Monument to Wallenberg Is Defaced
A monument in Budapest to Raoul Wallenberg was defiled with bloody pigs’ feet.
A group of tourists visiting the site Tuesday discovered the defacement, according to the Hungarian media. Pictures showed four or five severed pigs’ feet strung on rope hanging on the statue, one of them positioned by Wallenberg’s head.
Budapest authorities promised “immediate action” on the case, according to the media.
This year, the centenary of Wallenberg’s birth, is being marked in Hungary as Raoul Wallenberg year. While a neutral Swedish diplomat in Budapest after the German occupation in 1944, Wallenberg issued Swedish travel documents – known as “Wallenberg passports” – to at least 20,000 Jews and also set up more than 30 safe houses for Jews. He disappeared while being escorted out of Hungary toward the Soviet Union in January 1945.
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
