This week, in a reversal of their previous position, Mr. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party declared that the writings of author Imre Kertész, recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, are actually in sync with their philosophy and are putting him up for a high state award. Historian Dr. Mária Schmidt wrote a lengthy article declaring Mr. Kertész the Hungarian right-wing’s new “darling.”
In the past, Mr. Kertész a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp has strongly criticized Hungary and the Orbán-regime. In a 2002 interview he talked about his despair at the culture of hatred consuming his birth country. He was critical Hungary’s Holocaust-denier culture saying, “Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colors. Budapest is a city without a memory.”
Mr. Kertész has made his home in Germany for more than 10 years. Living in Berlin, far away from Hungary’s political affairs he felt there was nothing new in his native country, implying that life under Viktor Orbán was basically the same as it was during communist dictator János Kádár.
Imre Kertész
Mr. Kertész has compared Mr. Orban to the “Pied Piper” of Hamelin. Not surprisingly Mr. Orban’s party labelled him “anti-Hungarian,” and some party officials stated that “he didn’t deserve the Nobel prize.”
One year ago Luisa Zielinski interviewed Mr. Kertész. She wrote in the Paris Review that Kertész can no longer take part in life.
She observed, “he is in the last stages of a battle with Parkinson’s disease. Our interview was clearly taxing for him. Although he speaks fluent German, Kertész relied on his good friend Can Togay both to relay his answers to me and to translate my questions from German into Hungarian. At times, it was all Kertész could do to follow his own train of thought; our conversations were interspersed with pauses when he grew tired or needed help shifting position in his chair.”
Later that year Mr. Kertész collapsed in his home, hit his right hip, and had surgery. He has not been seen in public this year.
Mr. Orbán’s regime is perceived in the West as an anti-Semitic quasi dictatorship and badly needs a boost. Mr. Kertész, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, might provide a perfect photo op for the embattled regime.
To award Mr. Kertész, a man who has a hard time “to follow his own train of thought,” would be a shameless political exploitation of a suffering man. Since he is ill and incapacitated, he may not be able to refuse the award.
It would be a crime: elder abuse.
György Lázár
