Amid a string of anti-Semitic incidents in Hungary, the umbrella organization of Hungarian Jews has protested the naming of a Budapest street after an anti-Semitic author. “The Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary is shocked to learn of the renaming of a street in the Second District after Cecile Tormay,” read a statement sent on…
A lawmaker for the ultra-nationalist Jobbik party in Hungary said the Auschwitz death camp museum “may not reflect real facts.” Tamas Gaudi-Nagy made the statement on Thursday during a discussion in Parliament on a proposal to facilitate visits by teenagers or young adults to the former Nazi camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, where approximately one million…
Opera companies throughout the world are staging Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle this year to fete his 200th birthday on May 22, but Hungarian Jewish conductor Adam Fischer is having no part of it during his “Wagner Days” festival in June. Fischer, who launched his festival in 2006 in the Bela Bartok concert hall at the…
A Hungarian martial arts fighter was disinvited from an event in Prague because of his Nazi tattoos, including one reading “death to the Jews.” Some of the sponsors of the Heroes Gate martial arts tournament told organizers that Attila Petrovszki from Hungary could not attend the May 17 event because he had a tattoo of…
A small but growing English-language Jewish studies program here is attracting students, Jews and non-Jews alike, from around Europe and places as remote as Mongolia. Although most are drawn to the graduate program at Central European University because of its international focus and emphasis on modern Jewish history, says faculty member Michael Miller, others are…
The renowned Hungarian Jewish biblical scholar Geza Vermes, who died of cancer May 8 at age 88, disproved the old canard “You can’t go home again,” at least when it comes to Judaism. Born in the town of Makó in southeastern Hungary in 1924, Vermes was 7 when his family converted to Catholicism in what…
The head of Hungary’s top organization representing Jewish communities resigned on Sunday after losing a vote of confidence, AFP reported. Peter Feldmajer stepped down after 49 members out of 89 expressed no confidence in his leadership at a general meeting of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, the report said. Feldmajer, president of the Federation…
A Hungarian court convicted three young men who accosted Jews in Budapest during the World Jewish Congress general assembly. In an expedited court procedure on May 9, one of the men, identified by the Hungarian news site Hir24 as Gabor M., was sentenced to three years in jail and the other two, Gabor E. and…
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