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Hungary and the Jews: Jerusalem Post, Apr. 17, 2014— In yet another example of how nationalist sentiments and patriotism trump common sense, Hungarians went to the polls on April 6 and reelected Prime Minister Victor Orban and his ultra-conservative Fidesz party.
Hungary's Reactionary Lurch: Wall Street Journal, Apr. 8, 2014: Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party thumped a feckless opposition in Hungary's parliamentary election on Sunday, winning 133 of 199 seats, according to an official projection.
A Case of Selective Holocaust Memory: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Arutz Sheva, Apr. 30, 2014—Beginning in May 1944, Hungary’s Jews were deported by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed upon arrival.
Hungarian Jews in the Eye of the Storm: Jerusalem Post, Apr. 17, 2014— On the morning of March 20, 1944, the latest copies of the Orthodox Jewish weekly Orthodox Zsido Ujsag were delivered and laid neatly on the shelves of the Jewish stores in Budapest.
Hungary Won’t Change Design of Holocaust Memorial: Times of Israel, May 1, 2014
70 Years After Hungarian Holocaust, Historian Protests Planned Memorial: Alina Dain Sharon, JNS, Mar. 19, 2014
Hungarians March Against Anti-Semitism After Far-Right Poll Gains: Reuters, Apr. 27, 2014
‘Train of the Living’ to Memorialize 70th Anniversary of Deportation of Hungarian Jews: Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 23, 2014
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 17, 2014
In yet another example of how nationalist sentiments and patriotism trump common sense, Hungarians went to the polls on April 6 and reelected Prime Minister Victor Orban and his ultra-conservative Fidesz party. One in five voters also backed Jobbik, a far-right party that sees itself as the ideological heir to the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross party that existed from 1935 to 1945. Investment bankers and economists said the election results would hurt Hungary’s economy. The Goldman Sachs investment bank said Orban’s reelection means “unpredictable” economic policies are likely to hinder growth. An analyst at MKB Bank Zrt., a unit of Bayerische Landesbank, told Bloomberg that “Fidesz won’t really have an incentive to change its economic policy after this victory. And unless it does, there won’t be much of a sustained gain in the Hungary currency or in government bonds.”
There is concern that with Jobbik grabbing votes from Fidesz from the Right, Orban will be tempted to take further anti-democratic, nationalistic steps. Limitations on political advertising in commercial media, conditioning recognition of religious groups on cooperation with the government, and curbing the Constitutional Court’s powers have already caused the Council of Europe, the body responsible for defending human rights in the EU, to warn Orban that Hungary’s democratic checks and balances are at risk. If not for its membership in the EU, Orban would have taken further anti-democratic steps. In 2012, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso launched “infringement proceedings” in a successful bid to torpedo legislation advanced by Orban that would have empowered him to replace judges appointed under previous leftist governments and appoint the head of the central bank. One of the more eerily totalitarian bills had proposed to give the central government control over protecting the confidentiality of Hungarian citizens’ data. The emboldened Orban might try to pass similar legislation again. And this time he might be less willing to heed the EU’s watchdogs.
Why would Hungarians support a party and a prime minister that legislate policies that hurt their weak economy and threaten their fragile democracy? It seems the crude populist messages of Fidesz and Jobbik – suspicion of the EU and foreign business interests, distaste for migrants and a pride in Hungarian separatism – strike a deep chord. Unsurprisingly, the declining situation of the Jewish community – at more than 100,000 one of the largest in Europe – is collateral damage of Hungary’s turn to the Right. Attacks on Jews in times of crisis have been a theme in Europe throughout history, and the situation in Hungary is no different. The latest controversy is over a series of public ceremonies and other events planned this year in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Hungary. Hungary’s fascist government played a prominent role in the annihilation of half a million Jews. This fact will be played down, however, if not erased.
One example is a memorial to be unveiled during the commemoration ceremonies depicting an eagle (Nazi Germany) attacking an angel (Hungary). The special plight of the Jews will be omitted from the memorial.
