UCSJ » Hungary

Numerous Anti-Semitic Incidents Have Been Reported Throughout Eastern Europe in Recent Days

UCSJ — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:44:44 +0000

(JTA) — A string of anti-Semitic events and incidents have been recorded in Ukraine, Poland and Hungary in recent days.

A swastika and neo-Nazi symbols was spray-painted last week on a monument in Mykolaiv, near Odessa, to the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

In Kiev, anti-Semitic flyers on Monday were placed on a synagogue and other Jewish heritage sites, including a monument to the Jewish author Sholom Aleichem and the former home of the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

According to Jewish News, a news website about Ukraine, the posters contained profanities and calls for violence against Jews, who were referred to as “trash.” The posters were signed by Svodoba, the name of a nationalist movement with prominent members who have been accused of anti-Semitism. Svoboda spokesman Ruslan Koshulinsky denied the party was behind the posters.

In Lviv, in western Ukraine, soccer fans last week handed out leaflets ahead of a match between their team, the Carpathians, and a team from Odessa, Chernomorets, whose players are often referred to as “Jews.” The posters were titled “Death to the Jews” and featured a picture of the main entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, according to the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism.

In Poland, “Murder the Jews” was spray-painted on the walls of a newly dedicated Jewish cemetery in Myslenice near Krakow, along with a swastika and the symbol of the elite Nazi SS unit, the news website miasto-info.pl reported.

On March 16, anti-Semitic slogans were chanted at an anti-communist demonstration in Krakow, including “Down with Judaism” and “hit them once with a sickle and twice with the hammer.”

In Hungary, stickers reading “Jews, the university is ours, not yours” were placed on the doors of two University of Budapest lecturers, Gyorgy Peter and Gruberne Welker Agnes. Earlier this month, a young woman wearing a T-shirt with the logo “Auschwitz Holiday Camp” was filmed attending a nationalist demonstration in Budapest.

Book Traces Legal Roots of Hungarian Anti-Semitism

UCSJ — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:36:08 +0000

From Central European University–

Maria M. Kovacs’ new book is unexpectedly timely. The book, which traces the legal roots of Hungarian anti-Semitism back to quotas imposed in 1920, long before the rise of Nazi Germany, was published on the same day as a Hungarian member of Parliament called for Jewish MPs to be counted.

“When I was writing the book, through years and years of research, I was not naive to negative developments in this country,” said Kovacs, professor and director of CEU’s Nationalism Studies Program. “But if people were to say to me then that on the day my book was published, someone in the Hungarian Parliament would request numbers of Jews, I would have called them ridiculous.”

Kovacs is not interested in commenting on current Hungarian politics. Her research may be relevant in its analysis, however, because it dispels several myths about Hungarian interwar history, providing concrete evidence that anti-Semitism was not an idea or a policy imposed by Nazi Germany. The book, “Törvénytől sújtva: Numerus clausus Magyarországon 1920-1945,” or “Down By Law: Numerus Clausus in Hungary 1920-1945,” was published in November in Hungarian by Napvilág Kiadó.

The first myth is that the so-called numerus clausus law, passed in 1920, was not really anti-Semitic. The law is often justified as a form of positive discrimination that happened to be disadvantageous to Jews because they were overrepresented in higher education. The law limited the proportion of students from certain nationalities and races that could be accepted to universities. It led students of means to emigrate, including scientist Edward Teller, who left the country in 1933.

Kovacs argues that the law must be understood in terms of its implementation decree, i.e. the tool with which a cabinet minister implements the law. In this case, the implementation decree, which is legally binding, specifically mentioned Jews and redefined their legal status so that the end result would be restriction of entry into higher education.

The second myth is that modifications to numerus clausus in 1928 eliminated its anti-Semitic implications. While it did remove references to targeted discrimination of Jews by nationality – mostly due to pressure by the League of Nations – it was replaced with an occupational quota, which limited admissible students according to the occupation of the student’s father. Hungary’s statistics office, Kovacs’ research revealed, defined these occupations by linking them to the most prominent professions of Hungary’s Jews. While the number of Jewish students admitted to university rose after 1928, the persistence of discrimination is clear by looking at the number of rejections, Kovacs said.

“In 1929, 70 percent of Jewish applicants to university were rejected, compared with 15 percent of non-Jewish applicants,” Kovacs explained. “This is evidence that cannot be dismissed.”

Furthermore, the number of Jews admitted to institutions of higher education dropped to a record low after a new minister of culture was appointed in 1932, well before the official anti-Jewish laws were introduced in 1938.

