Csaba Latorcai, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office, arrived at the Auschwitz memorial on Tuesday for the international commemoration called the March of Life. The Hungarian delegation led by him, including young people from Hungarian educational institutions, also held a special commemoration in the morning in front of building number 18 of the Auschwitz I camp, where the exhibition dedicated to the Hungarian victims can be seen.
This year's Auschwitz commemoration is being held at a time when the world is "again showing its peaceful face", Latorcai stated in his speech. He added: "In addition to the war in Ukraine raging in our immediate neighborhood, we are also witnessing the growing alarming proportions of religious intolerance in Western Europe in the name of the culture of abolition." The latter threatens both Jewish and Christian religious denominations, he underlined.
As examples of restrictions on the exercise of Jewish religious freedom, he mentioned the regulation of kosher ritual slaughter, as well as the fact that in some large Western European cities, Jews are called upon to limit the wearing of the kippah for security reasons.
Anti-Semitism is also present in the world of the 21st century, which can only be dealt with by joint efforts, he emphasized.
He added that anti-Semitic statements are not something that "could be remedied simply by participating in a Seder evening", such a "symbolic participation does not absolve anyone from the responsibility they have to bear due to anti-Semitic thinking", one of the Hungarian opposition members believed to have indicated anonymously for the participation of the president of the party at the seder dinner held at the American embassy in Budapest.
The Secretary of State also reminded of the events in Western Europe when "they try to ridicule and specifically persecute those who stand for Christian values".
"We must raise our voices when anyone is restricted in their religion or is excluded because of their origin".
The state secretary called the Holocaust one of the greatest tragedies in the history not only of Jews, but of the entire Hungarian society. He emphasized:
we must keep the memory of the Holocaust alive so that future generations "knowing the past cannot commit the same atrocities that once happened".
The March of Life is part of the international educational program initiated in 1988, this year is also linked to the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.
The number of those deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex is estimated at 1.3 million, of whom 1.1 million were Jews, but there were also many Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war among them. The number of Jews brought there from Hungary exceeded 430 thousand, they made up the largest group of Jews. According to the data of the Auschwitz museum, 325,000-330,000 of them were killed in gas chambers immediately after their arrival, and around 25,000 died during the subsequent selections. The number of people killed and killed in the death camp was at least 1.1 million.
Source: MTI
Photos: Facebook/Csaba Latorcai