Hungary’s Jews are threatening to boycott the government- planned ceremonies. In parallel, the Central European University’s Open Society Archives…will hold alternative activities, such as the Yellow Star Houses Project, to increase awareness of Hungary’s complicity with Nazi Germany. These independent efforts should be applauded. Hungary’s election results, however, do not augur well for the country’s Jews. When countries such as Hungary take an anti-democratic, anti-liberal turn, inevitably it is the Jews who feel the heat first. But rarely are they the only ones to suffer. Victor Klemperer, the German-Jewish diarist whose writings predicted the Holocaust, noted long ago, “You know, we Jews are seismic people.” Jews’ vulnerability means they are often the first to register dangerous upheavals.
Wall Street Journal, Apr. 8, 2014
Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party thumped a feckless opposition in Hungary's parliamentary election on Sunday, winning 133 of 199 seats, according to an official projection. The opposition alliance, Unity, won 38 seats, while the far-right Jobbik party took 23. The results aren't surprising: Given a choice between Fidesz and a Hungarian left that brought the country to the brink of economic disaster while in power in the last decade, voters preferred Mr. Orban. This is despite Mr. Orban's recent show of an authoritarian streak that jars with his political roots in Hungary's anti-Communist movement.
Mr. Orban first served as premier from 1998 to 2002, but since voters returned him as PM in 2010 he has entrenched his party in power and advanced a heavy-handed nationalist agenda. He has nationalized some $14 billion in private pension funds, made repeated attempts to politicize Hungary's central bank, and passed a media law that allows a Fidesz-dominated government body to impose heavy fines for "imbalanced news coverage," among other things. Such measures played well to a nation that by 2010 was suffering from the highest rate of post-Communist dissatisfaction in the region: 72% of Hungarians, a Pew poll found, thought they were worse off in 2010 than under Communism. Mr. Orban has since been able to deliver a measure of fiscal stability: GDP grew by 1.1% in 2013, according to the European Commission, and inflation dropped to 1.7% last year, from 5.7% in 2012. Mr. Orban has kept personal and corporate taxes flat and low, and he's cut deficits to below 3% of GDP. But his party has also made it hard for foreigners to buy Hungarian farm land and forced banks to provide $1.4 billion in relief to struggling borrowers. Such moves, while popular at home, will make it hard for Hungary to attract the foreign investment it needs to grow.
More alarming are the electoral advances made by Jobbik, a far-right party with explicitly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma views. Marton Gyongyosi, a Jobbik parliamentarian who is vice chair of parliament's foreign-affairs committee, called on the government in 2012 to "tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian Parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary." Mr. Gyongyosi has praised Russia's annexation of the Crimea as "the triumph of a community's self-determination." Jobbik is estimated to have increased its share of the national vote this year to 20% from 16% in 2010. During the campaign Mr. Orban's Fidesz party tried to outflank Jobbik on the bigotry front. "In 1848 it was the Rothschilds and now it's the International Monetary Fund," a Fidesz lawmaker declared at a memorial last month celebrating Hungary's 1848 nationalist revolution. "Hungarian independence compromises the Rothschilds' interests." With a rising Russia on its doorstep and a still-stumbling economy, Hungary will not prosper by lurching back toward the ideologies that shaped its catastrophic 20th century.
A CASE OF SELECTIVE HOLOCAUST MEMORY
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Arutz Sheva, Apr. 30, 2014
To mark the 70th anniversary of the mass deportation and murder of over 585,000 Hungarian Jews, the Israeli government decided to observe this dark chapter in Holocaust history by making it the focus of the official Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 commemoration. Beginning in May 1944, Hungary’s Jews were deported by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed upon arrival. Israeli President Shimon Peres described the destruction of Hungarian Jewry in bone-chilling detail in his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem Sunday night.
