Israel’s Prime Minister and leader of the Likud party invited Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to visit. Authoritarian Orbán is generally not a welcome guest in the EU or North America; President Obama and Trump have never invited him to the White House. Mr. Orbán is creating a new history for Hungary, a heroic one. His regime has decided to downplay […]
June 4th is the day when Hungary and many Hungarians in the diaspora remember the Treaty of Trianon, signed in 1920, which led to the loss of two-thirds of historic Hungary’s population and almost three-fourths of its land. The Ottawa Hungarian Community Centre (OHCC) held its commemoration, including an exhibit, a cultural program and a meal, this past Sunday. I […]
On February 23, 2018 the Hungarian House on East 82nd Street in Manhattan hosted another program to celebrate Albert Wass. This is the fifth year that the Széchenyi Society has staged this event. Politicians, Hungarian-Americans, the Wiesenthal Center and other organizations have protested in the past; yet, the organizers were unfazed and the Hungarian House continued the program. (Read the […]
Balázs Nemes is in eighth place on Momentum’s party list for national elections scheduled for 8th April. Momentum, of course, is the youthful movement that rationalizes its decision not to cooperate with any other opposition party by claiming that it is the only party not tainted by the past and focused intently on the future. Yet it turns out that […]
I’m starting to think that Sir Roger Scruton, the highly regarded 73-year-old English philosopher and writer, has had some influence on the anti-Soros campaign in Hungary. Scruton’s primary interests are aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the “furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.” He is also a frequent visitor to Budapest and many of his articles and interviews are re-published in […]
János Esterházy (1901-1957) was an ethnic Hungarian Slovak politician, a devout Catholic and member of the pro-Hitler Slovak Tiso parliament during World Wat II. Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest and leader of Slovakia was convicted as a World War II criminal and hanged in 1947. Esterházy enthusiastically supported Hitler, Mussolini and pro-Hitler Miklós Horthy, Hungary’s ruler. After WWII he was […]
Elza Brandeisz is a deeply religious Hungarian woman. She is a member of The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hungary. On November 12, 1995, the Holocaust organization Yad Vashem in Jerusalem recognized Ms. Brandeisz, as Righteous Among the Nations, a person who risked her life to hide Jews during World War II. Among others, she hid George Soros. Elza Brandeisz was a […]
July 9, 1944 Seventy-three years ago on this day the transport of Jews of Pécs, Bonyhád and vicinity arrived to Auschwitz and many were immediately murdered. On July 9, 1944 11,140 Hungarian Jewish men, women and children were loaded onto transport wagons and sent to their death. From Monor two trains with 3,065 and 3,079 Jews. From Békásmegyer-Budakalász two trains […]
In a bizarre speech Hungary’s right-wing authoritarian strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, recently called Miklós Horthy an “exceptional statesman.” Admiral Horthy, also an authoritarian (although some called him a dictator) led his country as Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary following the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. He turned pro-Mussolini and pro-Hitler in the 1930s and […]
While racism and anti-Semitism are not uncommon in European Union (EU) countries, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the only one who brought anti-Semitism into a ruling party. Ruling party Fidesz politicians in Hungary frequently make anti-Semitic remarks in Hungarian, never in English. And the doubletalk has served Orbán well. His party has attracted a fair share of the country’s […]
