BUDAPEST, (Reuters) – Hungarians collaborated with Nazis in sending nearly half a million Jews to their deaths, Hungary’s president said yesterday in a rare public acknowledgement of a war-time past that Jewish groups say is often glossed over.
Earlier yesterday, an American historian said he was returning an award he received from the previous head of state in protest at what he called the government’s attempt to erase Hungary’s role in the Holocaust.
In a statement prepared for Monday’s Holocaust Memorial Day, President Janos Ader said that if the war had gone according to the plans of Adolf Hitler and his Hungarian fascist allies, Jews would have been exterminated completely from Hungary.
“Auschwitz may be hundreds of kilometres from Hungary but it is part of Hungarian history,” Ader wrote. “This death camp was the scene of the inhumane suffering, humiliation and death of nearly half a million of our compatriots.”
Jewish groups have criticised the centre-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban for what they see as its lacklustre attempt to fight anti-Semitism.
A Jewish group has threatened to boycott Holocaust commemorations over plans to erect a monument to the German occupation in 1944. It said that pushed the blame for the genocide solely onto Germans, obscuring the role of Hungarians.