A few days before Israelis honored the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and their willing collaborators, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with American Rabbi Marc Schneier, a well-known proponent of interfaith dialogue. It was during this get-together that Abbas declared, “The Shoah was the worst crime in human history.” The “Holocaust was a reflection of a racist ideology as expressed in ethnic cleansing, which the Palestinian people reject,” the PA president added. “Indeed, the Palestinian people, afflicted and oppressed, are the first to demand the end of racism against other nations.” Abbas subtly draws a parallel between the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ and today’s Israel. According to Israel’s presumptive peace partner, Israel is doing unto the Palestinians what the Nazis inflicted upon the Jews. Is that so? Is Israel herding Palestinians onto trains like animals? Is Israel shoving the Palestinian people into gas chambers? Is Israel burning Palestinian bodies in crematoria? Is Israel capturing Palestinians and confining them in forced labor camps? Yet, despite the fact there is zero similarity between what is happening now west of the Jordan River and the horrors experienced 70 years ago in Europe, Abu Mazen (Abbas) does not hesitate to implicitly equate Israel to Nazi Germany.
As disturbing as Abbas’s statements are, it’s what he does not say that is morally repugnant. Let’s not forget that the annihilation of Hungary’s Jews was aided by the founder of the Palestinian national liberation movement, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Having fled to Berlin in 1941, the Mufti got busy, actively assisting the Nazis by recruiting Bosnian Muslim soldiers into the Wafen-SS. It was these Mufti recruits who guarded the bridges across which passed the trains that carried over half a million Hungarian Jewish men, women and children to Auschwitz for extermination.The Muslim soldiers were tasked with thwarting partisan efforts to slow the killing machine by blowing up vital arteries such as bridges. The Mufti also helped establish the “Free Arab Legion” that operated as an adjunct to the Wehrmacht, the German army. The Nazis were most appreciative, paying al-Husseini a monthly salary that was twice the amount of a Reich Field Marshall’s. Al-Husseini’s activities on behalf of Nazi Germany are explored in a documentary titled “The Turban and the Swastika”.
At this point, allow me to relay a relevant personal experience. Several years ago I participated in a discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks conducted on an Arabic media outlet. The segment featured a spokesman from the Palestinian Authority. When I brought up the Mufti’s active involvement in the annihilation of Europe’s Jews, the PA representative claimed al-Husseini’s participation was justified, since now these Jews could “not come to Palestine.” I responded by asking, “What if they were planning on coming to America? Would they then also have deserved a death sentence?” He did not answer my question. Arab media never talk about the role of the Palestinian Mufti in the extermination of Hungary’s Jews. Yesterday, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, I was interviewed in Arabic by the BBC about Abbas’s statement that the Holocaust was, “…the worst crime in human history.” During the interview, I criticized Abbas for not condemning the Palestinian Mufti’s complicity in that horrible crime. Though the interview was broadcast, the part about Haj Amin al-Husseini was cut. I would like to ask Rabbi Marc Schneier: After Mahmoud Abbas condemned the destruction of European Jewry, did you remind him about the role of the Palestinian Mufti in facilitating the Nazi death machine? Does President Abbas find these actions reprehensible? Apparently, selective memory is what’s required for an orthodox rabbi to conduct an interfaith dialogue with Israel’s enemies.
Israel’s government, especially during Holocaust Memorial Day, must remind the country’s citizens and neighbors what Palestinian leaders did to destroy us. However, there is a tendency to forget recent history. During his speech that opened the official Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, Israeli President Shimon Peres dedicated several minutes to describing in gruesome detail the destruction of Hungarian Jewry that occurred 70 years ago. Evidently, the President of Israel ‘forgot’ to mention the involvement of the Palestinian Mufti in this crime against humanity.
Omitting the role of the Mufti from his nationally televised address was no accident: Peres believes that the Palestinians are partners in peace, so why remind them and us about the terrible crime committed by their leader against our people? Day and night for generations we have proclaimed that the Holocaust must never be forgotten, that its horrors and lessons will forever be emblazoned on the collective human conscience. But how can we continue to demand from the world that it continue to remember the Holocaust if the President of Israel “forgets” to note a significant aspect of the Shoah just because he doesn’t want to embarrass his friend, Mahmoud Abbas, by mentioning a Palestinian leader’s involvement in the extermination of Jews? It turns out that selective memory is not just employed by our enemies: the President of Israel’s Holocaust memories are also selective, shaped by a personal and political agenda.
