Hungary mourns victims of the Holocaust and countersues Jewish survivors in the US

Hungary’s young and photogenic Justice Minister Judit Varga recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and declared her “zero tolerance for antisemitism.”   Hungary has “taken several steps to prevent our country’s Jews from being exposed to any kind of antisemitism that has become more and more widespread in the world.”

What Varga did not mention is her government’s institutionalized efforts to rewrite World War II history. Hungary has praised Albert Wass a convicted WWII criminal who murdered Jews.  Numerous statues and memorials of WWII criminals have been installed and fake testimonials were fabricated to transform some anti-Semites, such as János Esterházy into “Jewsavers.”

Justice Minister Judit Varga (in the middle) in Auschwitz.

Varga boasts how Budapest has the third largest Jewish community in Europe, the second largest synagogue in the world, and “Jews can walk around proudly as they head to the streets.”  The Jewish community can always count on the Orbán government’s “protection.”    The West, including the United States is utterly anti-Semitic while White Christian Hungary is “the most secure country for Jews in Europe.”

Almost ten years ago 14 Holocaust survivors have filed a lawsuit against Hungary and its national railway for its role in the deaths of more than 600,000 Hungarian Jews.  (Twelve of the survivors were in Auschwitz.)   Now it seems that Budapest is trying to intimidate them. As part of the legal maneuvering Justice Minister Varga is countersuing the Holocaust victims in the US Supreme Court by requesting a lengthy judicial review of the decisions of the lower courts.

Hungary’s legal action in the US Supreme Court.

Judge Sri Srinivasan has already rejected Hungary’s arguments that the case raises political questions that should not be resolved in US courts.  Orbán’s legal experts are portraying the plaintiffs as political actors. In Hungary those who raise objections about the country’s Holocaust falsification are branded as “leftists” or even as “Soros agents.”

In 1944 Winston Churchill wrote about the Hungary’s Holocaust: There is no doubt in my mind that we are in the presence of one of the greatest and most horrible crimes ever committed. It has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men in the name of a great state and one of the leading races of Europe. I need not assure you that the situation has received and will receive the most earnest consideration from my colleagues and myself but, as the Foreign Secretary said, the principal hope of terminating it must remain the speedy victory of the Allied Nations.

According to Hungary’s revised WWII history the Allies were “occupiers” and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s name was recently removed from a central square in Budapest.  On the other hand, Orbán declared that pro-Hitler Hungarian ruler Miklós Horthy who collaborated in the deportations was a “great statesman.”

The fundamental issue is that Budapest is still not willing to admit to its wartime leaders’ responsibility for the systematic murder of the Hungarian population.  Beyond the Jews, the Roma, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, 200,000+ soldiers of the Hungarian Second Army and many others were butchered during the shameful Horthy’s regime.

Today, the perpetrators of war crimes are hailed as patriots and respected heroes of the nation.

György Lázár

 

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