Former prime minister Gordon Bajnai’s letter of 29 April 2014 to President Janos Ader regarding his speech about the Hungarian Holocaust delivered at Auschwitz on 28 April.

Dear President Ader:

As part of the International Life March you delivered a speech at Auschwitz yesterday worthy of a head of state in which you expressed the unity of the nation, for which I thank you on behalf of our fellow countrymen, Jew and non-Jew alike. It was an honest speech for which I congratulate you.

You stated that nothing could forgive the fact that in 1944 the Hungarian state turned against its own citizens and, instead of protecting them, served the Nazis devilish plans, instead of opposing them. You also stated that every third victim at Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew locked into a ghetto and deported from Hungary after the German invasion with the cooperation of Hungarian state organs.

Allow me to express my agreement with the statement that in order to understand the 1944 tragedy it is necessary to confront ourselves.

Dear Mr. President:

In light of the above, I respectfully request that you represent the above point of view when the government of Hungary wants to erect a memorial in Budapest’s Szabadsag square that is completely contrary to and irreconcilable with this. The memorial to the German invasion denies what you recalled so honestly in yesterday’s speech: the Hungarian state cooperated in the murder of many hundreds of thousands of our countrymen. The misguided objective of the statue is not to confront ourselves but rather to whitewash the responsibility of the Hungarian state in the Shoah. Behind this obviously is the cynical political calculation that with this unworthy debate attention can be diverted from the questions really defining the country’s future. We must never forget or deny the responsibility of the Hungarian state for the Holocaust. We must remember the dangerous period in an authentic manner so that it can never happen again!

Dear Mr. President:

I ask that in the spirit of the above that you use your influence to intervene in the interest of preventing the construction of the history falsifying memorial.

With respect and gratitude,

Gordon Bajani, former prime minister and head of the Together-PM alliance

Source: The Budapest Beacon

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