The U.S. Embassy in Budapest called on the Hungarian government to resume dialogue with Jewish, national and international groups over plans for its Holocaust memorial year. In a statement issued Tuesday directed at the newly re-elected government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the embassy wrote, “As a fellow democracy, we continue to urge the government…
In 2009, Csanad Szegedi was euphoric when Jobbik, the radical right-wing nationalist party he co-founded, placed third in Hungary’s elections for the European Parliament, winning enough votes to send three representatives to Brussels, including himself. But after Hungary’s elections for parliament April 6, Szegedi is shaken. The party, many of whose leaders are seen as…
Gusztav Zoltai, the director of Hungary’s federation of Jewish communities, or Mazsihisz, resigned in what community leaders said was a protest against the government over Holocaust commemorations. But Szombat, the Hungarian Jewish newspaper, published an article on Wednesday alleging that Zoltai quit because of financial irregularities connected with Budapest’s main Jewish cemetery on Kozma Street…
Members of the Jewish community were among the demonstrators protesting the construction of a controversial monument to the Hungarian victims of the German occupation. Work on the statue began Tuesday in downtown Budapest, according to Klubradio, a news station known to be critical of the government. The protest was held that evening adjacent to the…
The president of the European Jewish Congress said electoral gains in Hungary by Jobbik, a far-right party with a history of anti-Semitism, should be a source of grave concern to Europe. Jobbik won nearly 21 percent of the votes in Sunday’s parliamentary election, up from nearly 16 percent four years ago. “This is truly a…
(JTA) — In 1944, Andras Szasz’s mother obtained an admittance slip to a Red Cross children’s home that she hoped would save her 8-year-old son from the Hungarian fascists then prowling Budapest in search of Jews to torture or kill. Szasz never made it to the home. In the summer of 1944, he and his…
To launch its campaign for Hungary’s parliamentary election, the far-right Jobbik party, accused by critics of anti-Semitism, chose as its venue a former synagogue with a plaque on the wall commemorating 500 local Jews killed in the Holocaust. The reaction was unsurprising: opponents turned up outside the synagogue in the city of Esztergom to protest…
Britain’s Tate Gallery said it would return a Nazi-looted painting to the heirs of an art collector from Hungary. The gallery announced on March 27 that it would return the 1824 painting “Beaching a Boat, Brighton” by John Constable. The artwork had been loaned to museums in the United States as late as 2006, The…
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