Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Is Smashed
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A monument in Hungary commemorating Jewish slave workers later murdered in the Holocaust was defaced.
At least three marble plates signifying Jewish headstones were smashed Sunday in Balf, a town located 120 miles west of Budapest, the Jewish weekly Szombat reported Monday.
A government spokesman issued a “strong condemnation” of the act, which police are investigating. There are no suspects.
The monument, which comprises dozens of marble tablets in the shape of headstones, was unveiled in 2008. The positioning of the headstones evokes a group of people walking – meant to honor the memory of those forced to work there by pro-Nazi Hungarians before they were murdered.
Those commemorated in the monument are victims of what the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem calls the death marches of Hungarian Jews through Austria in the spring of 1945. The previous year, Hungarian Interior Minister Gabor Vajna pledged to provide the German Reich with 50,000 Jewish men and women as slave laborers.
By 1945, Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross handed over 76,209 Jews to the Germans “on loan” until the end of the war, most of whom were murdered or died.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
