THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The 80,000 Jews living in Hungary, out of a total population of 10.55 million, constitute the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe outside the borders of the former Soviet Union. The great majority live in Budapest, with smaller communities in large urban centers such as Miskolc and Debrecen, as well as in smaller cities. Of the 400,000 Jews in Hungary in 1937, more than 275,000 perished in the Holocaust.

The Federation of Jewish Communities is the main body of Hungarian Jewry, Several major organizations are active in Hungary, especially the Lauder Foundation, whose summer camps attract youth from across Central and Eastern Europe. The Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association publishes a monthly, Szombat (Saturday), and conducts a wide variety of cultural and educational activities. The quarterly Mult es Jovo (Past and Present) publishes original and translated essays on a wide variety of topics. The bi-weekly Uj Elet (New Life) is the official publication of the Jewish community, and its content also reflects the religious revival among some segments of the Jewish population.

In November 1999 it was announced that a Hungarian Holocaust documentation center and a permanent exhibition would be established in a former synagogue building in Budapest.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Since the 1998 elections, the Hungarian parliament has become a forum for the nationalist, xenophobic and veiled anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP) (for the elections, see ASW 1998/9). With the defeat of the socialists and the formation of the new center-right coalition government, the MIEP has warned of the “dangerous appetite” of the liberal elite, which would undoubtedly intensify its “destructive” actions against the Hungarian nation. Strongly anti-NATO, from the early stages of the organization’s bombing raids on Yugoslavia in late March 1999, MIEP leader Istvan Csurka accused the West of acting on behalf of Israel's long-range strategic interests, an argument which appeared in the March and April 1999 issues of his weekly Magyar Forum.

Contacts between various shades of the Hungarian right and Western counterparts continued in 1999 and early 2000. Csurka, in a lengthy interview to the conservative daily Napi Magyarorszag on 11 April 2000, spoke of his ties with Le Pen’s FN, with which “the Hungarian Justice and Life Party has good relations.” Csurka was due to meet with Le Pen in late April 2000. While praising Le Pen, Csurka distanced himself from Le Pen’s other East European friends, notably in Romania and Slovakia, who are staunchly anti-Hungarian. Nevertheless, it seems that Jewish topics could provide a link between competing nationalists in the area.

Having promised to “defeat liberalism and communism” before the 1998 election, the Independent Smallholders Party, led by Jozsef Torgyan, has moderated its populist rhetoric since joining the coalition government, and racist and anti-Semitic undertones have been noticeably absent. Nevertheless, Hungary’s left-wing forces and the media remained suspicious of the party. Torgyan has criticized Csurka’s movement for its ties with Le Pen’s FN, an indication that some right-wing political forces reject such extremist associations.

As minister of agriculture and regional development, Torgyan visited Israel in spring 2000, and declared at a conference on Jewish issues held in Debrecen in June 2000 that it was impossible to imagine Hungary and its achievements in the past without the Jews.

While neo-Nazi numbers may not be significant, they are visible>in public demonstrations on national days or anniversaries linked to World War II. The most notorious neo-Nazi group is the Hungarian Welfare Association, which has appeared under various names and in different forms and which adheres openly to the legacy of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross movement, led during World War II by Ferenc Szalasi.

Skinhead numbers do not appear to have increased in the past year and their activities might even have diminished. Nevertheless, their violent sub-culture with its neo-Nazi symbols continues to be a visible threat to public order. One of their main defenders is former member of parliament Izabella B. Kiraly, editor of the extremist periodical Kotott Keve (Tied Sheaf), published by the Hungarian Future in the Hungarian Past Foundation, and which often contains attacks on Csurka for being too soft on some issues, such as the center-right government. As in other East European countries, the skinheads act as “shock troops” of Hungarian extremism, manipulated by extremist politicians who seek to project a more respectable and sophisticated image. In February 1999, Hungarian police battled hundreds of local and foreign neo-Nazis who were commemorating the 54th anniversary of the attempt by Hungarian and Nazi troops to break out of Soviet-besieged Budapest. Following this unprecedented display of neo-Nazi power, the authorities promised a clampdown on such manifestations. The February 2000 march was much smaller in scale, to the point of being a non-event.

ANTI-SEMITIC AND RACIST ACTIVITIES

The Jewish community remains a major target of right-wing extremism and racism, although there was no rise in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism compared to 1998 and no change in the pattern of activities.

In the town of Szombathely, 13 Jewish graves were vandalized and the names of Holocaust victims were erased on the eve of a Holocaust memorial ceremony on 3 July 1999. In Debrecen, swastikas were again plastered in public places on the eve of a Jewish conference held there in May 2000. Both incidents were covered widely in the Hungarian press, for example, the weekly 168 Ora. At least four other cases of vandalism against Jewish targets were reported in 1999.

Anti-Semitic slogans and symbols were prominent at soccer matches and public events. At a demonstration in Budapest in March 2000 commemorating the 1849-49 revolution, the organizers, the MIEP, recalled “the girl from Tiszaeszlar” -- a reference to the blood libel trial held against a Jew there in 1882 -- when they greeted a delegation from the village attending the rally.

Motifs of “Hungarian superiority” and the nation’s “mission” in the Carpathian Basin, often echo the interwar East European nationalist and extremist language of exclusiveness and élitism. The Jewish role in the communist movement and the regime is still frequently raised, in order for the Jews to appear to be the source of all Hungary’s misfortunes. Kotott Keve, in its January 2000 issue, and Magyar Forum throughout 1999, as well as the right-wing weekly Demokrata, mentioned Hungarian communist leaders of Jewish origin and stressed Jewish global interests, either in their “Judeo-Bolshevik” or “capitalist” form.

