Surge of antisemitism in Hungary
domenica 27 gennaio 2013 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, January 27th, 2013In the Pest neighborhood on the edge of the Danube, where Zoltan Street meets the icy waters of the river father of Europe, there is a line of shoes. These shoes, nowadays cast in iron, are the shoes of people who were tied up and shot in the head into the river by Arrow Cross militiamen. Many were still alive. There are high heeled shoes, boots, and tiny children’s boots. This memorial represent Budapest Jews who had to suffer all kinds of tortures by Hungarian Nazi militiamen during the terror in the last two year of war. They were rapidly eliminated through the mass deportations and killings of around 650 thousand Jews. There are around 250 thousand today, who stay in the heart of Europe, where each single phase swamped and consequently swamped them. The shoes represented on the Danube are shoes belonging to the bourgeoisie of the 40s, and some of them are coquettish, gay.
Travelling to Budapest with a delegation of parliamentarians from several European countries (the other Italian with me was Sandro Gozi) as well as from Israel on the Holocaust Memorial Day, we pay a visit to the ancient Jewish community in Budapest in their golden seat, decorated by nineteenth and twentyeth century portraits of the community presidents (the memory of Theodor Herzl lingers in the air, as he was born in 1860 a few blocks away, next to the huge Synagogue, the biggest in Europe) with their smiles, in the words of quiet reflection, the current Day of Remembrance is palpably centered on the present. “We have no fear” they say, but thy need to state so. Hungarian antisemitism is the worst kind today in Europe; a recognition visit to ministers and parliamentarians in the quest of the causes and its relative remedies does not succeed in minimizing its dreadful dimension.
Europe’s soul bites once again Jews, gypsies, all the ones she can blame of its own envy and original frustrations, and we do not know what to do about it. We remember, we surely do, we are however somehow incapable of making memory a useful tool: antisemitism across Europe rose at worrying levels, while we keep remembering; it led to the killing of three kids and their teacher in front of their school in France; in our mild country forty per cent of the soft Italians does not have any liking of Jews … In Hungary however, at least 20 per cent of the population is strongly anti-Semitic, militant, this phenomenon has nothing to do with the Islamic immigration, which is not present, it’s seminal, rocky, european … The nationalist Jobbik party, that some Minister and government Fidesz party member mostly ascribe to the consequence of the economic crisis, holds 19 per cent of the seats in the Parliament. Therefore its leader Gyongyosi could stand up from his seat in the beautiful imperial venue and ask for a registry of the Jewish government officials: they pose a danger to the Nation, he said. He has a diversified troop of followers who manage this huge nonsense (which must be said caused much indignation and street demonstrations): there are intellectuals on the papers who in turn explain that Jews have economically taken the country,that they are the leaders of the European delusion which disposses Hungary. Jobbik denyes the Shoah claiming that “with the Holocaust industry Jews grant themselves the rule of the world” … Jobbik followers organize pro-Iran rallies, country they deem independent from the hated US, They adform that Iran is threatened by Israel. Their reiterated attacks to the "Zionist atrocities" are presented like a protection of the real Hungary, because, according to them, the Hungarian crisis is caused by a plot to destroy both Magyar soul and body. Gypsies then are considered like waste to get rid of. Jobbik has groups of people dressed in black, aggressive, young, real militias, although a new law prohibits them. But laws do prohibit many things. To my partners of my parliamentary delegation which indeed ask “What to do?” the hungarian officials explain that the rules are being changed in the parliament, Therefore hatred declarations will be more easily reprimanded, the exclusion from the Parliament will be extended beyond 24 hours, nobody will be able to go abroad in their institutional role (the vice-president of the foreign affairs committee for instance is a member of the Jobbik party and he goes on foreign missions to spread his ideological perversions in the name of the country). The Justice Minister and vice-minister Tibor Navrasics and Culture Minister Zoltan Balog know the government is blamed of not doing enough, but they insist in maintaining that the hatred wave is European.
Hungary undoubtedly has excellent educational programs against intolerance, but Europe is a sick and wild beast. The Austro-Hungarian Empire allowed Jews out of the countryside thanks to the vested yet considerable liking of Franz Joseph, then they were integrated into the urban middle class, but later came the involvement in the Bolshevik revolution of Bela Kun and the Stalinism, since then a persistent suspicion of a relationship with communists reinstated a hatred spiral that became hate from the right side. Today, after the Nazi-Fascism, Jobbik’s Nazi-fascism accuses the Jews of having destroyed the Hungarian self-confidence and the might of “ethnic Magyars”. And it grows any years. Education programs, laws … Yes, Europe has excellent drugs available, it lacks antibodies though.