Eighty-seven year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel died peacefully after a long illness on July 2, 2016 in New York City. “My husband was a fighter. He fought for the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust,” his widow, Marion said in a statement. US President Barack Obama wrote “Elie Wiesel was one of the […]
Quite a political storm is brewing in Hungary, after Ronald S. Lauder of the World Jewish Congress named Hungary Europe’s most anti-Semitic country. Specifically, Mr. Lauder said the following: “The worst offender is Hungary. Because they now have a neo-Nazi party called Jobbik. They had started to put up statues of Admiral Horthy, who was a Nazi.” András Heisler, President of the […]
Franz “Señor Tihany” Czeisler was 99 years old when he died on March 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A legendary magician and circus performer, he was the founder of Circo Tihany, the great circus troupe of South America. Franz (Ferenc in Hungarian) was also probably the last living survivor of the 1942 murderous pogrom in Újvidék (today Novi Sad, Serbia) […]
With Hungary a focal point of the ongoing storm of controversy over Europe’s refugee crisis, it’s instructive to take note of the upcoming seventieth anniversary, on March 12, of the hanging of Ferenc Szálasi , the “Hitler of Hungary.” Szálasi, the leader of a fascist, xenophobic government responsible for terrorizing the Budapest Jewish community and murdering tens of thousands of them […]
I just saw Son of Saul. It was a powerful, intense, painful experience. I am a child (not so young anymore) of Holocaust survivors. My mother was in Auschwitz and my father was in Mauthausen. I had heard many stories, especially from my father, about their days in hell. I have seen a number of films about the concentration camp […]
One cannot be a passive bystander when faced with injustice or oppression–this was the overarching message of a Holocaust commemoration and candle-lighting, organized at the Ottawa City Hall on February 1st, 2016. This year’s commemoration, which was spearheaded by Vera Gara, a Holocaust survivor of Hungarian origins, included a wide range of speakers, notably religious leaders from different faith communities, […]
I last wrote about Zoltán Harangi four years ago in Hungary’s Élet és Irodalom weekly magazine, as well as in a publication entitled Beszélő, arguing that Mr. Harangi’s despicable activities during the Second World War deserve special attention, even within the context of the many inhumane acts committed during the conflict. As a member of the Swedish Red Cross in Budapest, […]
Congratulations for the Golden Globe award won by the Hungarian film – Son of Saul. (The film has since also been nominated for an Oscar.) The drama is about the Sonderkommandos, the Jewish units of the death camps who were forced to clean the gas chambers and crematoriums. It is based on a collection of testimonies entitled “Voices from Beneath the Ashes.” Some […]
Our readers will recall the controversy surrounding plans to erect a statue to virulent anti-Semite and interwar politician Bálint Hóman in the town of Székesfehérvár. Those plans have been scrapped and the activist group at the centre of the campaign against the monument, who are also behind a moving alternative memorial to the Holocaust in Budapest’s Freedom Square, issued the […]
This morning, Népszava–one of Hungary’s daily newspapers–published an op-ed from me, which effectively serves as an open letter addressed to Csaba Latorcai. A couple of weeks ago, here in Ottawa, I met with Hungary’s Deputy State Secretary for Priority Social Affairs, whose works in the Prime Minister’s Office focuses on the Jewish minority, as well as other religious/cultural communities. Deputy […]