HUNGARIAN JEWS IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
Jehuda Hartman
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 28, 2014
On the morning of March 20, 1944, the latest copies of the Orthodox Jewish weekly Orthodox Zsido Ujsag were delivered and laid neatly on the shelves of the Jewish stores in Budapest. That edition was devoted entirely to Passover, the Festival of Freedom, whose celebration was to begin in less than two weeks’ time. Its pages were full of ads for wine meeting the strictest standards of kashrut, and for other familiar products for Passover. There was nothing in the magazine’s routine appearance or in its comforting content that indicated that this would be the magazine’s final edition, or that a fateful event in the life of the Hungarian Jewish community had taken place the day before, on March 19, the day that Nazi Germany invaded Hungary.
It had become clear to the Nazis that Hungary was conducting secret negotiations to join with the Allied Forces and that they must be stopped. Up to that point, Germany had allowed Hungary, its ally, to manage its internal affairs as it saw fit. As a result, the situation of Hungary’s Jews, though difficult, was immeasurably better than that of Jews in the neighboring countries, who, in fact, regarded Hungary as a place of refuge. Although they suffered from social rejection, severe financial hardship and a range of restrictive, discriminatory laws, the Hungarian Jews were not exposed to physical danger. Their hope was to remain in this condition until the end of the war, which seemed imminent. The period of relative safety, however, for over 700,000 Hungarian Jews, came to an abrupt end on March 19. From that day on, their lives were at stake.
How was it possible, in 1944, in the geographical center of a Europe being consumed by flames, where millions of Jews had already been murdered, that such a large Jewish community could continue to live in tranquility? How could they ignore the threat of Hungarian anti-Semitism and the pressures of Nazi Germany? Did they really fail to understand that the seething cauldrons of war just over their borders could boil over and destroy them, their families, their community? Did they really believe “This can’t happen to me?” On the other hand, what political conditions allowed Hungary, an island isolated in the German ocean of influence, to remain unaffected by the storm raging in the area? A number of historic factors help explain this anomaly.
In the mid-19th century, a Hungarian renaissance movement was formed, with the goals of renewing the Hungarian language (which, until then, was spoken mainly by the peasant population), nurturing Hungarian culture and working toward strengthening the country’s political position. Its territory was quite large, and included ethnic minorities from Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Ukraine, among others. Slightly over half the population of greater Hungary consisted of ethnically non-Hungarian minorities. In order to enlarge the Hungarian portion of the country’s culture and to legitimize the claim for the Hungarian nation state, the renaissance movement encouraged the non-Hungarian minorities to join the Hungarian culture by Magyarization – adopting the Hungarian language and culture, and identifying with the national goals.
Most of the members of the minority groups who maintained cultural and linguistic connections with their brethren in neighboring countries rejected the offer of Magyarization, while the Jews, for the most part, adopted the absorption project with great enthusiasm. They saw Magyarization as the key to a series of financial and cultural opportunities of great value. As things developed, the majority of Jews identified as Hungarians, and as a result the Hungarians achieved a majority in their quest for Magyarization.
The Jews saw themselves as an integral part of Hungary, in all its aspects, except for their religion. Jacob Katz, the historian, wrote that Hungarian Jews “…did not see themselves as similar to the Jews of France or Germany, who were merely pasted on to a pre-existing body. The experience of being full partners in the creation of a new People deepened their identification with the new nation and built a Jewish community whose hallmark was its love for the Motherland. Szabolcsi, the dean of Jewish Hungarian journalism, in 1903 tried to convince Herzl that the Hungarian Jews would turn their backs on the idea of a Zionist, national movement. Moreover, he urged that such a movement could not thrive in Hungary, as ‘Our love for our Magyar Motherland is so true, and has soaked up so much of our blood, that even if we wanted not to love her, we couldn’t do so; just as a mother is incapable of not loving her child, even if that were her desire.’”
