commissioner.
The Hungarian Embassy in Zagreb and the Hungarian Institute organised a symposium and an exhibition in the Croatian capital under the title The memory of the Holocaust, Holocaust memorial sites and Roma genocide under the auspices of the Hungarian Chairmanship. The event was opened by Mr Takács and Croatian Foreign Minister Miro Kovac.
The State Secretary said: during its IHRA Chairmanship Hungary made every effort to ensure that the saddest and most terrible memory of humanity should never be forgotten. It achieved with the support of the member countries of IHRA that the EU’s new data protection regulation provides unrestricted access to archive sources related to the Holocaust. In Mr Takács’s view, IHRA must further increase its popular recognition, in particular, among young people, and its ideas must be integrated into the societies of the present and the future.
Miro Kovac pointed out that the Holocaust had long-term implications in Europe, changed the continent’s demographic distribution, and in some countries entire Jewish communities ceased to exist. Another such endangered group was the Roma, he added.
The Croatian people, which itself has undergone a number of trials, is combatting religious and racial prejudice, Mr Kovac stressed. The Government will fight to ensure that the Holocaust will not be forgotten, and that younger generations in Croatia should be equally aware of this civilisational and moral disaster and tragedy, he highlighted.
After the conference, at which speeches were delivered, inter alia, by the Oscar Award winning Croatian Branko Lustig of Jewish origin (producer of the film Schindler’s List and himself a Holocaust survivor) and the Israeli Ambassador posted to Zagreb, an exhibition began which was opened by Szabolcs Szita, Director of the Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) was established in 1998 at the initiative of then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson. It currently has 31 member countries, ten countries enjoy observer status, and six international organisations also take part in its work. Hungary handed over the Chairmanship of the organisation to Romania on Tuesday. The Romanian Ambassador to Croatia also attended the event held in Zagreb.