“The fairy tale of Hungarian anti-Semitism, that it was imposed by Nazi Germany, is no longer valid,” Kovacs said. ”Hungarian anti-Semitism is a story of its own.”

Kovacs’ research was supported by a grant from the Rothschild Foundation Europe, as well as by CEU, and she appreciates the research assistance of CEU M.A. students in the Nationalism Studies Program.

For more information on the book, see the publisher’s website (in Hungarian) here http://napvilagkiado.eu/webaruhaz/shop.product_details/1-ujdonsagaink/flypage.tpl/849-toervenytl-sujtva/

USCIRF Alarmed by Anti-Semitic Remarks in Hungary

UCSJ — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:51:46 +0000

On December 3, 2012, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released the following statement regarding the anti-Semitic remarks of Hungarian politician Marton Gyongyosi:

Marton Gyongyosi, a Hungarian politician from the far-right Jobbik party, on November 26 issued a statement in Parliament urging the government to create a list of Jews who pose a “national security risk.” Gyongyosi serves as the leader of Jobbik, which is the third largest party in the Hungarian parliament with 44 of the 386 seats. The Hungarian government condemned the remarks.

“As the daughter of Hungarian Holocaust survivors, this statement by the leader of a political party and sitting Member of Parliament is deeply concerning,” said USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett. “The listing of Jews in Hungary brings up memories of the darkest days of Nazism, when hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed or deported to their death. There is no place for such talk in civilized societies.”

The Hungarian government “in the strongest possible terms” condemned the remarks and stated its opposition to “all forms or expressions of extremism, racist or anti-Semitic, and does everything in its power to combat it.” Other political parties in the Parliament also condemned the remarks.

“I was pleased to see the strong response by the Hungarian government and Parliament,” added Lantos Swett. “Denouncing such hateful statements is crucially important to show that Hungary will ‘never again’ tolerate the scourge of anti-Semitism.”

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner please contact Samantha Schnitzer at (202) 786-0613.

Hungarian Jews Request for Russia to Return Looted Items

UCSJ — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:27:04 +0000

Jewish Hungarians, backed by the government in Budapest, have requested for Russia to return items that were looted during WWII by the Nazis and the Red Army. While they are asking for a return of all the articles — including vestments, crowns and artwork — they are most interested in receiving the Torah scrolls that are hundreds of years old.

Slomo Koves, executive rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, explained, “Our request is that if we’re not speaking about looted art, at least we can speak about all the pieces that are important to the Jewish community… When we speak of Torah scrolls, there is no question that they belong to the Jewish community, and we are all heirs of the survivors.”

Approximately ten percent of the 6 million Jewish people killed during the Holocaust were Hungarian. According to Reuters, “Historians have documented stories of people who risked their lives or died trying to protect Torah scrolls. Some… ran into burning synagogues or hid them on their person when they were deported to death camps.”

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims stated in their catalogue that 344 Torah scrolls are held in the Russian State Historical Museum.

Based on reporting by Reuters.

Roma Political Activist Denied Refugee Status in Canada

UCSJ — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:20:50 +0000

Gyula Kanto, a Roma political activist, and his wife and son have been denied refugee status in Canada. Kanto is known as a Roma civil rights leader in Hungary, and has run for office on that platform. The family greatly fears for their safety in their homeland.

In their application for refugee protection, they stated accounts of being verbally and physically abused, sometimes while police officers watched. A summary of the court documents, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen explains:

“In 2006, Gyula Kanto Sr. participated in the Roma elections for a position in the minority government,” according to a summary of background facts in court documents. “This participation further publicized his ethnicity and role as a Roma activist. In the applicants’ apartment complex, their upstairs neighbour was a known Guardist (a street thug who dresses in traditional Hungarian Nazi colours and spreads fear). The neighbour would shout racial slurs at them and send threatening letters. He even broke their windows. The applicants complained to the police but they refused to intervene.

Then, on July 8, 2009, Kanto’s son said, he was confronted by three Guardists and when he said he’d call the police, one of his tormentors pulled out a police badge said, ‘Complain all you want, but we will not investigate.’ Someone then smashed a beer bottle in his face and he required stitches.

‘On August 26, 2009, Gyula Kanto Jr. was surrounded and verbally abused by a group of police officers at a bank machine. They spoke with approval about a recent violent attack on Romanies by a group of skinheads. The applicant overheard one of the police officers say: ‘At least there is one less Roma in the country.’”

The Federal Court of Canada admitted that the Immigration and Refugee board member who made the initial ruling that “[Kanto and his family] have no legitimate fear of persecution in their homeland,” was incorrect in his overall assessment. However, the Federal Court has still sided with the initial ruling.

Source: Ottawa Citizen