Mr Csaba Hende: the Jewish community can count on the Hungarian Government

At the presentation of the book published as a result of the cooperation between the Military Rabbinate of the Chaplain Corps and the Zrínyi Non-profit Ltd. – Zrínyi Publishing House the Hungarian Minister of Defence said that he was convinced in Hungary the overwhelming majority of people is benign" which will be proved by the most representative public survey in April".

Mr Hende emphasised that no idea of dictatorship denying human dignity, rights and existence can be harmonised with the notion of Hungarian liberty.

The Minister of Defence said “we can survive only if we have common life, if we have common past, and we take all of their joys and triumphs and what is even more important if we take all of their sins and bitterness. (…) If we do not label good as bad or bad as good. If we are able to remember and mourn together", and we are able to hang down our heads together.

Those who were forced to leave Hungary during the Holocaust or during the dictatorship that followed and settled in Israel “connect us forever. Those who live with us today and add their lives to the collective life of the nation (…) belong to us", Mr Hende noted.

The Minister of Defence said “the nation comprises not only persons, not only families but also communities. We, as members of the nation have to renew those bonds that connect us. When we commemorate all that happened to our predecessors (…) we indicate that these bonds are important for us and for everybody and every community that belong to us".

Mr Hende noted that the fate of those who went to war to defend the country is tragic because they sacrificed their life, the most important they possessed, and the fate of this book is similarly tragic because its message was not heard.

At the time of its first publication this book was a cry for help to all those who knew what war meant and to those who went through all what war involved. “If we want to understand what the Hungarians lost with the Shoah we must read this book", Mr Hende added.

The Minister of Defence declared that the renovation of the plot of heroes in the Kozma Street Cemetery is being accomplished and it is scheduled to be re-inaugurated on the last Sunday of May, on the Day of Hungarian Heroes. Mr Hende also said that in the Farkasréti Street Cemetery the graves of another 121 Jewish soldiers had been discovered and the resources for their renovation were provided by the Hungarian Government, in accordance with the Wednesday resolution of the Cabinet.

Chief Rabbi of the HDF Mr Slomó Köves pointed out that the Hungarian Jewish community in the Carpathian Basin has been participating in daily life of the nation for a thousand year while the Hungarian State, through the Emancipation Act approved after the Great Compromise of 1867, declared the members of the Hungarian Jewish community equal to other citizens of the Hungarian nation.

He reminded of the fact that in 1848-49 tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews took part in the Hungarian War of Independence while the First World War was the first case when soldiers belonging to Hebrew religion were “taken in organised way". During the Second World War, on the other hand, these people were severely humiliated through not being regarded fit for armed service and “a shovel army" was formed from labour service personnel.

The Chief Rabbi said the book is about the struggle of the Hungarian Jews aimed at trying to stop hatred in the very last years prior to the global catastrophe. The majority of the Jewish people in Hungary decided to stay in Hungary after 1945 “in spite of all their frustration", he emphasised.

Managing Director of HDF Zrínyi Non-profit Ltd. Mr Károly Bozsonyi talked about the difficulties of producing a reprint of a book printed in 1938 because only few copies of the original books remained and they were not in good shape. The book is a salute “to our heroes who shed their blood for the country within the ranks of the Hungarian Armed Forces", he said.

President of the National Association of Former Labour Battalion Conscripts Mr György Sessler thanked Mr Hende for the financial support provided by the Ministry of Defence, Mr Köves for his “the enthusiastic backing", and Mr Károly Bozsonyi and his colleagues for their work on the reprint version of the book.

At the event Mr Csaba Hende presented a copy of the book to the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary Mr Ilan Mor.

Photos by Gábor Galovtsik