As in other European states and in the Arab world, the globalization process was a major target of attack by extremists such as Csurka, who accused Jewish interests of enslaving Hungary spiritually, morally, financially, militarily and politically. This was also part of Csurka’s campaign to “cleanse” the media, following the conservative-right-wing victory in the elections. In its issue of 1 July 1999, Magyar Forum complained of the attempts of “liberals” [a veiled reference to Jews] to control some Internet discussion groups and to censor people like Csurka, who, it claimed, were very popular when allowed to participate

Similar accusations appeared in various right-wing papers; for example,> the March-April 2000 issue of Szittyakurt, an extremist paper published in the US and distributed in Hungary, contained an article entitled “Media Terror or Jewish Censorship,” which raised a variety oclaims, such as the Jewish origin of most of the communist reformists in the 1956 revolution and the penetration of Jews into all levels of Hungarian society. After the collapse of the regime, it alleged, Jewish communists succeeded in infiltrating the “Academy of Sciences, university history departments and leading positions in the media.”

The vehemently racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying monthly Hunnia changed its format in early 2000, appearing as a smaller, bi-monthly journal, but still bearing the previous Hunnia logo, combined with the new motto “Hunnia – workshop – work.” It can no longer be purchased at local neighborhood kiosks.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

Numerous writers in the right-wing press linked the issue of compensation to Jews to the intensifying debate in Hungary on the “communist Holocaust” allegedly brought about by Jews, for which East European nations were not compensated. Thus, in its March-April 2000 issue, Szittyakurt claimed that the Christian world need not ask forgiveness from the Jews, but rather the Jews should beg forgiveness for “not stopping the Hungarian Holocaust” (under the communist regime of 1919 and after World War II). It lists leading communists such as Bela Kun, Rakosi and Gero, who “were of Jewish origin and who sent thousands of Hungarians to their death, and maimed millions for the rest of their lives.”

During 1999 several topics linked to the Holocaust and the “Jewish question” generated heated discussion in the media and among the public. The popular daily Nepszabadsag published an article on 5 March 1999 entitled “Comparative Blood-Algebra and the Holocaust,” by a well-known publicist Istvan Lovas, who specializes in provocative articles on Jewish topics and then sues those who dare to call him an anti-Semite. Lovas, most of whose articles appear in Demokrata, compared the Holocaust to genocides of other nations. The attempt to belittle the magnitude of Jewish losses caused a public furor, actually initiated by Nepszabadsag, which had published the article in order to demonstrate the existence of such views.

Lovas and others joined the debate that was going on in France and elsewhere in the West, which compared the Nazi and communist genocides. Arguing that there were more victims of communism than of Nazism, they stressed the Jewish origin of communist leaders and Jewish attempts to keep the Holocaust “unique,” while disregarding other types of genocide.

In late 1999 and early 2000 another debate on the Holocaust was stimulated by a lecture given in November 1999 by the historian Maria Schmidt, director of the Twentieth Century Institute and advisor to Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Gusztav Kosztolanyi reviewed the debate in his article “Jewish Life in Hungary,” published in Central Europe Review (Vol. 2, No. 5 -- a web publication focusing on the area). Schmidt declared, inter alia, that “World War II was not about the Jews or genocide. No matter how regrettable it may be to say so, the Holocaust and the extermination or rescuing of the Jews was a secondary issue -- we may even call it a marginal one -- which did not feature among the war aims of either side in the conflict.” Excerpts from the lecture, which was delivered at the Political Academy of the Independent Smallholders Party, were printed in the daily Magyar Hirlap, where one of the strongest attacks on Schmidt’s views was published on 15 November by the well known philosopher and prominent public figure Miklos Tamas Gaspar. While pointing out that Schmidt had an official position as advisor to the prime minister, Gaspar stressed that “Schmidt draws public attention to a view -- a daring opinion that enjoys currency among the ranks of the extreme right and that sees nothing special in the annihilation of the Jewish communities of Europe, regarding it as an unfortunate, though banal, episode in history.” During the Schmidt debate, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary dubbed Schmidt Le Pen’s brightest pupil in Hungary.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Relations between the Hungarian population and the authorities with the Roma remained problematic, despite government pledges to ease tensions by promoting cultural and educational activities. A new generation of educated Roma is also contributing to this effort. Roma, whose numbers in Hungary range between 800,000 and one million, accounted for 30 percent of the unemployed in 1998.

In December 1999, the ADL published a report in its International Notes, entitled “Hungary: A Growing Tolerance For Anti-Semitism.” The paper’s main thesis was that “in recent months many Jews and international observers have noticed a change in the environment in Hungary that is more tolerant of racism and anti-Semitism.” An article in the New York Times, published in April 2000 by Miklos Haraszti, a former deputy in the Hungarian parliament, warned of the dangers of right-wing extremism following Haider’s victory in Austria and its effects on populism and radical views in Central Europe. On the other hand, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared that, according to the Council of Europe, there were “no extremist parties in Hungary” – a point which again triggered debate in the Hungarian media.

At the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in January 2000, the Hungarian representative declared: “We in Hungary deem it our duty to face our past, however difficult this may prove.” The speaker, as well as other high-level leaders, stressed Hungary’s commitment to fight racism and anti-Semitism. It remains to be seen if Hungary’s conservative government, which is eager to continue Hungary’s integration into European structures, mainly the EU, will intensify the struggle against such intolerance.