In 2000, the first Orbán government decided that April 16 would be the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust in Hungary. In 1944, members of the Hungarian public administration and law enforcement cooperating with the Nazi occupiers began setting up the first ghettos and concentration camps on this day.

On the anniversary of this event, it is our moral duty to remember, to keep alive the spirit of the martyrs and human-saving heroes, and to set them as an example for future generations!

The whole of Europe has a shared responsibility to ensure that future generations learn from the crimes of the past, understand its background and reflect on its consequences. This day also invites all people of good will to strengthen solidarity and the feeling of belonging, to exercise patience towards each other!

In honor of Memorial Day, I filmed in a small town about 20 years ago. It is about my hometown, from where 800 Jews were dragged to the death camps. I conducted interviews with old men and women who were still young at the time of the Emergency, who painfully remembered the spring of 1944. The fence of the synagogue, now renovated and used for theater and music performances, still has the old iron bars. As the camera moved away in front of them, following the cameraman's soft footsteps, the families, men, old people, women, and children locked in the yard, who had to leave everything there and start a shameful path towards hopelessness and death, cried again in the yard.

Everything was completely incomprehensible, I tried to save my little friend, but it was impossible, only the bravest ventured near the bars, - said the already old lady in 2004. The Hungarian soldier in love reached out to his partner through the grate, people brought food, packages, water, whatever they could and allowed. It was amazing to see those kind people so humiliated, and although the war caused great losses to everyone, almost every woman and mother mourned the sons and husbands left behind at the Don bend, yet no one thought that the war would end in such inhumanity when they saw their eyes there.

And we are still a long way from the fact that the Arrowmen are crowding the streets, that Soviet tanks arrive and, with Molotov's permission (order?), rape almost every woman, harass and kill civilians, and that a poor Jewish man returning from the death camp says: the main street of this small town will be lined with goy skulls .

No one knows if he said it, it was the word of mouth!

Of course, it didn't happen, but his frustration is understandable. The strange state of mind I heard at another filming location is also understandable, that there must be as many kulaks, whether they deserved it financially or not, as many Jewish families were taken from the village.

No one knows if that was the case, it was the word of mouth!

Poor, tormented people count, they don't understand. Those who survived the Holocaust were scattered, their centuries-old strong human-religious community was destroyed, only sometimes their descendants or Orthodox believers come to look for the miracle rabbi to give them advice, to give them a blessing for their lives, on which the II. The Nazi trauma of World War II left its disgusting mark there. Many times burned into the skin. They cross the river in boats in the fog, because on the other side, at the bottom of the old castle, there are still gravestones that remind us of times of peace.

Those where the Jewish shopkeeper and merchant were still respected people of the settlement, the poor with many children - like my grandmother - always got food, shoes, clothes, without interest, from a good heart, and, of course, to spend his future salary with him , which was either given by the master or not.

Or there was always a green loan for the farmers, who were thus able to acquire the necessary tools and seeds for production, and the purchase of the crop was also guaranteed. Traders' carts stood long and long in front of the railway ramps.

What kind of wild ideas freed the communist Lenin boys for this peaceful time, the madness of the class struggle, the unjust peace dictates of the great powers, the madness of the Nazis, the Gulag, the Malenkij robot, the six million Jewish victims, the 50 million war losses, the 100 million Stalinist terror demanding dictatorships, the Arrows, the AVH, the Rákos era, deportations, the Kádár-type blood judges, violent collectivization.

Even now, I can see the image of the camera slowly gliding in front of the iron bars. Inside, the cold spring, the last kiss, the children hiding in the arms of their trembling parents, my grandmother's last almsgiving given between the iron bars to her good shopkeeper's family, and then the creaking open wagons, which swallowed these people like dragons and set the gears in the direction of the final destruction .

On April 19, Hungary's independence ceases, Germany invades our country with troops and only regains it in 1991 with the departure of the last Soviet soldier.

But the bitterness, the mutual suspicion, the division still has an effect, it circulates in the vascular system of society, causing ugly boils on its body again and again. I have friends whose packed suitcases - in order to escape - are still within easy reach in a corner of their apartment.

We can never forget our beloved compatriots who became victims of the Holocaust. And in tribute to them, let us never let people swear by any ideal lose their common sense and this leads to war and genocide, especially now during the year of danger.

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