The winds of modernization which blew so mightily in Western Europe were late in arriving in Hungary. The country’s economy, until the First World War, had been mostly based on the outdated methods and structures of feudal agriculture. The ruling elite sought to carry out broad reforms in the economy and in society in order to bring the country up to the level of the developed nations of the West. Unfortunately, despite the forward-looking views of its elite, Hungary lacked sufficient skilled, motivated manpower to lead the country in the process of moving from a feudalistic to a modern society. It was just that combination of circumstances, at the turn of the 20th century, that made the Jews of Hungary a decisive element in fashioning the shape and nature of the country’s economy. At the beginning of the 19th century, nearly all of Hungary’s Jews lived in agricultural areas, while 100 years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, the greatest concentration of Hungary’s Jews was in the cities; especially in Budapest, the capital. Very quickly, these centers of urban life became the backbone of Hungary’s middle class. These accelerated changes in the nature of the economy opened unprecedented commercial opportunities for the country’s Jews.
Since Hungary did not as yet have a modern infrastructure, the Jewish-led enterprises were able to operate almost without competition. In a relatively short time, industry and commerce began to develop, as did agriculture and the modern banking systems for which the Jews supplied the critical, educated manpower. The percentage of Jews in the commercial life of the country, in medicine, law, the arts and academe grew rapidly toward the end of the 19th century, and Jews became dominant in a number of areas. “The Hungarian Jews became a decisive factor in molding the image of Hungarian society and culture… the role of Hungary’s Jews in developing their country was greater than the contribution of the Jews, as a group, to any other country in Europe,” wrote historian Katz. Hungary’s social anti-Semitism grew and deepened in reaction to the strengthening of the Jews’ status in the financial and cultural life of the country. Because the ruling circles and the aristocracy consistently gave them support, the Jews did not perceive anti-Semitism as an existential threat. Anti-Semitism failed to upset the co-existence between Jews and non-Jews which had prevailed in Hungary since the granting of Emancipation in 1867. Although, to a certain degree, Jews did experience social rejection, they were not discriminated against in the judicial system, as was later the case in the period between the two world wars.
Although the Jews’ successful integration into Hungary’s cultural and industrial realms was the primary reason for the hate directed against them, it was this very success which earned them the support of the country’s elite, who recognized the Jews’ significant contribution to the modernization of Hungary, and to the furthering of its national and cultural goals. The period between the Emancipation and outbreak of WWI was considered the Golden Age of Hungarian Jewry. Patterns of loyalty and patriotism and identification with the land and people of Hungary were firmly set, as if in concrete. The extraordinary economic success, the sense of partnership in building a People, and the consistent support of the country’s elite led the Jews to trust completely in the Hungarian establishment, the leadership and the people.
It should come as no surprise, then, to read the headline of the liberal Jewish newspaper at the outbreak of WWI, calling for the Jewish population to enlist in the Hungarian armed forces in order to defend “The Holy Land,” and even “to sacrifice one’s life for this “great and noble People.” In fact, many Jews did enlist, and over 10,000 were killed in battle. The outcome of the war, however, brought instability to the status of Hungarian Jewry. With the defeat of the Central Powers, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was disbanded, and, according to the Trianon Peace Agreement of 1920, approximately two-thirds of Hungary’s territory and 60 percent of its population were distributed among Hungary’s neighbors. Postwar Hungary spoke one language, controlled much less land, and Jews became the only “others” in the eyes of the majority. There was no longer any need for the policy of Magyarization, and the Jews lost the advantage of their enthusiastic adoption of Magyarization since most other minority groups were now living in their own national states…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed. ]
Hungary Won’t Change Design of Holocaust Memorial: Times of Israel, May 1, 2014—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Jewish community leaders that he would build a controversial Nazi occupation monument despite their opposition.
70 Years After Hungarian Holocaust, Historian Protests Planned Memorial: Alina Dain Sharon, JNS, Mar. 19, 2014 — This year Hungary is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the deportation of more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Hungarians March Against Anti-Semitism After Far-Right Poll Gains: Reuters, Apr. 27, 2014 —Tens of thousands of Hungarians joined a protest march on Sunday against anti-Semitism, three weeks after the far-right Jobbik party won nearly a quarter of votes cast in a national election.
‘Train of the Living’ to Memorialize 70th Anniversary of Deportation of Hungarian Jews: Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 23, 2014—To mark the 70th anniversary of the mass deportation and murder of over 585,000 Hungarian Jews during World War II, hundreds of highschool students from across the globe will travel by train from Budapest to Auschwitz, where they will join 10,000 other students to march to the Birkenau extermination camp.
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