Hungary Sees ‘March of the Living’ Amid Rising Antisemitism
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Thousands of Hungarians, many waving Israeli flags, have marched through Budapest to remember the 600,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in World War Two amid fears about rising antisemitism.
The annual “March of the Living” on Sunday came 80 years after Hungary’s Holocaust, or Shoah, at a time when Jews “are again afraid across the world,” noted Yacov Hadas-Handelsman, Israel’s ambassador to Hungary.
The event began with the unveiling of a memorial dedicated to 440,000 Hungarian Jews deported and killed between May 15 and July 9, 1944, in front of the Budapest Dohány Street synagogue, Europe’s largest.
From there, the vast crowd marched to the Keleti (“eastern”) railway station in Hungary’s capital.
The Hamas attack on Israel last October, in which some 1,200 people died, gave this year’s March “a special significance,” Ambassador Hadas-Handelsman observed. “Education of the younger generations is even more important now, inspiring them to fight racism, discrimination, and injustice,” he said.
However, he stressed that Hungary was “an island of renewal” with its prosperous Jewish community and thanked the Hungarians for setting “an example through introducing zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.”
Hungary’s longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also personally intervened to prevent a pro-Palestine rally in Budapest, saying “pro-terrorist demonstrations are not allowed in Hungary.”
SUPPORTING ISRAEL
Orbán’s declared support for Israel and the Jewish people is music to the ears of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who said in a video message that the Holocaust stood out in the crimes of mankind throughout world history.
He added that the “Jewish community was mourning over the deep tragedy of recent months,” in reference to the attack by Hamas, which also took about 250 hostages. “Those killed, tortured, or kidnapped cry out for justice and freedom,” the president added.
Péter Niedermüller, the mayor of the 7th district of Budapest, said it was “Hungarian society’s grave moral failing and sin that we couldn’t protect our Jewish compatriots” during the war when Hungary was a close ally of Nazi Germany.
Gábor Gordon, head of the board of the March of the Living Foundation, said “the horror of the Holocaust” must be remembered as one of the largest massacres of mankind.
Yet, simultaneously, “we must celebrate a love of life and a will to live,” he said. Those willing to live included some 100 Holocaust survivors who attended the March in a minibus, he noted.
Baruch Adler, deputy director of the international March of the Living organization, said the annually organized event “demonstrated the victory of good over evil forces.” He recalled the Ukrainian villager who hid his mother during the Holocaust, risking the life of his own family by doing so.
Referring to last October’s attack, Adler said the silence of the world was “deafening.” He said citizens of the free world “should feel ashamed for passively watching history repeat itself.”
Hungary claims it has learned from its history and now hosts one of the largest annual Jewish festivals in Europe.
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