Christian Illiberalism in Hungary in a Historical Perspective
Nora Berend
and
How the Fidesz Government in Hungary is Co-opting the Churches
Alexander Faludy
Discussion notes follow
(Summary of both presentations compiled by Philip Walters – 9 May 2019)
Christian Illiberalism in Hungary in a Historical Perspective
Nora Berend
A recently-established government-controlled research institute in Hungary has the Orwellian title Veritas. Its remit is to rewrite the history of Hungary from a national perspective. Its director has stated that the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Nazi-occupied territory in 1941 was not motivated by antisemitism but was a police action to remove illegal immigrants. A new museum called Sorsok Háza (House of Fates) was built to show that Hungarians tried to save the Jews during the war; because of significant protests, its opening has been delayed. A crucial issue being debated in Hungary is the place of the Holocaust in Hungarian history. One main theme of the official narrative is that Jews were not persecuted until Hungary was occupied by the Nazis in 1944.
The government designated 2014 as the commemorative year of the Holocaust. Many events were criticised and boycotted by the main Jewish umbrella organisation Mazsihisz. Government spokesmen distinguished between ‘Hungarian patriots’ and ‘Jewish co-citizens’. While claiming that the Holocaust was the work of the Nazis from Germany, the current Hungarian government is at the same time implicitly scapegoating the Jews as causing the problems: an official statement accused those boycotting the commemoration of undermining centuries of Jewish-Hungarian cooperation in the Carpathian basin. Another statement argued that Hungarians resisted communism because it was based on lies, and also that those now claiming that the present government was falsifying history were lying; thus the statement implicitly bolstered the persistent idea in Hungary that communism was created and implemented by the Jews.
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